mountain air! one look
     At the grim features—­
     (He goes to the window.)
     What they disvizor’d also! shatter’d chaos
     Cast into stately shape and masonry,
     Between whose channel’d and perspective sides
     Compact with rooted towers, and flourishing
     To heaven with gilded pinnacle and spire,
     Flows the live current ever to and fro
     With open aspect and free step!—­Clotaldo! 
     Clotaldo!—­calling as one scarce dares call
     For him who suddenly might break the spell
     One fears to walk without him—­Why, that I,
     With unencumber’d step as any there,
     Go stumbling through my glory—­feeling for
     That iron leading-string—­ay, for myself—­
     For that fast-anchor’d self of yesterday,
     Of yesterday, and all my life before,
     Ere drifted clean from self-identity
     Upon the fluctuation of to-day’s
     Mad whirling circumstance!—­And, fool, why not? 
     If reason, sense, and self-identity
     Obliterated from a worn-out brain,
     Art thou not maddest striving to be sane,
     And catching at that Self of yesterday
     That, like a leper’s rags, best flung away! 
     Or if not mad, then dreaming—­dreaming?—­well—­
     Dreaming then—­Or, if self to self be true,
     Not mock’d by that, but as poor souls have been
     By those who wrong’d them, to give wrong new relish? 
     Or have those stars indeed they told me of
     As masters of my wretched life of old,
     Into some happier constellation roll’d,
     And brought my better fortune out on earth
     Clear as themselves in heaven!—­Prince Segismund
     They call’d me—­and at will I shook them off—­
     Will they return again at my command
     Again to call me so?—­Within there!  You! 
     Segismund calls—­Prince Segismund—­

     (He has seated himself on the throne. 
     Enter Chamberlain, with lords in waiting.)

     CHAMB. 
     I rejoice
     That unadvised of any but the voice
     Of royal instinct in the blood, your Highness
     Has ta’en the chair that you were born to fill.

     Seg. 
     The chair?

     CHAMB. 
     The royal throne of Poland, Sir,
     Which may your Royal Highness keep as long
     As he that now rules from it shall have ruled
     When heaven has call’d him to itself.

     Seg. 
     When he?—­

     CHAMB. 
     Your royal father, King Basilio, Sir.

     Seg. 
     My royal father—­King Basilio. 
     You see I answer but as Echo does,
     Not knowing what she listens or repeats. 
     This is my throne—­this is my palace—­Oh,
     But this out of the window?—­

     CHAMB. 
     Warsaw, Sir,
     Your capital—­

     Seg. 
     And all the moving people?