Unite us at the customary board,
     Each to his several chamber:  you to rest;
     I to contrive with old Clotaldo best
     The method of a stranger thing than old
     Time has a yet among his records told.

     Exeunt.

ACT II

Scene I—­A Throne-room in the Palace.  Music within.

     (Enter King and Clotaldo, meeting a Lord in waiting)

     King. 
     You, for a moment beckon’d from your office,
     Tell me thus far how goes it.  In due time
     The potion left him?

     Lord. 
     At the very hour
     To which your Highness temper’d it.  Yet not
     So wholly but some lingering mist still hung
     About his dawning senses—­which to clear,
     We fill’d and handed him a morning drink
     With sleep’s specific antidote suffused;
     And while with princely raiment we invested
     What nature surely modell’d for a Prince—­
     All but the sword—­as you directed—­

     King. 
     Ay—­

     Lord. 
     If not too loudly, yet emphatically
     Still with the title of a Prince address’d him.

     King. 
     How bore he that?

     Lord. 
     With all the rest, my liege,
     I will not say so like one in a dream
     As one himself misdoubting that he dream’d.

     King. 
     So far so well, Clotaldo, either way,
     And best of all if tow’rd the worse I dread. 
     But yet no violence?

     Lord. 
     At most, impatience;
     Wearied perhaps with importunities
     We yet were bound to offer.

     King. 
     Oh, Clotaldo! 
     Though thus far well, yet would myself had drunk
     The potion he revives from! such suspense
     Crowds all the pulses of life’s residue
     Into the present moment; and, I think,
     Whichever way the trembling scale may turn,
     Will leave the crown of Poland for some one
     To wait no longer than the setting sun!

     CLO. 
     Courage, my liege!  The curtain is undrawn,
     And each must play his part out manfully,
     Leaving the rest to heaven.

     King. 
     Whose written words
     If I should misinterpret or transgress! 
     But as you say—­
     (To the Lord, who exit.)
     You, back to him at once;
     Clotaldo, you, when he is somewhat used
     To the new world of which they call him Prince,
     Where place and face, and all, is strange to him,
     With your known features and familiar garb
     Shall then, as chorus to the scene, accost him,
     And by such earnest of that old and too
     Familiar world, assure him of the new. 
     Last in the strange procession, I myself