Life is a Dream
Page 7
Imagination, once lit up within
And unconditional of time and space,
Can pour infinities.
SEGISMUND. And I remember
How the old man they call'd the King, who wore
The crown of gold about his silver hair,
And a mysterious girdle round his waist,
Just when my rage was roaring at its height,
And after which it all was dark again,
Bid me beware lest all should be a dream.
CLOTALDO. Ay—there another specialty of dreams,
That once the dreamer 'gins to dream he dreams,
His foot is on the very verge of waking.
SEGISMUND. Would it had been upon the verge of death
That knows no waking—
Lifting me up to glory, to fall back,
Stunn'd, crippled—wretcheder than ev'n before.
CLOTALDO. Yet not so glorious, Segismund, if you
Your visionary honour wore so ill
As to work murder and revenge on those
Who meant you well.
SEGISMUND. Who meant me!—me! their Prince Chain'd like a felon—
CLOTALDO. Stay, stay—Not so fast,
You dream'd the Prince, remember.
SEGISMUND. Then in dream
Revenged it only.
CLOTALDO. True. But as they say
Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul
Yet uncorrected of the higher Will,
So that men sometimes in their dreams confess
An unsuspected, or forgotten, self;
One must beware to check—ay, if one may,
Stifle ere born, such passion in ourselves
As makes, we see, such havoc with our sleep,
And ill reacts upon the waking day.
And, by the bye, for one test, Segismund,
Between such swearable realities—
Since Dreaming, Madness, Passion, are akin
In missing each that salutary rein
Of reason, and the guiding will of man:
One test, I think, of waking sanity
Shall be that conscious power of self-control,
To curb all passion, but much most of all
That evil and vindictive, that ill squares
With human, and with holy canon less,
Which bids us pardon ev'n our enemies,
And much more those who, out of no ill will,
Mistakenly have taken up the rod
Which heaven, they think, has put into their hands.
SEGISMUND. I think I soon shall have to try again—
Sleep has not yet done with me.
CLOTALDO. Such a sleep.
Take my advice—'tis early yet—the sun
Scarce up above the mountain; go within,
And if the night deceived you, try anew
With morning; morning dreams they say come true.
SEGISMUND. Oh, rather pray for me a sleep so fast
As shall obliterate dream and waking too.
[Exit into the tower.]
CLOTALDO. 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?
How if, I say, the senses we now trust
For date of sensible comparison,—
Ay, ev'n the Reason's self that dates with them,
Should be in essence or intensity
Hereafter so transcended, and awake
To a perceptive subtlety so keen
As to confess themselves befool'd before,
In all that now they will avouch for most?
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; the beggar of his rags:
And all this stage of earth on which we seem
Such busy actors, and the parts we play'd,
Substantial as the shadow of a shade,
And Dreaming but a dream within a dream!
FIFE. Was it not said, sir,
By some philosopher as yet unborn,
That any chimney-sweep who for twelve hours
Dreams himself king is happy as the king
Who dreams himself twelve hours a chimney-sweep?
CLOTALDO. A theme indeed for wiser heads than yours
To moralize upon—How came you here?—
FIFE. Not of my own will, I assure you, sir.
No matter for myself: but I would know
About my mistress—I mean, master—
CLOTALDO. Oh,
Now I remember—Well, your master-mistress
Is well, and deftly on its errand speeds,
As you shall—if you can but hold your tongue.
Can you?
FIFE. I'd rather be at home again.
CLOTALDO. Where you shall be the quicker if while here
You can keep silence.
FIFE. I may whistle, then?
Which by the virtue of my name I do,
And also as a reasonable test
Of waking sanity—
CLOTALDO. Well, whistle then;
And for another reason you forgot,
That while you whistle, you can chatter not.
Only remember—if you quit this pass—
FIFE. (His rhymes are out, or he had call'd it spot)—
CLOTALDO. A bullet brings you to.
I must forthwith to court to tell the King
The issue of this lamentable day,
That buries all his hope in night. (To Fife.) Farewell.
Remember.
FIFE. But a moment—but a word!
When shall I see my mis—mas—
CLOTALDO. Be content:
All in good time; and then, and not before,
Never to miss your master any more. [Exit.]
FIFE. Such talk of dreaming—dreaming—I begin
To doubt if I be dreaming I am Fife,
Who with a lad who call'd herself a boy
Because—I doubt there's some confusion here—
He wore no petticoat, came on a time
Riding from Muscovy on half a horse,
Who must have dreamt she was a horse entire,
To cant me off upon my hinder face
Under this tower, wall-eyed and musket-tongued,
With sentinels a-pacing up and down,
Crying All's well when all is far from well,
All the day long, and all the night, until
I dream—if what is dreaming be not waking—
Of bells a-tolling and processions rolling
With candles, crosses, banners, San-benitos,
Of which I wear the flamy-finingest,
Through streets and places throng'd with fiery faces
To some back platform—
Oh, I shall take a fire into my hand
With thinking of my own dear Muscovy—
Only just over that Sierra there,
By which we tumbled headlong into—No-land.
Now, if without a bullet after me,
I could but get a peep of my old home
Perhaps of my own mule to take me there—
All's still—perhap
s the gentlemen within
Are dreaming it is night behind their masks—
God send 'em a good nightmare!—Now then—Hark!
Voices—and up the rocks—and armed men
Climbing like cats—Puss in the corner then. [He hides.]
[Enter SOLDIERS cautiously up the rocks]
CAPTAIN. This is the frontier pass, at any rate,
Where Poland ends and Muscovy begins.
SOLDIER. We must be close upon the tower, I know,
That half way up the mountain lies ensconced.
CAPTAIN. How know you that?
SOLDIER. He told me so—the Page
Who put us on the scent.
SOLDIER. 2. And, as I think,
Will soon be here to run it down with us.
CAPTAIN. Meantime, our horses on these ugly rocks
Useless, and worse than useless with their clatter—
Leave them behind, with one or two in charge,
And softly, softly, softly.
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!
CAPTAIN. 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.
SOLDIER. Shame to wait
For odds with such a cause at stake.
CAPTAIN. Because
Of such a cause at stake we wait for odds—
For if not won at once, for ever lost:
For any long resistance on their part
Would bring Basilio's force to succour them
Ere we had rescued him we come to rescue.
So softly, softly, softly, still—
A SOLDIER (discovering FIFE). Hilloa!
SOLDIERS.—Hilloa! Here's some one skulking—
—Seize and gag him!
—Stab him at once, say I: the only way
To make all sure.
—Hold, every man of you!
And down upon your knees!—Why, 'tis the Prince!
—The Prince!—
—Oh, I should know him anywhere,
And anyhow disguised.
—But the Prince is chain'd.
—And of a loftier presence—
—'Tis he, I tell you;
Only bewilder'd as he was before.
God save your Royal Highness! On our knees
Beseech you answer us!
FIFE. Just as you please.
Well—'tis this country's custom, I suppose,
To take a poor man every now and then
And set him on the throne; just for the fun
Of tumbling him again into the dirt.
And now my turn is come. 'Tis very pretty.
SOLDIER. His wits have been distemper'd with their drugs.
But do you ask him, Captain.
CAPTAIN. On my knees,
And in the name of all who kneel with me,
I do beseech your Highness answer to
Your royal title.
FIFE. Still, just as you please.
In my own poor opinion of myself—
But that may all be dreaming, which it seems
Is very much the fashion in this country
No Polish prince at all, but a poor lad
From Muscovy; where only help me back,
I promise never to contest the crown
Of Poland with whatever gentleman
You fancy to set up.
SOLDIERS.—From Muscovy?
—A spy then—
—Of Astolfo's—
—Spy! a spy
—Hang him at once!
FIFE. No, pray don't dream of that!
SOLDIER. How dared you then set yourself up for our Prince Segismund?
FIFE. I set up!—I like that
When 'twas yourselves be-siegesmunded me.
CAPTAIN. No matter—Look!—The signal from the tower.
Prince Segismund!
SOLDIER. (from the tower). Prince Segismund!
CAPTAIN. All's well.
Clotaldo safe secured?—
SOLDIER. (from the tower). No—by ill luck,
Instead of coming in, as we had look'd for,
He sprang on horse at once, and off at gallop.
CAPTAIN. To Court, no doubt—a blunder that—And yet
Perchance a blunder that may work as well
As better forethought. Having no suspicion
So will he carry none where his not going
Were of itself suspicious. But of those
Within, who side with us?
SOLDIER. Oh, one and all
To the last man, persuaded or compell'd.
CAPTAIN. Enough: whatever be to be retrieved
No moment to be lost. For though Clotaldo
Have no revolt to tell of in the tower,
The capital will soon awake to ours,
And the King's force come blazing after us.
Where is the Prince?
SOLDIER. Within; so fast asleep
We woke him not ev'n striking off the chain
We had so cursedly help bind him with,
Not knowing what we did; but too ashamed
Not to undo ourselves what we had done.
CAPTAIN. No matter, nor by whosesoever hands,
Provided done. 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.]
CAPTAIN. 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! They've kill'd him—
—No—he breathes—
And the heart beats—and now he breathes again
Deeply, as one about to shake away
The load of sleep.
CAPTAIN. Come, let us all kneel round,
And with a blast of warlike instruments,
And acclamation of all loyal hearts,
Rouse and restore him to his royal right,
From which no royal wrong shall drive him more.
[They all kneel round his bed: trumpets, drums, etc.]
SOLDIERS.—Segismund! Segismund! Prince Segismund!
—King Segismund! Down with Basilio!
—Down with Astolfo! Segismund our King! etc.
—He stares upon us wildly. He cannot speak.
—I said so—driv'n him mad.