CHARLES (_unheeding_): Did I not humble me?
ANTONIO: Father----?
CHARLES: Or ask more than a brevity of joy
To bud on my life's withering close?
ANTONIO: But, sir----!
CHARLES: If it bud not----!
ANTONIO: What thought impels and wrings
These angers from your eyes?
CHARLES (_slowly, gazing at him_): You're like your mother.
ANTONIO: In trouble for your peace, more than in feature.
CHARLES: Peace--peace? Antonio, a dream has come:
To stir--to wake--to learn it is a dream--
I must not, will not look on such abyss.
You love me, boy?
ANTONIO: Sir, well: you cannot doubt it.
CHARLES: There has been darkness in me--and it seems
Such night as would put out a heaven of hope,
Quench an eternity of flaming joy!
I have sunk down under the world and hit
On nethermost despair: flown blind across
An infinite unrest!
ANTONIO: Forget it, now.
CHARLES: Had I drunk Lethe's all 'twould not have stilled
The crying of my desolation's want.
Within me tenderness to iron turned,
Gladness to worm and gloom.--But 'tis o'erpast.
A rift, a smile, a breath has come--blown me
From torture to an ecstasy.
ANTONIO: To----?
CHARLES: Ecstasy!
Such as surrounds Hyperion on his sun,
Or Pleiads sweeping seven-fold the night.
ANTONIO: And you--this breath----?
CHARLES: Is--you are pale!
And press your lips from trembling!
ANTONIO: No--yes--well--
This ecstasy?
CHARLES: Is love! is love that-- How?
You feign! distress and groaning tear in you!