Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681). Life Is a Dream.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Act I
Scene IEnter first from the topmost rock R
Of brute, or mouth to match the bit Of man—art satisfied at last? Who, when thunder roll’d aloof, Tow’rd the spheres of fire your ears Pricking, and the granite kicking Into lightning with your hoof, Among the tempest-shatter’d crags Shattering your luckless rider Back into the tempest pass’d? There then lie to starve and die, Or find another Phaeton Mad-mettled as yourself; for I, Wearied, worried, and for-done, Alone will down the mountain try, That knits his brows against the sun. Long-ear’d lightning, tail’d tornado, Griffin-hoof-in hurricano,— (I might swear till I were almost Hoarse with roaring Asonante) Who forsooth because our betters Would begin to kick and fling— You forthwith your noble mind Must prove, and kick me off behind, Tow’rd the very centre whither Gravity was most inclined. There where you have made your bed In it lie; for, wet or dry, Let what will for me betide you, Burning, blowing, freezing, hailing; Famine waste you: devil ride you: Tempest baste you black and blue:— (To R I can hold my own with you. Come weal, come woe, is never out of tune— What, you in the same plight too? And madam—sir—hereby desire, When you your own adventures sing Another time in lofty rhyme, You don’t forget the trusty squire Who went with you Don-quixoting. Who scarce can serve us than our horses worse— They say no one should rob another of The single satisfaction he has left Of singing his own sorrows; one so great, So says some great philosopher, that trouble Were worth encount’ring only for the sake Of weeping over—what perhaps you know Some poet calls the ‘luxury of woe.’ In the place of her that kick’d me off to ride, I’d test his theory upon his hide. But no bones broken, madam—sir, I mean?— And you?— But not in ‘quo’—my wounds are all behind. But, as you say, to stop this strain, Which, somehow, once one’s in the vein, Comes clattering after—there again!— What are we twain—deuce take’t!—we two, I mean, to do—drench’d through and through— Oh, I shall choke of rhymes, which I believe Are all that we shall have to live on here. Has carried all we had away with her, Clothing, and cate, and all. Our only friend and guide, about to sink Under the stage of earth. With Capa y Espada—and—pray heaven!— With but her lanthorn also. To-night, if any, with a dark one—or Almost burnt out after a month’s consumption. Well! well or ill, on horseback or afoot, This is the gate that lets me into Poland; And, sorry welcome as she gives a guest Who writes his own arrival on her rocks In his own blood— Yet better on her stony threshold die, Than live on unrevenged in Muscovy. Some men— Make yourself perfect in that little part, Or all will go to ruin! Please God we find some one to try it on. But, truly, would not any one believe Some fairy had exchanged us as we lay Two tiny foster-children in one cradle? Of what perhaps I should have thought before, But better late than never—You know I love you, As you, I know, love me, and loyally Have follow’d me thus far in my wild venture. Well! now then—having seen me safe thus far— Safe if not wholly sound—over the rocks Into the country where my business lies— Why should not you return the way we came, The storm all clear’d away, and, leaving me (Who now shall want you, though not thank you, less, Now that our horses gone) this side the ridge, Find your way back to dear old home again; While I—Come, come!— What, weeping my poor fellow?— Alone—my Lady—Lord! I mean my Lord— In a strange country—among savages— Oh, now I know—you would be rid of me For fear my stumbling speech— I want you with me for a thousand sakes To which that is as nothing—I myself More apt to let the secret out myself Without your help at all—Come, come, cheer up! And if you sing again, ‘Come weal, come woe,’ Let it be that; for we will never part Until you give the signal. ‘You fairy elves that be.’ Something of ‘following darkness like a dream,’ For that we’re after. Trying to catch hold of his glittering skirts That hang upon the mountain as he goes. He heard what you were saying, and—just so— Like some scared water-bird, As we say in my country, dove below. Poland is no great country, and, as rich In men and means, will but few acres spare To lie beneath her barrier mountains bare. We cannot, I believe, be very far From mankind or their dwellings. And well provided for man, woman, and beast. No, not for beast. Ah, but my heart begins To yearn for her— From serving you as hers did. If in default of other entertainment, We should provide them with ourselves to eat— Bears, lions, wolves— Default of other beasts, beastlier men, Cannibals, Anthropophagi, bare Poles Who never knew a tailor but by taste. With twilight—down among the rocks there, Fife— Some human dwelling, surely— Or think you but a rock torn from the rocks In some convulsion like to-day’s, and perch’d Quaintly among them in mock-masonry? A square of darkness opening in it— I don’t half like such openings!— Of night from which she spins her outer gloom— In such a time and place— Within that square of darkness, look! a light That feels its way with hesitating pulse, As we do, through the darkness that it drives To blacken into deeper night beyond. As might some English Bardolph with his nose, We might defy the sunset—Hark, a chain! That carries it. As strange as any in Arabian tale, So giant-like, and terrible, and grand, Spite of the skin he’s wrapt in. Oh, ’tis some wild man of the woods; I’ve heard They build and carry torches— Bore such a brow before the heavens as that— Chain’d as you say too!— And with one hand clench’d in his tangled hair And with a sigh as if his heart would break—[During this S Splitting the crags of God as it retires; But sparing still what it should only blast, This guilty piece of human handiwork, And all that are within it. Oh, how oft, How oft, within or here abroad, have I Waited, and in the whisper of my heart Pray’d for the slanting hand of heaven to strike The blow myself I dared not, out of fear Of that Hereafter, worse, they say, than here, Plunged headlong in, but, till dismissal waited, To wipe at last all sorrow from men’s eyes, And make this heavy dispensation clear. Thus have I borne till now, and still endure, Crouching in sullen impotence day by day, Till some such out-burst of the elements Like this rouses the sleeping fire within; And standing thus upon the threshold of Another night about to close the door Upon one wretched day to open it On one yet wretcheder because one more;— Once more, you savage heavens, I ask of you— I, looking up to those relentless eyes That, now the greater lamp is gone below, Begin to muster in the listening skies; In all the shining circuits you have gone About this theatre of human woe, What greater sorrow have you gazed upon Than down this narrow chink you witness still; And which, did you yourselves not fore-devise, You registered for others to fulfil! No wonder we went rhyming. See, starting to his feet, he strides about Far as his tether’d steps— You help’d to rivet round me did contract Since guiltless infancy from guilt in act; Of what in aspiration or in thought Guilty, but in resentment of the wrong That wreaks revenge on wrong I never wrought By excommunication from the free Inheritance that all created life, Beside myself, is born to—from the wings That range your own immeasurable blue, Down to the poor, mute, scale-imprison’d things, That yet are free to wander, glide, and pass About that under-sapphire, whereinto Yourselves transfusing you yourselves englass! That’s all the mystery. That’s why he’s chain’d— And why— But that which lives on blood and rapine; nay, Charter’d with larger liberty to slay Their guiltless kind, the tyrants of the air Soar zenith-upward with their screaming prey, Making pure heaven drop blood upon the stage Of under earth, where lion, wolf, and bear, And they that on their treacherous velvet wear Figure and constellation like your own, With their still living slaughter bound away Over the barriers of the mountain cage, Against which one, blood-guiltless, and endued With aspiration and with aptitude Transcending other creatures, day by day Beats himself mad with unavailing rage! Rebellion— The law by which not only conscience-blind Creatures, but man too prospers with his kind; Who leaving all his guilty fellows free, Under your fatal auspice and divine Compulsion, leagued in some mysterious ban Against one innocent and helpless man, Abuse their liberty to murder mine: And sworn to silence, like their masters mute In heaven, and like them twirling through the mask Of darkness, answering to all I ask, Point up to them whose work they execute! By man wrong’d, wretched, unrevenged, as I! Nay, so much worse than I, as by those chains Clipt of the means of self-revenge on those Who lay on him what they deserve. And I, Who taunted Heaven a little while ago With pouring all its wrath upon my head— Alas! like him who caught the cast-off husk Of what another bragg’d of feeding on, Here’s one that from the refuse of my sorrows Could gather all the banquet he desires! Poor soul, poor soul! He could not harm me—Nay, and if he could, Methinks I’d venture something of a life I care so little for— That, venturing in these forbidden rocks, Have lighted on my miserable life, And your own death? In which they slay me with a lingering death, Will slay you with a sudden—Who are you? Who, having lost his way in this strange land And coming night, drew hither to what seem’d A human dwelling hidden in these rocks, And where the voice of human sorrow soon Told him it was so. That by this smoky supplement of day But for a moment I may see who speaks So pitifully sweet. Could better help you than by barren pity, And my poor presence— But that—a few poor moments—and, alas! The very bliss of having, and the dread Of losing, under such a penalty As every moment’s having runs more near, Stifles the very utterance and resource They cry for quickest; till from sheer despair Of holding thee, methinks myself would tear To pieces— And live in sweet communion with your kind, After an hour lost in these lonely rocks Hunger and thirst after some human voice To drink, and human face to feed upon; What must one do where all is mute, or harsh, And ev’n the naked face of cruelty Were better than the mask it works beneath?— Across the mountain then! Across the mountain! What if the next world which they tell one of Be only next across the mountain then, Though I must never see it till I die, And you one of its angels? No angel! And the face you think so fair, ’Tis but the dismal frame-work of these rocks That makes it seem so; and the world I come from— Alas, alas, too many faces there Are but fair vizors to black hearts below, Or only serve to bring the wearer woe! But to yourself—If haply the redress That I am here upon may help to yours. I heard you tax the heavens with ordering, And men for executing, what, alas! I now behold. But why, and who they are Who do, and you who suffer— Whom, as to-night, I have so often ask’d, And ask’d in vain. The trumpet of the watch to shut us in. Oh, should they find you!—Quick! Behind the rocks! To-morrow—if to-morrow— Are but ill opiates, Segismund, I think, For night to follow: and to-night you seem More than your wont disorder’d. What! A sword! Within there! Will have to pay head-reckoning. Meanwhile, This weapon had a wearer. Bring him here, Alive or dead. Whoever more to follow— That in defiance of know proclamation Are found, at night-fall too, about this place? And let me speak for both.—Two foreign men, To whom your country and its proclamations Are equally unknown; and had we known, Ourselves not masters of our lawless beasts That, terrified by the storm among your rocks, Flung us upon them to our cost. But with no ill design on her, and therefore Taking it ill that we should thus be stop Upon her threshold so uncivilly. And you shall be the nearer to my answer. And yet so young—and— (Aloud.) Well,— Your business was not surely with the man We found you with? And strangers and benighted, as we were, As you too would have done in a like case, Accosted him at once. But to revenge himself on those who thus Injuriously misuse him. ’Tis well such resolution wants a beard— And, I suppose, is never to attain one. Well, I must take you both, you and your sword, Prisoners. I’m sure I gave it to that mule of mine To mighty little purpose. And may it win us some more kindliness Than we have met with yet. How came you by this weapon? From one of this same Polish realm of yours, Who promised a return, should come the chance, Of courtesies that he received himself In Muscovy, and left this pledge of it— Not likely yet, it seems, to be redeem’d. The sword that I myself in Muscovy, When these white hairs were black, for keepsake left Of obligation for a like return To him who saved me wounded as I lay Fighting against his country; took me home; Tended me like a brother till recover’d, Perchance to fight against him once again— And now my sword put back into my hand By his—if not his son—still, as so seeming, By me, as first devoir of gratitude, To seem believing, till the wearer’s self See fit to drop the ill-dissembling mask. (Aloud.)Well, a strange turn of fortune has arrested The sharp and sudden penalty that else Had visited your rashness or mischance: In part, your tender youth too—pardon me, And touch not where your sword is not to answer— Commends you to my care; not your life only, Else by this misadventure forfeited; But ev’n your errand, which, by happy chance, Chimes with the very business I am on, And calls me to the very point you aim at. That capital of capitals, the Court: Where you may plead, and, I may promise, win Pardon for this, you say unwilling, trespass, And prosecute what else you have at heart, With me to help you forward all I can; Provided all in loyalty to those To whom by natural allegiance I first am bound to. Your offer: with like promise on my side Of loyalty to you and those you serve, Under like reservation for regards Nearer and dearer still. Your hand; a bargain on both sides. Meanwhile, Here shall you rest to-night. The break of day Shall see us both together on the way. Directly draws me where my wishes aim’d.[Exeunt.
T
C
These stormy days you like to see the last of
F