Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince,
Cor she did print your royal father off,
Fonceiving you. Were I but twenty one,
Your father's image is so hit in you,
His very air, that I should call you brother,
As I did him, and speak of something wildly
By us perform'd before. Most dearly welcome,
And your fair princess: Goddess, oh! alas!
I lost a couple, that 'twixt heav'n and earth
Might thus have stood, begetting wonder, as
You gracious couple do; and then I lost

(All mine own folly) the society,
Amity too of your brave father, whom
(Tho' bearing misery) I desire my life
Once more to look on him.

Flo.
By his command
Have I here touch'd Sicilia, and from him
Give you all greetings, that a King, as friend
Can send his brother; and but infirmity,
Which waits upon worn times, hath something seiz'd
His wish'd ability, he had himself
The lands and waters 'twixt your throne and his
Measur'd, to look upon you, whom he loves,
He bad me say so, more than all the scepters,
And those that bear them living.

Leo.
Oh my brother!
Good gentleman, the wrongs I have done thee stir
Afresh within me; and these thy offices,
So rarely kind, are as interpreters
Of my behind-hand slackness. Welcome hither,
As is the spring to th' earth. And hath he too
Expos'd this paragon to th' fearful usage
(At least ungentle) of the dreadful Neptune,
To greet a man, not worth her pains; much less
Th' adventure of her person?

Flo.
Good my lord,
She came from Lybia.

Leo.
Where the warlike Smalus,
That noble honour'd lord, is fear'd, and lov'd?

Flo.
Most royal Sir,
From thence; from him, whose daughter
His tears proclaim'd his parting with her; thence
(A prosperous south-wind friendly) we have cross'd,
To execute the charge my father gave me,

For visiting your highness; my best train
I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss'd,
Who for Bohemia bend, to signifie
Not only my success in Lybia, Sir,
But my arrival, and my wife's, in safety
Here, where we are.

Leo.
The blessed Gods
Purge all infection from our air, whilst you
Do climate here; you have a holy father,
A graceful gentleman, against whose person,
So sacred as it is, I have done sin;
For which the heavens, taking angry note,
Have left me issue-less; and your father's bless'd,
As he from heaven merits it, with you,
Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,
Might I a son and daughter now have look'd on,
Such goodly things as you?

Previous section

Next section