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 the realm, And under strict anathema of death Guarded from men's inquisitive approach, Save from the trusty few one needs must trust;Who while his fasten'd body they provide With salutary garb and nourishment, Instruct his soul in what no soul may miss Of holy faith, and in such other lore As may solace his life-imprisonment, And tame perhaps the Savage prophesied Toward such a trial as I aim at now, And now demand your special hearing to.
What in this fearful business I have done, Judge whether lightly or maliciously,--I, with my own and only flesh and blood, And proper lineal inheritor!
I swear, had his foretold atrocities Touch'd me alone.I had not saved myself At such a cost to him; but as a king,--A Christian king,--I say, advisedly, Who would devote his people to a tyrant Worse than Caligula fore-chronicled?
But even this not without grave mis-giving, Lest by some chance mis-reading of the stars, Or mis-direction of what rightly read, I wrong my son of his prerogative, And Poland of her rightful sovereign.
For, sure and certain prophets as the stars, Although they err not, he who reads them may;Or rightly reading--seeing there is One Who governs them, as, under Him, they us, We are not sure if the rough diagram They draw in heaven and we interpret here, Be sure of operation, if the Will Supreme, that sometimes for some special end The course of providential nature breaks By miracle, may not of these same stars Cancel his own first draft, or overrule What else fore-written all else overrules.
As, for example, should the Will Almighty Permit the Free-will of particular man To break the meshes of else strangling fate--Which Free-will, fearful of foretold abuse, I have myself from my own son fore-closed From ever possible self-extrication;A terrible responsibility, Not to the conscience to be reconciled Unless opposing almost certain evil Against so slight contingency of good.
Well--thus perplex'd, I have resolved at last To bring the thing to trial: whereunto Here have I summon'd you, my Peers, and you Whom I more dearly look to, failing him, As witnesses to that which I propose;And thus propose the doing it.Clotaldo, Who guards my son with old fidelity, Shall bring him hither from his tower by night Lockt in a sleep so fast as by my art I rivet to within a link of death, But yet from death so far, that next day's dawn Shall wake him up upon the royal bed, Complete in consciousness and faculty, When with all princely pomp and retinue My loyal Peers with due obeisance Shall hail him Segismund, the Prince of Poland.
Then if with any show of human kindness He fling discredit, not upon the stars, But upon me, their misinterpreter, With all apology mistaken age Can make to youth it never meant to harm, To my son's forehead will I shift the crown I long have wish'd upon a younger brow;And in religious humiliation, For what of worn-out age remains to me, Entreat my pardon both of Heaven and him For tempting destinies beyond my reach.
