Life Is A Dream | Page 8

men-at-arms
Out-crest the plumage of your lady
court?

EST.
But to defend what yours would force from me.
AST.
Might not I, lady, say the same of mine?
But not to come to
battle, ev'n of words,
With a fair lady, and my kinswoman;
And as
averse to stand before your face,
Defenceless, and condemn'd in your
disgrace,
Till the good king be here to clear it all--
Will you
vouchsafe to hear me?
EST.
As you will.
AST.
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, Clorilena, 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