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join’d to me,
Our strength and might unstoppable shall be.
[Exeunt.



SCENE 1.
    On the planet Coruscant, in Padmé’s apartment.
    Enter P ADMÉ and A NAKIN S KYWALKER .
    PADMÉ
O, Anakin, I’d have our child be born
Not here, where burthens press on ev’ry side,
But in Naboo, where sunlight greets the morn:
The sweet lake country where we three can hide,
Where none shall know about our offspring’s birth,
Where we three shall be safe from ev’ry strife,
Where we may show our child its ample worth,
Where we may offer it a peaceful life.
I could repair unto my planet first,
And make for our small babe an humble room—
Next to the gardens shall our child be nurs’d.
    ANAKIN
With ev’ry moment, love, your flow’r doth bloom.
    PADMÉ
Thou art the gardener who brings increase,
The tender of my soil who bringeth growth.
Within thy love my blossom is at peace,
And doth shoot forth upon mine Ani’s oath.
    ANAKIN
Nay, thou for thine own beauty art the cause,
For thou are both the flower and the sun,
Which bringeth light, sans hesitance or pause,
And makes thee flourish such that thou dost stun.
My love is but the witness to this growth,
Mine heart is but observer to your beauty.
This love, this heart, they are for thee, yea, both—
Thou mayst command them unto any duty.
    PADMÉ
If thou art witness only, art thou blind
To love whate’er grows in me sans thy reason?
    ANAKIN
My words are far too simple for thy mind,
Thy loveliness hath put me out of season.
    PADMÉ
Thy love may find in me an ample shade,
So thou, by my wit’s shining, art not burn’d.
And now, my dear, let us not be delay’d:
Unto our bed, till morning hath return’d.
[Exeunt.
    Enter R UMOR .
    RUMOR
A touching scene, which Rumor shall disturb.
Ne’er could these lovers guess at what shall come:
All blinded are they by their love superb—
Kindhearted, aye, but deaf to Rumor’s drum.
Indeed, I come, with beats to work them woe,
Night falls, wherein I play my warlike tune—
Haranguing Anakin with rhythms low,
Attacking him by light of fickle moon.
To make him fret, I’ll shake his pleasant dreams:
His heart shall move from worry to dismay,
Anon his moans and groans shall turn to screams,
Distraught his soul shall be ere comes the day.
Resourceful is this Rumor, for I shall—
E’en by his love for Padmé—bring him strife.
A dream of pain shall shake the youth’s morale,
Misguided thus, he’ll fall to save her life.
[Exit Rumor.
    Enter A NAKIN S KYWALKER .
    ANAKIN
What wroth, tormenting dreams this night I’ve had,
Strange visions of a horrid pain to come!
Yet not mine own pain—that I’d haply bear—
’Twas Padmé who did writhe with shrieks and screams,
Whilst calling out my name in fear and hurt.
O, how her cries sent chills into my heart,
And still do echo there as though were real.
When sleep is anguish-laden, mercy ’tis
To wake and find ’twas but a mare of night
A’riding o’er my sleep with vicious hooves
And trampling any rest I hop’d to find.
This evil courser, sent from hell’s own heart,
Rac’d o’er my mind to bring this foresight dire,
Then vanish’d from the ether whence it strode.
’Tis gone: the beast that plagued me was but spectral.
Yet I must not dismiss this steedlike sign,
It shall not gallop off, escape my mind:
I must consider what its coming means.
I am a Jedi Knight, and thus my dreams
May be some portent of a future time.
I’d not see this most heinous dream fall on
Mine enemy, much less belovèd Padmé:
It must not be my love’s reality.
Ne’er shall her waking moments troubled be
By this most dark and dismal vision—nay,
Not while I have my life and health and strength.
I shall undo the omen by which she,
My gentle Padmé, else would be undone.
Yea, I shall find the secret that shall turn
This wretched, dreary charger into wind:
A memory that passeth in the night
And bringeth no more terror than the air.
Come, wakefulness, and let me conquer pain—
Come, day, and make me master over death.
    Enter P