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, 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, 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 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.
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, Who choosing play at hide and seek with death, Just hid where death just came to look 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 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 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.
AST.
Fly, sir--
KING.
And slave-like flying not out-ride The fate which better like a King abide!
(Enter Segismund, Rosaura, Soldiers, etc.)SEG.
Where is the King?
KING (prostrating himself).
Behold him,--by this late Anticipation of resistless fate, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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!--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 Undrawn, have harmless in the scabbard slept.
