Fife. 
     A poor lad,
     Who choosing play at hide and seek with death,
     Just hid where death just came to look for him;
     For there’s no place, I think, can keep him out,
     Once he’s his eye upon you.  All grows dark—­
     You glitter finely too—­Well—­we are dreaming
     But when the bullet’s off—­Heaven save the mark! 
     So tell my mister—­mastress—­
     (Dies.)

     King. 
     Oh God!  How this poor creature’s ignorance
     Confounds our so-call’d wisdom!  Even now
     When death has stopt his lips, the wound through which
     His soul went out, still with its bloody tongue
     Preaching how vain our struggle against fate!

     (Voices within). 
     After them!  After them!  This way!  This way! 
     The day is ours—­Down with Basilio, etc.

     Ast.
     Fly, sir—­

     King. 
     And slave-like flying not out-ride
     The fate which better like a King abide!

     (Enter Segismund, Rosaura, Soldiers, etc.)

     Seg. 
     Where is the King?

     King (prostrating himself). 
     Behold him,—­by this late
     Anticipation of resistless fate,
     Thus underneath your feet his golden crown,
     And the white head that wears it, laying down,
     His fond resistance hope to expiate.

     Seg. 
     Princes and warriors of Poland—­you
     That stare on this unnatural sight aghast,
     Listen to one who, Heaven-inspired to do
     What in its secret wisdom Heaven forecast,
     By that same Heaven instructed prophet-wise
     To justify the present in the past. 
     What in the sapphire volume of the skies
     Is writ by God’s own finger misleads none,
     But him whose vain and misinstructed eyes,
     They mock with misinterpretation,
     Or who, mistaking what he rightly read,
     Ill commentary makes, or misapplies
     Thinking to shirk or thwart it.  Which has done
     The wisdom of this venerable head;
     Who, well provided with the secret key
     To that gold alphabet, himself made me,
     Himself, I say, the savage he fore-read
     Fate somehow should be charged with; nipp’d the growth
     Of better nature in constraint and sloth,
     That only bring to bear the seed of wrong
     And turn’d the stream to fury whose out-burst
     Had kept his lawful channel uncoerced,
     And fertilized the land he flow’d along. 
     Then like to some unskilful duellist,
     Who having over-reached himself pushing too hard
     His foe, or but a moment off his guard—­
     What odds, when Fate is one’s antagonist!—­
     Nay, more, this royal father, self-dismay’d
     At having Fate against himself array’d,
     Upon himself the very