In the transfer of these two great empires--Greece first, since I
myself was born, and after Syria, since you were born too--the land
was lost before the money was found!
Oh, Cousin Vincent, if the whole world were animated with a
reasonable soul, as Plato thought it were, and if it had wit and
understanding to mark and perceive everything, Lord God, how the
ground on which a prince buildeth his palace would loud laugh its
lord to scorn, when it saw him proud of his possession and heard
him boast himself that he and his blood are for ever the very lords
and owners of the land! For then would the ground think the while,
to itself, "Ah, thou poor soul, who thinkest thou wert half a god,
and art amid thy glory but a man in a gay gown! I who am the ground
here, over whom thou are so proud, have had a hundred such owners
of me as thou callest thyself, more than ever thou hast heard the
names of. And some of them who went proudly over mine head now lie
low in my belly, and my side lieth over them. And many a one shall,
as thou does now, call himself mine owner after thee, who shall
neither be kin to thy blood nor have heard any word of thy name."
Who owned your village, cousin, three thousand years ago?
VINCENT: Three thousand, uncle? Nay, nay, in any king, Christian
or heathen, you may strike off a third part of that well
enough--and, as far as I know, half of the rest, too.
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