Not only on the common score of kind, But that peculiar count of sovereignty--If not behind the beast in brain as heart, How should I thus deal with my innocent child, Doubly desired, and doubly dear when come, As that sweet second-self that all desire, And princes more than all, to root themselves By that succession in their people's hearts, Unless at that superior Will, to which Not kings alone, but sovereign nature bows?
SEG.
And what had those same stars to tell of me That should compel a father and a king So much against that double instinct?
KING.
That, Which I have brought you hither, at my peril, Against their written warning, to disprove, By justice, mercy, human kindliness.
SEG.
And therefore made yourself their instrument To make your son the savage and the brute They only prophesied?--Are you not afear'd, Lest, irrespective as such creatures are Of such relationship, the brute you made Revenge the man you marr'd--like sire, like son.
To do by you as you by me have done?
KING.
You never had a savage heart from me;
I may appeal to Poland.
SEG.
Then from whom?
If pure in fountain, poison'd by yourself When scarce begun to flow.--To make a man Not, as I see, degraded from the mould I came from, nor compared to those about, And then to throw your own flesh to the dogs!--Why not at once, I say, if terrified At the prophetic omens of my birth, Have drown'd or stifled me, as they do whelps Too costly or too dangerous to keep?
KING.
That, living, you might learn to live, and rule Yourself and Poland.
SEG.
By the means you took To spoil for either?
KING.
Nay, but, Segismund!
You know not--cannot know--happily wanting The sad experience on which knowledge grows, How the too early consciousness of power Spoils the best blood; nor whether for your long Constrain'd disheritance (which, but for me, Remember, and for my relenting love Bursting the bond of fate, had been eternal)You have not now a full indemnity;
Wearing the blossom of your youth unspent In the voluptuous sunshine of a court, That often, by too early blossoming, Too soon deflowers the rose of royalty.
SEG.
Ay, but what some precocious warmth may spill, May not an early frost as surely kill?
KING.
But, Segismund, my son, whose quick discourse Proves I have not extinguish'd and destroy'd The Man you charge me with extinguishing, However it condemn me for the fault Of keeping a good light so long eclipsed, Reflect! This is the moment upon which Those stars, whose eyes, although we see them not, By day as well as night are on us still, Hang watching up in the meridian heaven Which way the balance turns; and if to you--As by your dealing God decide it may, To my confusion!--let me answer it Unto yourself alone, who shall at once Approve yourself to be your father's judge, And sovereign of Poland in his stead, By justice, mercy, self-sobriety, And all the reasonable attributes Without which, impotent to rule himself, Others one cannot, and one must not rule;But which if you but show the blossom of--All that is past we shall but look upon As the first out-fling of a generous nature Rioting in first liberty; and if This blossom do but promise such a flower As promises in turn its kindly fruit:
