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A wooded pass near the field of battle: drums, trumpets, firing, etc. Cries of ‘God save Basilio! Segismund,’ etc.
Enter FIFE, running
FIFE. God save them both, and save them all! say I!— | |
| Oh—what hot work!—Whichever way one turns | |
| The whistling bullet at one’s ears—I’ve drifted | |
| Far from my mad young-master—whom I saw | |
| Tossing upon the very crest of battle, | 5 |
| Beside the Prince—God save her first of all! | |
| With all my heart I say and pray—and so | |
| Commend her to His keeping—bang!—bang!—bang!— | |
| And for myself—scarce worth His thinking of— | |
| I’ll see what I can do to save myself | 10 |
| Behind this rock, until the storm blows over. | |
| |
(Skirmishes, shouts, firing, etc. After some time enter KING BASILIO, ASTOLFO, and CLOTALDO)
KING. The day is lost! | |
| |
| AST. Do not despair—the rebels— | |
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| KING. Alas! the vanquish’d only are the rebels. | |
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| CLOTALDO. Ev’n if this battle lost us, ’tis but one | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
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| 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, | 25 |
| 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; | |
| I could but pause to gaze at him, although, | 30 |
| Like the pale horseman of the Apocalypse, | |
| Each moment brought him nearer—Yet I say, | |
| I could but pause and gaze on him, and pray | |
| Poland had such a warrior for her king. | |
| |
| AST. The cry of triumph on the other side | 35 |
| Gains ground upon us here—there’s but a moment | |
| For you, my liege, to do, for me to speak, | |
| Who back must to the field, and what man may | |
| Do, to retrieve the fortune of the day. (Firing.) | |
| |
| FIFE (falling forward, shot). Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. | 40 |
| |
| 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, | 45 |
| Who choosing play at hide and seek with death, | |
| Just hid where death just came to took 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— | 50 |
| But when the bullet’s off—Heaven save the mark! | |
| So tell my mister—mastress— (Dies.) | |
| |
| KING. Oh God! How this poor creature’s ignorance | |
| Confounds our so-call’d wisdom! Even now | |
| When death has stopt his lips, the wound through which | 55 |
| His soul went out, still with its bloody tongue | |
| Preaching how vain our struggle against fate! | |
| |
| (VOICES within). After them! After them! This way! This way! | |
| The day is ours—Down with Basilio, etc. | |
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| AST. Fly, sir— | 60 |
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| KING. And slave-like flying not out-ride | |
| The fate which better like a King abide! | |
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Enter SEGISMUND, ROSAURA, SOLDIERS, etc.
SEG. Where is the King? | |
| |
| KING (prostrating himself). Behold him,—by this late | |
| Anticipation of resistless fate, | 65 |
| Thus underneath your feet his golden crown, | |
| And the white head that wears it, laying down, | |
| His fond resistance hope to expiate. | |
| |
| SEG. Princes and warriors of Poland—you | |
| That stare on this unnatural sight aghast, | 70 |
| Listen to one who, Heaven-inspired to do | |
| What in its secret wisdom Heaven forecast, | |
| By that same Heaven instructed prophet-wise | |
| To justify the present in the past. | |
| What in the sapphire volume of the skies | 75 |
| Is writ by God’s own finger misleads none, | |
| But him whose vain and misinstructed eyes, | |
| They mock with misinterpretation, | |
| Or who, mistaking what he rightly read, | |
| Ill commentary makes, or misapplies | 80 |
| Thinking to shirk or thwart it. Which has done | |
| The wisdom of this venerable head; | |
| Who, well provided with the secret key | |
| To that gold alphabet, himself made me, | |
| Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read | 85 |
| Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp’d the growth | |
| Of better nature in constraint and sloth, | |
| That only bring to bear the seed of wrong | |
| And turn’d the stream to fury whose out-burst | |
| Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced, | 90 |
| And fertilized the land he flow’d along. | |
| Then like to some unskilful duellist, | |
| Who having over-reached himself pushing too hard | |
| His foe, or but a moment off his guard— | |
| What odds, when Fate is one’s antagonist!— | 95 |
| Nay, more, this royal father, self-dismay’d | |
| At having Fate against himself array’d, | |
| Upon himself the very sword he knew | |
| Should wound him, down upon his bosom drew, | |
| That might well handled, well have wrought; or, kept | 100 |
| Undrawn, have harmless in the scabbard slept. | |
| But Fate shall not by human force be broke, | |
| Nor foil’d by human feint; the Secret learn’d | |
| Against the scholar by that master turn’d | |
| Who to himself reserves the master-stroke. | 105 |
| Witness whereof this venerable Age, | |
| Thrice crown’d as Sire, and Sovereign, and Sage, | |
| Down to the very dust dishonour’d by | |
| The very means he tempted to defy | |
| The irresistible. And shall not I, | 110 |
| 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, | 115 |
| 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, | 120 |
| Out of the ashes of my self-extinction | |
| A better self revive; if not beneath | |
| Your feet, beneath your better wisdom bow’d, | |
| The Sovereignty of Poland I resign, | |
| With this its golden symbol; which if thus | 125 |
| Saved with its silver head inviolate, | |
| Shall nevermore be subject to decline; | |
| But when the head that it alights on now | |
| Falls honour’d by the very foe that must, | |
| As all things mortal, lay it in the dust, | 130 |
| Shall star-like shift to his successor’s brow. | |
| |
| Shouts, trumpets, etc. God save King Segismund! | |
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| SEG. For what remains— | |
| As for my own, so for my people’s peace, | |
| Astolfo’s and Estrella’s plighted hands | 135 |
| I disunite, and taking hers to mine, | |
| His to one yet more dearly his resign. | |
| |
| Shouts, etc. God save Estrella, Queen of Poland! | |
| |
| SEG. (to CLOTALDO). You | |
| That with unflinching duty to your King, | 140 |
| Till countermanded by the mightier Power, | |
| Have held your Prince a captive in the tower, | |
| Henceforth as strictly guard him on the throne | |
| No less my people’s keeper than my own. 1 | |
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| You stare upon me all, amazed to hear | 145 |
| The word of civil justice from such lips | |
| As never yet seem’d tuned to such discourse. | |
| But listen—In that same enchanted tower, | |
| Not long ago I learn’d it from a dream | |
| Expounded by this ancient prophet here; | 150 |
| And which he told me, should it come again, | |
| How I should bear myself beneath it; not | |
| As then with angry passion all on fire, | |
| Arguing and making a distemper’d soul; | |
| But ev’n with justice, mercy, self-control, | 155 |
| As if the dream I walk’d in were no dream, | |
| And conscience one day to account for it. | |
| A dream it was in which I thought myself, | |
| And you that hail’d me now then hail’d me King, | |
| In a brave palace that was all my own, | 160 |
| Within, and all without it, mine; until, | |
| Drunk with excess of majesty and pride, | |
| Methought I tower’d so high and swell’d so wide, | |
| That of myself I burst the glittering bubble, | |
| That my ambition had about me blown, | 165 |
| And all again was darkness. Such a dream | |
| As this in which I may be walking now; | |
| Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows, | |
| Who make believe to listen; but anon, | |
| With all your glittering arms and equipage, | 170 |
| King, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel, | |
| Ay, ev’n with all your airy theatre, | |
| May flit into the air you seem to rend | |
| With acclamation, leaving me to wake | |
| In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake | 175 |
| From this that waking is; or this and that | |
| waking or both dreaming; such a doubt | |
| Confounds and clouds our mortal life about. | |
| And, whether wake or dreaming, this I know, | |
| How dream-wise human glories come and go; | 180 |
| 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 | 185 |
| 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. [Exeunt. | |
