LEONTES

Older only to my sight, Hermione has returned
Bearing a loveliness new in my heart,
A life I never thought that I should know:
My house is made whole by her womanhood.
Those fifteen years but a pause at the open door,
During which we watched, waited
And consolidated the fading knowledge of this kingdom.
Thus garlanded we turn, go hand in hand,
And let the light draw low over this barren winter land.
My madness, Polixenes, drove apart
The frail pulse that once beat between our youthful hearts:
I need your forgiveness. In our children
That one pulse shall beat again, and restore
The joy and knowledge that I destroyed.
My children, go on together: the threshhold
At which I stumbled no more bars your way:
Go on, and do not return as the hawk returns
Hunting an open field;
Do not rest where the shepherd rests,
In the blind hope of a warm fire.
    I am with my wife again, and she has given me life
Life enough to last the days now rising and falling,
Life enough to learn to die. Having never lost her life,
She has redeemed the grace I learnt of long ago
When she died for what was dead in me.
We are living again, and though I can only call
This kingdom ours a little while longer
Now I am not afraid that time should work in me,
Of the necessary pattern of birth and of decay.
    Let us go then: Florizel, Perdita,
Bear fruit to bless this barren land.