Racine: Phaedra

LIFE A DREAM
Your pulses throb and flutter, reeling still
Under the storm of such a dream
Segismund.— A dream 1
That seem'd as swearable reality
As what I wake in now.
Clotaldo.— Ay—wondrous how
Imagination in a sleeping brain
Out of the uncontingent senses draws
Sensations strong as from the real touch
That we not only laugh aloud, and drench
With tears our pillow ; but in the agony
Of some imaginary conflict, fight
And struggle—ev'n as you did ;
some, 'tis thought,
Under the dreamt-of stroke of death have died.
Segismund.—And what so very strange too—In that world
Where place as well as people all was strange,
Ev'n I almost as strange unto myself.
You only, you, Clotaldo— you, as much
And palpably yourself as now you are,
Came in this very garb you ever wore,
By such a token of the past, you said.
To assure me of that seeming present.
Clotaldo.— Ay ?
Segismund.—Ay
; and even told me of the very stars
You tell me here of—how in spite of them,
I was enlarged to all that glory.
Clotaldo.— Ay,
By the false spirits' nice contrivance thus
A little truth oft leavens all the false.
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 smouldering
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