revenge on those
Who meant you well.

SEGISMUND--Who meant me!--me! their Prince,
Chain'd like a felon--

CLOTALDO-- Stay, stay--Not so fast.
You dream'd the Prince, remember.

SEGISMUND-- Then in dream
Revenged it only.

CLOTALDO-- True. But as they say
Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul
Yet uncorrected of the higher Will,
So that men sometimes in their dream confess
An unsuspected or forgotten self;
One must beware to check--ay, if one may,
Stifle ere born, such passion in ourselves
As makes, we see, such havoc with our sleep,
And ill reacts upon the waking day.
And, by the by, for one test, Segismund,
Between such swearable realities--
Since dreaming, madness, passion, are akin
In missing each that salutary rein
Of reason, and the guiding will of man:
One test, I think, of waking sanity
Shall be that conscious power of self-control
To curb all passion, but much, most of all,
That evil and vindictive, that ill squares
With human, and with holy canon less,
Which bids us pardon ev'n our enemies,
And much more those who, out of no ill-will,
Mistakenly have taken up the rod
Which Heaven, they think, has put into their hands.

SEGISMUND--I think I soon shall have to try again--
Sleep has not yet done with me.

CLOTALDO-- Such a sleep!
Take my advice--'tis early yet--the sun
Scarce up above the mountain; go within,
And if the night deceived you, try anew
With morning; morning dreams they say come true.

SEGISMUND--Oh, rather pray for me a sleep so fast
As shall obliterate dream and waking too.

[_Exit into the tower._

CLOTALDO--So sleep; sleep fast: and sleep away those two
Night-potions, and the waking dream between,
Which dream thou must believe; and if to see
Again, poor Segismund! that dream must be.--
And yet--and yet--in these our ghostly lives,
Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,
How if our waking life, like that of sleep,
Be all a dream in that eternal life
To which we wake not till we sleep in death?
How if, I say, the senses we now trust
For date of sensible comparison,--
Ay, ev'n the Reason's self that dates with them,
Should be in essence of intensity
Hereafter so transcended, and awoke