lse,
The better to delude us.

SEGISMUND-- For you know
'Tis nothing but a dream?

CLOTALDO-- 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?

SEGISMUND--Never, to such reality.

CLOTALDO-- Such dreams
Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations
Of that ambition that lies smoldering
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 heav'n 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.

SEGISMUND--Last night? Last night?

CLOTALDO-- 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 burned about him, while with poising wings
He darkled in it as a burning brand
Is seen to smolder in the fire it feeds?

SEGISMUND--Last night--last night--Oh, what a day was that
Between that last night and this sad to-day!

CLOTALDO-- And yet perhaps
Only some few dark moments, into which
Imagination, once lit up within
And unconditional of time and space,
Can pour infinities.

SEGISMUND-- 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,
Bade me beware lest all should be a dream.

CLOTALDO--Ay--there another specialty of dreams,
That once the dreamer 'gins to dream he dreams,
His foot is on the very verge of waking.

SEGISMUND--Would that it had been on the verge of death
That knows no waking--
Lifting me up to glory, to fall back,
Stunned, crippled--wretcheder than ev'n before.

CLOTALDO--Yet not so glorious, Segismund, if you
Your visionary honor wore so ill
As to work murder and