Racine: Phaedra

,62
CALDERON
And of a noble stock I will not name
Till I, who brought it, have retrieved the shame.
Whom Duke Astolfo, Pnnce of Muscovy,
With all the solemn vows of wedlock won,
And would have wedded, as I do believe,
Had not the cry of Poland for a Prince
Call'd him from Muscovy to join the prize
Of Poland with the fair Estrella's eyes.
I, following him hither, as you saw,
Was cast upon these rocks ; arrested by
Clotaldo : who, for an old debt of love
He owes my family, with all his might
Served, and had served me further, till my cause
Clash'd with his duty to his sovereign,
Which, as became a loyal subject, sir,
(And never sovereign had a loyaller,)
Was still his first. He carried me to Court,
Where for the second time, I cross'd your path;
Where, as I watch'd my opportunity.
Suddenly broke this public passion out
Which, drowning private into public wrong,
Yet swiftlier sweeps it to revenge along.
Segismund.—Oh God, if this be dreaming, charge it not
To burst the channel of enclosing sleep
And drown the waking reason ! Not to dream
Only what dreamt shall once or twice again
Return to buzz about the sleeping brain
Till shaken off forever
But reassailing one so quick, so thick
The very figure and the circumstance
Of sense-confest reality foregone
In so-call'd dream so palpably repeated,
The copy so like the original.
We know not which is which ; and dream so-caird
Itself inweaving so inextricably
Into the tissue of acknowledged truth
The very figures that empeople it
Returning to assert themselves no phantoms
In something so much like meridian day.
And in the very place that not my worst