Life is a Dream Read online

  ASTOLFO. You know that, when about to leave this world,

  Our royal grandsire, King Alfonso, left

  Three children; one a son, Basilio,

  Who wears—long may he wear! the crown of Poland;

  And daughters twain: of whom the elder was

  Your mother, Clorileña, now some while

  Exalted to a more than mortal throne;

  And Recisunda, mine, the younger sister,

  Who, married to the Prince of Muscovy,

  Gave me the light which may she live to see

  Herself for many, many years to come.

  Meanwhile, good King Basilio, as you know,

  Deep in abstruser studies than this world,

  And busier with the stars than lady's eyes,

  Has never by a second marriage yet

  Replaced, as Poland ask'd of him, the heir

  An early marriage brought and took away;

  His young queen dying with the son she bore him;

  And in such alienation grown so old

  As leaves no other hope of heir to Poland

  Than his two sisters' children; you, fair cousin,

  And me; for whom the Commons of the realm

  Divide themselves into two several factions;

  Whether for you, the elder sister's child;

  Or me, born of the younger, but, they say,

  My natural prerogative of man

  Outweighing your priority of birth.

  Which discord growing loud and dangerous,

  Our uncle, King Basilio, doubly sage

  In prophesying and providing for

  The future, as to deal with it when come,

  Bids us here meet to-day in solemn council

  Our several pretensions to compose.

  And, but the martial out-burst that proclaims

  His coming, makes all further parley vain,

  Unless my bosom, by which only wise

  I prophesy, now wrongly prophesies,

  By such a happy compact as I dare

  But glance at till the Royal Sage declare.

  [Trumpets, etc. Enter KING BASILIO with his Council]

  ALL. The King! God save the King!

  ESTRELLA (Kneeling.) Oh, Royal Sir!—

  ASTOLFO (Kneeling.) God save your Majesty—

  KING. Rise both of you,

  Rise to my arms, Astolfo and Estrella;

  As my two sisters' children always mine,

  Now more than ever, since myself and Poland

  Solely to you for our succession look'd.

  And now give ear, you and your several factions,

  And you, the Peers and Princes of this realm,

  While I reveal the purport of this meeting

  In words whose necessary length I trust

  No unsuccessful issue shall excuse.

  You and the world who have surnamed me "Sage"

  Know that I owe that title, if my due,

  To my long meditation on the book

  Which ever lying open overhead—

  The book of heaven, I mean—so few have read;

  Whose golden letters on whose sapphire leaf,

  Distinguishing the page of day and night,

  And all the revolution of the year;

  So with the turning volume where they lie

  Still changing their prophetic syllables,

  They register the destinies of men:

  Until with eyes that, dim with years indeed,

  Are quicker to pursue the stars than rule them,

  I get the start of Time, and from his hand

  The wand of tardy revelation draw.

  Oh, had the self-same heaven upon his page

  Inscribed my death ere I should read my life

  And, by fore-casting of my own mischance,

  Play not the victim but the suicide

  In my own tragedy!—But you shall hear.

  You know how once, as kings must for their people,

  And only once, as wise men for themselves,

  I woo'd and wedded: know too that my Queen

  In childing died; but not, as you believe,

  With her, the son she died in giving life to.

  For, as the hour of birth was on the stroke,

  Her brain conceiving with her womb, she dream'd

  A serpent tore her entrail. And too surely

  (For evil omen seldom speaks in vain)

  The man-child breaking from that living tomb

  That makes our birth the antitype of death,

  Man-grateful, for the life she gave him paid

  By killing her: and with such circumstance

  As suited such unnatural tragedy;

  He coming into light, if light it were

  That darken'd at his very horoscope,

  When heaven's two champions—sun and moon I mean—

  Suffused in blood upon each other fell

  In such a raging duel of eclipse

  As hath not terrified the universe

  Since that which wept in blood the death of Christ:

  When the dead walk'd, the waters turn'd to blood,

  Earth and her cities totter'd, and the world

  Seem'd shaken to its last paralysis.

  In such a paroxysm of dissolution

  That son of mine was born; by that first act

  Heading the monstrous catalogue of crime,

  I found fore-written in his horoscope;

  As great a monster in man's history

  As was in nature his nativity;

  So savage, bloody, terrible, and impious,

  Who, should he live, would tear his country's entrails,

  As by his birth his mother's; with which crime

  Beginning, he should clench the dreadful tale

  By trampling on his father's silver head.

  All which fore-reading, and his act of birth

  Fate's warrant that I read his life aright;

  To save his country from his mother's fate,

  I gave abroad that he had died with her

  His being slew; with midnight secrecy

  I had him carried to a lonely tower

  Hewn from the mountain-barriers of the realm,

  And under strict anathema of death

  Guarded from men's inquisitive approach,

  Save from the trusty few one needs must trust;

  Who while his fasten'd body they provide

  With salutary garb and nourishment,

  Instruct his soul in what no soul may miss

  Of holy faith, and in such other lore

  As may solace his life-imprisonment,

  And tame perhaps the Savage prophesied

  Toward such a trial as I aim at now,

  And now demand your special hearing to.

  What in this fearful business I have done,

  Judge whether lightly or maliciously,—

  I, with my own and only flesh and blood,

  And proper lineal inheritor!

  I swear, had his foretold atrocities

  Touch'd me alone. I had not saved myself

  At such a cost to him; but as a king,—

  A Christian king,—I say, advisedly,

  Who would devote his people to a tyrant

  Worse than Caligula fore-chronicled?

  But even this not without grave mis-giving,

  Lest by some chance mis-reading of the stars,

  Or mis-direction of what rightly read,

  I wrong my son of his prerogative,

  And Poland of her rightful sovereign.

  For, sure and certain prophets as the stars,

  Although they err not, he who reads them may;

  Or rightly reading—seeing there is One

  Who governs them, as, under Him, they us,

  We are not sure if the rough diagram

  They draw in heaven and we interpret here,

  Be sure of operation, if the Will

  Supreme, that sometimes for some special end

  The course
of providential nature breaks

  By miracle, may not of these same stars

  Cancel his own first draft, or overrule

  What else fore-written all else overrules.

  As, for example, should the Will Almighty

  Permit the Free-will of particular man

  To break the meshes of else strangling fate—

  Which Free-will, fearful of foretold abuse,

  I have myself from my own son fore-closed

  From ever possible self-extrication;

  A terrible responsibility,

  Not to the conscience to be reconciled

  Unless opposing almost certain evil

  Against so slight contingency of good.

  Well—thus perplex'd, I have resolved at last

  To bring the thing to trial: whereunto

  Here have I summon'd you, my Peers, and you

  Whom I more dearly look to, failing him,

  As witnesses to that which I propose;

  And thus propose the doing it. Clotaldo,

  Who guards my son with old fidelity,

  Shall bring him hither from his tower by night

  Lockt in a sleep so fast as by my art

  I rivet to within a link of death,

  But yet from death so far, that next day's dawn

  Shall wake him up upon the royal bed,

  Complete in consciousness and faculty,

  When with all princely pomp and retinue

  My loyal Peers with due obeisance

  Shall hail him Segismund, the Prince of Poland.

  Then if with any show of human kindness

  He fling discredit, not upon the stars,

  But upon me, their misinterpreter,

  With all apology mistaken age

  Can make to youth it never meant to harm,

  To my son's forehead will I shift the crown

  I long have wish'd upon a younger brow;

  And in religious humiliation,

  For what of worn-out age remains to me,

  Entreat my pardon both of Heaven and him

  For tempting destinies beyond my reach.

  But if, as I misdoubt, at his first step

  The hoof of the predicted savage shows;

  Before predicted mischief can be done,

  The self-same sleep that loosed him from the chain

  Shall re-consign him, not to loose again.

  Then shall I, having lost that heir direct,

  Look solely to my sisters' children twain

  Each of a claim so equal as divides

  The voice of Poland to their several sides,

  But, as I trust, to be entwined ere long

  Into one single wreath so fair and strong

  As shall at once all difference atone,

  And cease the realm's division with their own.

  Cousins and Princes, Peers and Councillors,

  Such is the purport of this invitation,

  And such is my design. Whose furtherance

  If not as Sovereign, if not as Seer,

  Yet one whom these white locks, if nothing else,

  To patient acquiescence consecrate,

  I now demand and even supplicate.

  ASTOLFO. Such news, and from such lips, may well suspend

  The tongue to loyal answer most attuned;

  But if to me as spokesman of my faction

  Your Highness looks for answer; I reply

  For one and all—Let Segismund, whom now

  We first hear tell of as your living heir,

  Appear, and but in your sufficient eye

  Approve himself worthy to be your son,

  Then we will hail him Poland's rightful heir.

  What says my cousin?

  ESTRELLA. Ay, with all my heart.

  But if my youth and sex upbraid me not

  That I should dare ask of so wise a king—

  KING. Ask, ask, fair cousin! Nothing, I am sure,

  Not well consider'd; nay, if 'twere, yet nothing

  But pardonable from such lips as those.

  ESTRELLA. Then, with your pardon, Sir—if Segismund,

  My cousin, whom I shall rejoice to hail

  As Prince of Poland too, as you propose,

  Be to a trial coming upon which

  More, as I think, than life itself depends,

  Why, Sir, with sleep-disorder'd senses brought

  To this uncertain contest with his stars?

  KING. Well ask'd indeed! As wisely be it answer'd!

  Because it is uncertain, see you not?

  For as I think I can discern between

  The sudden flaws of a sleep-startled man,

  And of the savage thing we have to dread;

  If but bewilder'd, dazzled, and uncouth,

  As might the sanest and the civilest

  In circumstance so strange—nay, more than that,

  If moved to any out-break short of blood,

  All shall be well with him; and how much more,

  If 'mid the magic turmoil of the change,

  He shall so calm a resolution show

  As scarce to reel beneath so great a blow!

  But if with savage passion uncontroll'd

  He lay about him like the brute foretold,

  And must as suddenly be caged again;

  Then what redoubled anguish and despair,

  From that brief flash of blissful liberty

  Remitted—and for ever—to his chain!

  Which so much less, if on the stage of glory

  Enter'd and exited through such a door

  Of sleep as makes a dream of all between.

  ESTRELLA. Oh kindly answer, Sir, to question that

  To charitable courtesy less wise

  Might call for pardon rather! I shall now

  Gladly, what, uninstructed, loyally

  I should have waited.

  ASTOLFO. Your Highness doubts not me,

  Nor how my heart follows my cousin's lips,

  Whatever way the doubtful balance fall,

  Still loyal to your bidding.

  OMNES. So say all.

  KING. I hoped, and did expect, of all no less—

  And sure no sovereign ever needed more

  From all who owe him love or loyalty.

  For what a strait of time I stand upon,

  When to this issue not alone I bring

  My son your Prince, but e'en myself your King:

  And, whichsoever way for him it turn,

  Of less than little honour to myself.

  For if this coming trial justify

  My thus withholding from my son his right,

  Is not the judge himself justified in

  The father's shame? And if the judge proved wrong,

  My son withholding from his right thus long,

  Shame and remorse to judge and father both:

  Unless remorse and shame together drown'd

  In having what I flung for worthless found.