Life is a Dream :: :: University of Virginia Library

Clarin.
In a strange enchanted tower,
I, for what I know, am prisoned;
How would ignorance be punished,
If for knowledge they would kill me?
What a thing to die of hunger,
For a man who loves good living!
I compassionate myself;
All will say: “I well believe it”;
And it well may be believed,
Because silence is a virtue
Incompatible with my name
Clarin, which of course forbids it.
In this place my sole companions,
It may safely be predicted,
Are the spiders and the mice:
What a pleasant nest of linnets!—
Owing to this last night's dream,
My poor head I feel quite dizzy
From a thousand clarionets,
Shawms, and seraphines and cymbals,
Crucifixes and processions,

Flagellants who so well whipped them,
That as up and down they went,
Some even fainted as they witnessed
How the blood ran down the others.
I, if I the truth may whisper,
Simply fainted from not eating,
For I see me in this prison
All day wondering how this Poland
Such a Hungary look exhibits,
All night reading in the Fasti
By some half-starved poet written.
In the calendar of saints,
If a new one is admitted,
Then St. Secret be my patron,
For I fast upon his vigil;
Though it must be owned I suffer
Justly for the fault committed,
Since a servant to be silent
Is a sacrilege most sinful.

[A sound of drums and trumpets, with voices within.

The asonante to the end of Scene IV. is in i—e, or their vocal equivalents.

These four lines are a paraphrase of the original. Clarin's jokes are different, and not much better. He says he spends his days studying philosophy in the works of Nicomedes (or Not-eating), and his nights perusing the decrees of the Nicene Council (Concilio Niceno, the Council of No-Supper).