SEGISMUND'S DREAM.

BY CALDERON.

(From Edward Fitzgerald's version of "Vida es Sueño," entitled “Such Stuff as Dreams are Made Of.")

[The King of Poland, frightened by an omen at his son's birth, which the soothsayers have interpreted to mean that the boy will grow up a mere wild beast, bringing fire and slaughter on the country if he succeeds to power, has imprisoned him in a tower till he shall come of age, with a faithful officer for guard. He then has him released-to see if the oracle has been mistaken!- and told that all this confinement and misery has been a dream as in the "Induction" to the "Taming of the Shrew."]

Segismund [within] –

Forbear! I stifle with your perfume! cease
Your crazy salutations! peace, I say

Begone, or let me go, ere I go mad

With all this babble, mummery, and glare,

For I am growing dangerous - Air! room! air!

[He rushes in. Music ceases.

Oh but to save the reeling brain from wreck
With its bewildered senses!

[After looking in the mirror.]

[He covers his eyes for a while.

What, this fantastic Segismund the same
Who last night, as for all his nights before,
Lay down to sleep in wolfskin on the ground
In a black turret which the wolf howled round.

And woke again upon a golden bed,

Round which as clouds about a rising sun,

In scarce less glittering caparison,

Gathered gay shapes that, underneath a breeze

Of music, handed him upon their knees

The wine of heaven in a cup of gold,

And still in soft melodious undersong

Hailing me Prince of Poland!"Segismund,"

They said, "Our Prince! The Prince of Poland!" and
Again, "Oh, welcome, welcome, to his own

Our own Prince Segismund -"

If reason, sense, and self-identity
Obliterated from a worn-out brain,

Art thou not maddest striving to be sane,

And catching at that Self of yesterday

That, like a leper's rags, best flung away!

Or if not mad, then dreaming-dreaming? — well —
Dreaming then-Or, if self to self be true,

Not mocked by that, but as poor souls have been

By those who wronged them, to give wrong new relish?

Or have those stars indeed they told me of

As masters of my wretched life of old,

Into some happier constellation rolled,

And brought my better fortune out on earth

Clear as themselves in heav'n!

[The great officers of state crowd around him with protestations of fidelity; Clotaldo, his old warder, comes, and after attempts at explaining and justifying the situation, Segismund in a fury attempts to strike his head off; the Princess Estrella, betrothed to the Duke of Muscovy, enters, and Segismund claims her for his own and attempts to throttle the Duke; the King is called in, and after a storm of reproaches which the King parries on the ground of good intentions, Segismund closes as follows:]

King

Be assured your Savage, once let loose,

Will not be caged again so quickly; not
By threat or adulation to be tamed,

Till he have had his quarrel out with those
Who made him what he is.

Beware! Beware!

Subdue the kindled Tiger in your eye,
Nor dream that it was sheer necessity
Made me thus far relax the bond of fate,
And, with far more of terror than of hope
Threaten myself, my people, and the State.
Know that, if old, I yet have vigor left

To wield the sword as well as wear the crown;

And if my more immediate issue fail,

Not wanting scions of collateral blood,

Whose wholesome growth shall more than compensate
For all the loss of a distorted stem.

Segismund

That will I straightway bring to trial - Oh,
After a revelation such as this,

The Last Day shall have little left to show
Of righted wrong and villainy requited!
Nay, Judgment now beginning upon earth,
Myself, methinks, in right of all my wrongs,
Appointed heav'n's avenging minister,

Accuser, judge, and executioner,

Sword in hand, cite the guilty-First, as worst,
The usurper of his son's inheritance;

Him and his old accomplice, time and crime
Inveterate, and unable to repay

The golden years of life they stole away.

What, does he yet maintain his state, and keep

The throne he should be judged from? Down with him,
That I may trample on the false white head

So long has worn my crown! Where are my soldiers?
Of all my subjects and my vassals here

Not one to do my bidding? Hark! A trumpet!

The trumpet

[He pauses as the trumpet sounds as in Act I., and masked Soldiers gradually fill in behind the throne.]

King [rising before his throne] —

Aye, indeed, the trumpet blows

A memorable note, to summon those

Who, if forthwith you fall not at the feet

Of him whose head you threaten with the dust,
Forthwith shall draw the curtain of the Past
About you; and this momentary gleam

Of glory, that you think to hold life-fast,
So coming, so shall vanish, as a dream.

Segismund

King

He prophesies; the old man prophesies;

And, at his trumpet's summons, from the tower

The leash-bound shadows loosened after me

My rising glory reach and overlour

But, reach not I my height, he shall not hold,

But with me back to his own darkness!

[He dashes toward the throne and is inclosed by the soldiers Traitors!

Hold off!

Unhand me! Am not I your king?

And you would strangle him!

But I am breaking with an inward Fire

Shall scorch you off, and wrap me on the wings

Of conflagration from a kindled pyre

Of lying prophecies and prophet kings

Above the extinguished stars-Reach me the sword

He flung me-Fill me such a bowl of wine

As that you woke the day with —

And shall close,—

But of the vintage that Clotaldo knows.

[He is drugged, returned to the tower, and on waking assured that the recent taste of freedom and kingship was all a dream, and his former life in the tower the reality.]

Segismund

"Tis nothing but a dream?

Clotaldo

You know

Nay, you yourself
Know best how lately you awoke from that
You know you went to sleep on?

Why, have you never dreamt the like before?
Segismund-

Never, to such reality.

Clotaldo

Such dreams
Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations
Of that ambition that lies smoldering
Under the ashes of the lowest fortune;
By which, when reason slumbers, or has lost
The reins of sensible comparison,

We fly at something higher than we are
Scarce ever dive to lower- to be kings,
Or conquerors, crowned with laurel or with gold,
Nay, mounting heav'n itself on eagle wings.
Which, by the way, now that I think of it,
May furnish us the key to this high flight
That royal Eagle we were watching, and
Talking of as you went to sleep last night.
Segismund-

Last night? Last night?

Clotaldo

Aye, do you not remember
Envying his immunity of flight,

As, rising from his throne of rock, he sailed
Above the mountains far into the West

That burned about him, while with poising wings

He darkled in it as a burning brand

Is seen to smolder in the fire it feeds?

Segismund --

Last night-last night-Oh, what a day was that
Between that last night and this sad To-day!

And yet, perhaps,

Only some few dark moments, into which

Imagination, once lit up within

And unconditional of time and space,

Can pour infinities.

Segismund

And I remember

How the old man they called 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 was all dark again,

Bid me beware lest all should be a dream.

Clotaldo

Aye, 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,

Stunned, crippled-wretcheder than ev'n before.

Clotaldo

Yet not so glorious, Segismund, if you
Your visionary honor wore so ill

As to work murder and revenge on those
Who meant you well.

Revenged it only.

Clotaldo

Then in dream

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

aye, 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,