Pedro Calderón de la Barca

“ SEG. Oh, rather pray for me a sleep so fast As shall obliterate dream and waking too. (Exit into the tower.) CLO. So sleep; sleep fast: and sleep away those two Night-potions, and the waking dream between Which dream thou must believe; and, if to see Again, poor Segismund! that dream must be.— And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death? ”

“ CLO. Courage, my liege! The curtain is undrawn, And each must play his part out manfully, Leaving the rest to heaven. KING. Whose written words If I should misinterpret or transgress! But as you say— (To the Lord, who exit.) You, back to him at once; Clotaldo, you, when he is somewhat used To the new world of which they call him Prince, Where place and face, and all, is strange to him, With your known features and familiar garb Shall then, as chorus to the scene, accost him, And by such earnest of that old and too Familiar world, assure him of the new. ”

“ SEG. Oh God, if this be dreaming, charge it not To burst the channel of enclosing sleep And drown the waking reason! Not to dream Only what dreamt shall once or twice again Return to buzz about the sleeping brain Till shaken off for ever— But reassailing one so quick, so thick— The very figure and the circumstance Of sense-confess'd reality foregone In so-call'd dream so palpably repeated, The copy so like the original, We know not which is which; and dream so-call'd Itself inweaving so inextricably Into the tissue of acknowledged truth ”

“ SEG. The chair? CHAMB. The royal throne of Poland, Sir, Which may your Royal Highness keep as long As he that now rules from it shall have ruled When heaven has call'd him to itself. SEG. When he?— CHAMB. Your royal father, King Basilio, Sir. SEG. My royal father—King Basilio. You see I answer but as Echo does, Not knowing what she listens or repeats. This is my throne—this is my palace—Oh, But this out of the window?— CHAMB. Warsaw, Sir, Your capital— SEG. And all the moving people? CHAMB. Your subjects and your vassals like ourselves. ”

“ Great things forecast themselves by shadows great: Or will you have it, this like that dream too, People, and place, and time itself, all dream Yet, being in't, and as the shadows come Quicker and thicker than you can escape, Adopt your visionary soldiery, Who, having struck a solid chain away, Now put an airy sword into your hand, And harnessing you piece-meal till you stand Amidst us all complete in glittering, If unsubstantial, steel— ROSAURA (without) . The Prince! The Prince! ”

“ This is the moment upon which Those stars, whose eyes, although we see them not, By day as well as night are on us still, Hang watching up in the meridian heaven Which way the balance turns; and if to you— As by your dealing God decide it may, To my confusion!—let me answer it Unto yourself alone, who shall at once Approve yourself to be your father's judge, And sovereign of Poland in his stead, By justice, mercy, self-sobriety, And all the reasonable attributes Without which, impotent to rule himself, Others one cannot, and one must not rule ”

“ And shall not I, Till now the mere dumb instrument that wrought The battle Fate has with my father fought, Now the mere mouth-piece of its victory Oh, shall not I, the champions' sword laid down, Be yet more shamed to wear the teacher's gown, And, blushing at the part I had to play, Down where that honour'd head I was to lay By this more just submission of my own, The treason Fate has forced on me atone? KING. Oh, Segismund, in whom I see indeed, Out of the ashes of my self-extinction A better self revive ”

“ KING. What a shriek— Oh, some poor creature wounded in a cause Perhaps not worth the loss of one poor life!— So young too—and no soldier— FIFE. A poor lad, Who choosing play at hide and seek with death, Just hid where death just came to look for him; For there's no place, I think, can keep him out, Once he's his eye upon you. All grows dark— You glitter finely too—Well—we are dreaming But when the bullet's off—Heaven save the mark! ”

“ For though your father, King Basilio, Now King of Poland, jealous of the stars That prophesy his setting with your rise, Here holds you ignominiously eclipsed, And would Astolfo, Duke of Muscovy, Mount to the throne of Poland after him; So will not we, your loyal soldiery And subjects; neither those of us now first Apprised of your existence and your right: Nor those that hitherto deluded by Allegiance false, their vizors now fling down, And craving pardon on their knees with us For that unconscious disloyalty, Offer with us the service of their blood; Not only we and they ”

“ I weary of all this— Prince, cousins, chamberlains, and compliments— Where are my soldiers? Blow the trumpet, and With one sharp blast scatter these butterflies And bring the men of iron to my side, With whom a king feels like a king indeed! (Voices within. Within there! room for the Princess Estrella!) (Enter Estrella with Ladies.) ESTRELLA. Welcome, my Lord, right welcome to the throne That much too long has waited for your coming: And, in the general voice of Poland, hear A kinswoman and cousin's no less sincere. SEG. Ay, this is welcome-worth indeed, And cousin cousin-worth! ”

“ LORD. With all the rest, my liege, I will not say so like one in a dream As one himself misdoubting that he dream'd. KING. So far so well, Clotaldo, either way, And best of all if tow'rd the worse I dread. But yet no violence? LORD. At most, impatience; Wearied perhaps with importunities We yet were bound to offer. KING. Oh, Clotaldo! Though thus far well, yet would myself had drunk The potion he revives from! such suspense Crowds all the pulses of life's residue Into the present moment ”

“ SEG. Oh, how cheap The muster of a countless host of shadows, As impotent to do with as to keep! All this they said before—to softer music. CAPT. Soft music, sir, to what indeed were shadows, That, following the sunshine of a Court, Shall back be brought with it—if shadows still, Yet to substantial reckoning. SEG. They shall? The white-hair'd and white-wanded chamberlain, So busy with his wand too—the old King That I was somewhat hard on—he had been Hard upon me—and the fine feather'd Prince Who crow'd so loud—my cousin,—and another, Another cousin, we will not bear hard on— And—But Clotaldo? ”

“ 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. ”

“ One man—like this—but only so much longer As life is longer than a summer's day, Believed himself a king upon his throne, And play'd at hazard with his fellows' lives, Who cheaply dream'd away their lives to him. The sailor dream'd of tossing on the flood: The soldier of his laurels grown in blood: The lover of the beauty that he knew Must yet dissolve to dusty residue: The merchant and the miser of his bags Of finger'd gold ”

“ KING. Nay, but, Segismund! You know not—cannot know—happily wanting The sad experience on which knowledge grows, How the too early consciousness of power Spoils the best blood; nor whether for your long Constrain'd disheritance (which, but for me, Remember, and for my relenting love Bursting the bond of fate, had been eternal) You have not now a full indemnity; Wearing the blossom of your youth unspent In the voluptuous sunshine of a court, That often, by too early blossoming, Too soon deflowers the rose of royalty. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ And, whether wake or dreaming, this I know, How dream-wise human glories come and go; Whose momentary tenure not to break, Walking as one who knows he soon may wake, So fairly carry the full cup, so well Disorder'd insolence and passion quell, That there be nothing after to upbraid Dreamer or doer in the part he play'd, Whether To-morrow's dawn shall break the spell, Or the Last Trumpet of the eternal Day, When Dreaming with the Night shall pass away. ”

“ Come; we will bring him forth Out of that stony darkness here abroad, Where air and sunshine sooner shall disperse The sleepy fume which they have drugg'd him with. (They enter the tower, and thence bring out Segismund asleep on a pallet, and set him in the middle of the stage.) CAPT. Still, still so dead asleep, the very noise And motion that we make in carrying him Stirs not a leaf in all the living tree. SOLDIERS. If living—But if by some inward blow For ever and irrevocably fell'd By what strikes deeper to the root than sleep? —He's dead! He's dead! ”

“ The Prince of Poland!' and Again, 'Oh, welcome, welcome, to his own, 'Our own Prince Segismund—' Oh, but a blast— One blast of the rough mountain air! one look At the grim features— (He goes to the window.) What they disvizor'd also! shatter'd chaos Cast into stately shape and masonry, Between whose channel'd and perspective sides Compact with rooted towers, and flourishing To heaven with gilded pinnacle and spire, Flows the live current ever to and fro With open aspect and free step!—Clotaldo! ”

“ CLOTALDO. Ev'n if this battle lost us, 'tis but one Gain'd on their side, if you not lost in it; Another moment and too late: at once Take horse, and to the capital, my liege, Where in some safe and holy sanctuary Save Poland in your person. AST. Be persuaded: You know your son: have tasted of his temper; At his first onset threatening unprovoked The crime predicted for his last and worst. How whetted now with such a taste of blood, And thus far conquest! KING. Ay, and how he fought! Oh how he fought, Astolfo; ranks of men Falling as swathes of grass before the mower ”

“ SEG. But leaving with the Judge what, till this earth Be cancell'd in the burning heavens, He leaves His earthly delegates to execute, Of retribution in reward to them And woe to those who wrong'd them—Not as you, Not you, Clotaldo, knowing not—And yet Ev'n to the guiltiest wretch in all the realm, Of any treason guilty short of that, Stern usage—but assuredly not knowing, Not knowing 'twas your sovereign lord, Clotaldo, You used so sternly. CLO. Ay, sir; with the same Devotion and fidelity that now Does homage to him for my sovereign. SEG. Fidelity that held his Prince in chains! ”

“ If pure in fountain, poison'd by yourself When scarce begun to flow.—To make a man Not, as I see, degraded from the mould I came from, nor compared to those about, And then to throw your own flesh to the dogs!— Why not at once, I say, if terrified At the prophetic omens of my birth, Have drown'd or stifled me, as they do whelps Too costly or too dangerous to keep? KING. That, living, you might learn to live, and rule Yourself and Poland. ”

“ SOLDIERS. —There it is! —There what? —The tower—the fortress— —That the tower!— —That mouse-trap! We could pitch it down the rocks With our own hands. —The rocks it hangs among Dwarf its proportions and conceal its strength; Larger and stronger than you think. —No matter; No place for Poland's Prince to be shut up in. At it at once! CAPT. No—no—I tell you wait— Till those within give signal. For as yet We know not who side with us, and the fort Is strong in man and musket. SOL. Shame to wait For odds with such a cause at stake. ”

“ I know I must be near awake, Knowing I dream; or, if not at my voice, Then vanish at the clapping of my hands, Or take this foolish fellow for your sport: Dressing me up in visionary glories, Which the first air of waking consciousness Scatters as fast as from the almander— That, waking one fine morning in full flower, One rougher insurrection of the breeze Of all her sudden honour disadorns To the last blossom, and she stands again The winter-naked scare-crow that she was! ”