KING. Rise both of you, Rise to my arms, Astolfo and Estrella; As my two sisters' children always mine, Now more than ever, since myself and Poland Solely to you for our succession look'd. And now give ear, you and your several factions, And you, the Peers and Princes of this realm, While I reveal the purport of this meeting In words whose necessary length I trust No unsuccessful issue shall excuse. You and the world who have surnamed me "Sage" Know that I owe that title, if my due, To my long meditation on the book Which ever lying open overhead-- The book of heaven, I mean--so few have read; Whose golden letters on whose sapphire leaf, Distinguishing the page of day and night, And all the revolution of the year; So with the turning volume where they lie Still changing their prophetic syllables, They register the destinies of men: Until with eyes that, dim with years indeed, Are quicker to pursue the stars than rule them, I get the start of Time, and from his hand The wand of tardy revelation draw. Oh, had the self-same heaven upon his page Inscribed my death ere I should read my life And, by fore-casting of my own mischance, Play not the victim but the suicide In my own tragedy!--But you shall hear. You know how once, as kings must for their people, And only once, as wise men for themselves, I woo'd and wedded: know too that my Queen In childing died; but not, as you believe, With her, the son she died in giving life to. For, as the hour of birth was on the stroke, Her brain conceiving with her womb, she dream'd A serpent tore her entrail. And too surely (For evil omen seldom speaks in vain) The man-child breaking from that living tomb That makes our birth the antitype of death, Man-grateful, for the life she gave him paid By killing her: and with such circumstance As suited such unnatural tragedy; He coming into light, if light it were That darken'd at his very horoscope, When heaven's two champions--sun and moon I mean-- Suffused in blood upon each other fell In such a raging duel of eclipse As hath not terrified the universe Since that which wept in blood the death of Christ: When the dead walk'd, the waters turn'd to blood, Earth and her cities totter'd, and the world Seem'd shaken to its last paralysis. In such a paroxysm of dissolution That son of mine was born; by that first act Heading the monstrous catalogue of crime, I found fore-written in his horoscope; As great a monster in man's history As was in nature his nativity; So savage, bloody, terrible, and impious, Who, should he live, would tear his country's entrails, As by his birth his mother's; with which crime Beginning, he should clench the dreadful tale