Life is a Dream – Act III
ACT III
SCENE I.
The Tower, etc., as in Act I. Scene I.
CLOTALDO.
Princes and princesses, and counsellors
Fluster’d to right and left—my life made at—
But that was nothing
Even the white-hair’d, venerable King
Seized on—Indeed, you made wild work of it;
And so discover’d in your outward action,
Flinging your arms about you in your sleep,
Grinding your teeth—and, as I now remember,
Woke mouthing out judgment and execution,
On those about you.
SEG.
Ay, I did indeed.
CLO.
A dream!
That seem’d as swearable reality
As what I wake in now.
CLO.
Ay—wondrous how
Imagination in a sleeping brain
Out of the uncontingent senses draws
Sensations strong as from the real touch;
That we not only laugh aloud, and drench
With tears our pillow; but in the agony
Of some imaginary conflict, fight
And struggle—ev’n as you did; some, ’tis thought,
Under the dreamt-of stroke of death have died.
SEG.
And what so very strange too—In that world
Where place as well as people all was strange,
Ev’n I almost as strange unto myself,
You only, you, Clotaldo—you, as much
And palpably yourself as now you are,
Came in this very garb you ever wore,
By such a token of the past, you said,
To assure me of that seeming present.
CLO.
Ay?
SEG.
Ay; and even told me of the very stars
You tell me here of—how in spite of them,
I was enlarged to all that glory.
CLO.
Ay, By the false spirits’ nice contrivance thus
A little truth oft leavens all the false,
The better to delude us.
SEG.
CLO.
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?
SEG.
Never, to such reality.
CLO.
Such dreams
Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations
Of that ambition that lies smouldering
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, crown’d with laurel or with gold,
Nay, mounting heaven 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.
SEG.
Last night? Last night?
CLO.
Ay, do you not remember
Envying his immunity of flight,
As, rising from his throne of rock, he sail’d
Above the mountains far into the West,
That burn’d about him, while with poising wings
He darkled in it as a burning brand
Is seen to smoulder in the fire it feeds?
SEG.
Last night—last night—Oh, what a day was that
Between that last night and this sad To-day!
CLO.
And yet, perhaps,
Only some few dark moments, into which
Imagination, once lit up within
And unconditional of time and space,
Can pour infinities.
SEG.
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