Racine: Phaedra

LIFE A DREAM 245
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.
Segismund.— 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.
Segismund.—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