Was the comment of their margins And of all their leaves the index, Would to heaven, I say, my life Had been offered the first victim Of its anger, that my death-stroke Had in this way have been given me, Since the unhappy find even merit Is the fatal knife that kills them, And his own self-murderer Is the man whom knowledge injures!-- I may say so, but my story So will say with more distinctness, And to win your admiration Once again I pray you listen.-- Clorilene, my wife, a son Bore me, so by fate afflicted That on his unhappy birthday All Heaven's prodigies assisted. Nay, ere yet to life's sweet life Gave him forth her womb, that living Sepulchre (for death and life Have like ending and beginning), Many a time his mother saw In her dreams' delirious dimness From her side a monster break, Fashioned like a man, but sprinkled With her blood, who gave her death, By that human viper bitten. Round his birthday came at last, All its auguries fulfilling (For the presages of evil Seldom fail or even linger): Came with such a horoscope, That the sun rushed blood-red tinted Into a terrific combat With the dark moon that resisted; Earth its mighty lists outspread As with lessening lights diminished Strove the twin-lamps of the sky. 'Twas of all the sun's eclipses The most dreadful that it suffered Since the hour its bloody visage Wept the awful death of Christ. For o'erwhelmed in glowing cinders The great orb appeared to suffer Nature's final paroxysm. Gloom the glowing noontide darkened, Earthquake shook the mightiest buildings, Stones the angry clouds rained down, And with blood ran red the rivers. In this frenzy of the sun, In its madness and delirium, Sigismund was born, thus early Giving proofs of his condition, Since his birth his mother slew, Just as if these words had killed her, "I am a man, since good with evil I repay here from the beginning,"-- I, applying to my studies, Saw in them as 'twere forewritten This, that Sigismund would be The most cruel of all princes, Of all men the most audacious, Of all monarchs the most wicked; That his kingdom through his means Would be broken and partitioned, The academy of the vices, And the high school of sedition; And that he himself, borne onward By his crimes' wild course resistless, Would even place his feet on me; For I saw myself down-stricken, Lying on the ground before him (To say this what shame it gives me!) While his feet on my white hairs As a carpet were imprinted. Who discredits threatened ill, Specially an ill previsioned By one's study, when self-love Makes it his peculiar business?-- Thus then crediting the fates Which far off my science witnessed, All these fatal auguries Seen though dimly in the distance, I resolved to chain the monster That unhappily life was given to, To find out if yet the stars Owned the wise man's weird dominion. It was publicly proclaimed That the sad ill-omened infant Was stillborn. I then a tower Caused by forethought to be builded