Life Is A Dream | Page 8

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