Racine: Phaedra

230
CALDERON
With its bewilder'd senses I
[He covers his eyes for awhiU.
What! Ev'n now
That Babel left behind me, but my eyes
Pursued by the same glamour, that—unless
Alike bewitch'd too—the confederate sense
Vouches for palpable: bright-shining floors
That ring hard answer back to the stamp'd heel,
And shoot up airy columns marble-cold,
That, as they climb, break into golden leaf
And capital, till they embrace aloft
In clustering flower and fruitage over walls
Hung with such purple curtain as the West
Fringes wnth such a gold ; or over-laid
With sanguine-glowing semblances of men,
Each in his all but living action busied,
Or from the wall they look from, with fix'd eyes
Pursuing me ; and one most strange of all
That, as I pass'd the crystal on the wall,
Look'd from it—left it—and as I return,
Returns, and looks me face to face again
Unless some false reflection of my brain,
The outward semblance of myself—Myself?
How know that taw^dry shadow for myself,
But that it moves as I move ; lifts his hand
With mine ; each motion echoing so close
The immediate suggestion of the will
In which myself I recognize—Myself !
What, this fantastic Segismund the same
Who last night, as for all his nights before,
Lay down to sleep in wolf-skin on the ground
In a black turret which the wolf howl'd round,
And woke again upon a golden bed.
Round which as clouds about a rising sun,
In scarce less glittering caparison,
Gather'd gay shapes that, underneath a breeze
Of music, handed him upon their knees
The wine of heaven in a cup of gold.
And still in soft melodious under-song
Hailing me Prince of Poland !— " Segismund,"