Yet when this thing is through and this plague purged
There stands a thorn yet in our way to prick -
The loose weak-witted half-souled boy called king.
JOHN KNOX.
It is of him I am bidden speak with her,
Having but now rebuked him backsliding
In God’s sight and his name. It may be yet,
Whether by foolishness and envious heart
Or by some nobler touch left in his blood,
Some pulse of spirit that beats to a tune more high
Than base men set their hearts by, he will turn
Helpful to Godward, serviceable in soul
To good men’s ends in hate of that they hate:
I cannot say; howbeit I fear not much
Her love of him will keep him fast to her;
If he be drawn in bonds after her wheels,
It will be but of subtle soul and craft
The cords are woven that hold him. But, for me,
Love they or hate, my way is clear with them;
Not for her sake nor his sake shall our Lord
Change counsel and turn backward; and save his
What will or wit I have to speak or live
He knows who made it little for myself,
But for him great; and be you well assured
Love of their love nor doubt of their dislike
Hath upon me more power than upon God.
For now I have seen him strive these divers years
With spirits of men and minds exorbitant,
Souls made as iron and their face as flame
Full hard and hot against him, and their wits
Most serpent-strong and swift, sudden of thought
And overflowing of counsel, and their hands
Full of their fortune, and their hearts made large
To hold increase of all prosperities;
And all these are not, and I poor man am,
Because he hath taken and set me on his side
And not where these were; I am content alone
To keep mine own heart in his secret sight
Naked and clean, well knowing that no man born
Shall do me scathe but he hath bidden him do,
Nor I speak word but as he hath set it me.
FIRST CITIZEN.
Goes he to Holyrood?
SECOND CITIZEN.
Ay, sir, by noon.
FIRST CITIZEN.
There is a kindling trouble in the air;
The sun is halting toward the top of day;
It will be shine or rain before he come.
OCHILTREE.
What ails this folk to hover at our heel
And hang their eyes on you so heedfully?
JOHN KNOX.
They should be naturally disquieted
Seeing what new wind makes white the wave o’ the time
We ride on out of harbour. Sirs, ye have heard
News of your scathe and of shame done to God,
And the displeasure bites you by the heart,
I doubt not, if your hearts be godly given;
Make your souls strong in patience; let your wrath
Be rather as iron than as fuel in fire,
Tempered and not consumed; heat that burns out
Leaves the hearth chillier for the flameless ash
Than ere the wood was kindled.
FIRST CITIZEN.
Master Knox,
You know us whereto we would and by what way;
This too much patience burns our cheeks with shame
That our hands are not redder than our face
With slaying of manslayers who spill blood of faith
And pierce the heart of naked holiness;
It is far gone in rumour how the queen
Will set on high and feed on gold that man
Who was a scourge laid long since on the saints,
The archbishop of St. Andrew’s, and perforce,
Dyed as he stands in grain with innocent blood,
Will make him mightier for our scathe and shame
Than ere the kindly people of the word
Had made him bare of bad authority.
SECOND CITIZEN.
Likewise she hath given her seal imperial
To a lewd man and a stranger, her own knave,
Vile, and a papist; that with harp and song
Makes her way smoother toward the pit of hell.
JOHN KNOX.
What needs us count and cast offences up
That all we know of, how all these have one head,
The hateful head of unstanched misbelief?
For sins are sin-begotten, and their seed
Bred of itself and singly procreative;
Nor is God served with setting this to this
For evil evidence of several shame,
That one may say, Lo now, so many are they;
But if one seeing with God-illumined eyes
In his full face the encountering face of sin
Smite once the one high-fronted head and slay,
His will we call good service. For myself,
If ye will make a counsellor of me,
I bid you set your hearts against one thing
To burn it up, and keep your hearts on fire,
Not seeking here a sign and there a sign,
Nor curious of all casual sufferances,
But steadfast to the undoing of that thing done
Whereof ye know the being, however it be,
And all the doing abominable of God.
Who questions with a snake if the snake sting?
Who reasons of the lightning if it burn?
While these things are, deadly will these things be;
And so the curse that comes of cursed faith.
FIRST CITIZEN.
It is well said.
SECOND CITIZEN.
Ay, and well done were well.
THIRD CITIZEN.
We have borne too long for God, we that are men,
Who hath time to bear with evil if he would,
Having for life’s length even eternity;
But we that have but half our life to live,
Whose half of days is swallowed of their nights,
We take on us this lame long-suffering,
To sit more still and patienter than God,
As though we had space to doubt in, and long time
For temperate, quiet, and questionable pause.
FIRST CITIZEN.
Let the time com -
SECOND CITIZEN.
Nay, we must make the time,
Bid the day bring forth to us the fruit we would,
Or else fare fruitless forth.
THIRD CITIZEN.
It is nigh noon;
There will be shine and rain and shine ere night.
Scene III. Holyrood
The Queen and Rizzio; Mary Seyton and Mary Carmichael in attendance
QUEEN.
Is he so tender-tongued? it is his fear
That plucks the fang out from his hate, and makes
A stingless snake of his malignant heart;
He hath a mind, or had he a mind at all,
Would have a mind to mischief; but his will
Is a dumb devil.
RIZZIO.
Why, fear then and no love
Will make faith in him out of falsehood’s self,
And keep him constant through unstableness.
QUEEN.
Fear that makes faith may break faith; and a fool
Is but in folly stable. I cannot tell
If he indeed fear these men more than me;
Or if he slip their collar, whether or no
He will be firm on my side, as you say,
Through very lightness; but I think not of him,
Steadfast or slippery. Would I had been that day
Handless, when I made one his hand with mine!
Yet it seemed best. I am spirit-sick and faint
Wi
th shame of his foul follies and loathed life,
Which hath no part but lewdness of a man,
Nor style of soul nor several quality,
Dividing men from men, and man from beast,
By working heart or complement of brain -
None, very none. I will not see him to-night.
I have given command to ensure our privacy.
Is it past noon?
Enter Darnley and Mary Beaton
DARNLEY.
You say she hath asked for me?
MARY BEATON.
Ay, and complainingly, as though her love
Were struck at by your absence.
DARNLEY.
Love! her love!
It were a cunning stroke should print a wound
In that which hath no substance, and no spirit
To feel the hurt. Well, I will speak to her.
QUEEN.
How like a chidden bondman of his lord
Looks my lord now! Come you from penance, sir?
Has the kirk put you to no private shame
Besides the public tongue of broad rebuke?
We are blessed in your penitence; it is
A gracious promise for you.
DARNLEY.
Penitence?
QUEEN.
You have a tender faith and quick remorse
That will bear buffets easily; pray God
It pluck you absolution from their hands
Who are godly sparing of it. We have heard
A priest of theirs cast for incontinence
Hardly with thrice purgation of his shame
Redeemed himself to kirkward.
DARNLEY.
I hear nought.
QUEEN.
Nay, but you hear when these rebuke you of sin
In the full face and popular ear of men;
You hear them surely, and patiently you hear,
And it shows in you godliness and grace
Praiseworthy from them; for myself, my lord,
I have some foolish petulances in me
And stings of pride that shut me out from grace
So sought and bought of such men; but your course
May teach me timelier humble-mindedness
And patience to get favour: which till now
I have never needed beg, and now should prove
A very witless beggar. Teach me words,
Pray you, to move men’s minds with; such great men’s
As your submission purchases to be
Good friends and patrons to you; for I fear
Your Knox is not my friend yet.
DARNLEY.
So I think.
Madam, I know not what you make of me,
Nor if your jest be seasonable or no;
I am no fool nor implement of theirs,
Nor patienter of their irreverences
Than the queen’s self; if you endure such tongues,
Why, I may bear them.
QUEEN.
Well and patiently;
I praise your manhood’s temper for it, and am
The happier for your royalty of spirit
That will not feel wrong done of baser men
To be at all wrong done you.
DARNLEY.
Will you think it?
Well then, I am so, I am just your thought,
You read me right, and this our friend reads too,
For I am plain and easy to read right.
QUEEN.
Have you made time to say so?
DARNLEY.
Ay, and this,
That it mislikes me - it gives me discontent
That men should -
QUEEN.
Ay? that men should - anything -
Bear themselves manlike, or that men should be,
It is offence done openly to you?
DARNLEY.
Nay, not offence, nor open; nought it is,
Or to me nought.
QUEEN.
Nought as I think indeed.
You were about to chide us? well it is
You have so humble a wife of us and true,
To make your chidings fruitful, that your words
Bear and bring forth good seed of bettering change.
I pray you, when you chide me, that you make
Your stripes the gentler for my humbleness.
DARNLEY.
I have no mind to jest and jape, and will -
And will not wrangle with you.
QUEEN.
Will, and will not?
They say a woman’s will is made like that,
But your will yet is wilfuller than ours.
DARNLEY.
Not as I think.
QUEEN.
God better the king’s thought,
And mind more tyrannous than is his place!
DARNLEY.
If I be king -
QUEEN.
And I be kingdomless,
And place be no place, and distinction die
Between the crown and curch - Well, on, our lord.
DARNLEY.
Why am I out of counsel with you? Whence
Am I made show of for a titular fool
And have no hand in enterprise of yours,
Nor tongue, nor presence? Not alone my name
That is rubbed out and grated off your gold,
But myself plucked out of your register,
Made light account of, held as nothingness,
Might move me -
QUEEN.
Whither?
DARNLEY.
To some show of wrath
More than complaint, if I were minded ill.
Here is a breach made with the English queen,
Our cousin of England, a wide-open breach,
A great-grown quarrel, and I no part of it,
Not named or known of.
QUEEN.
You are the happier man
Heavenward, if blessed be the peaceable.
DARNLEY.
The happier heavenward, being the worldlier shamed;
The less I like it. You have suddenly cast forth
A man her servant and ambassador,
With graceless haste and instance, from the realm,
On barren charge of bare complicity
With men now banished and in English bounds,
But not attaint of treason toward us yet
Nor deadly doomed of justice.
QUEEN.
Not attaint?
Give not your spirit trouble for that; the act
Is drawn by this against them, and the estates
Need but give warrant to their forfeiture
Now it has passed the lords of the articles;
Take no care for it; though it be sweet in you
And gracious, to show care of your worst foes
You have on earth; that would have driven you forth
A shameful rebel to your cousin queen
And naked of our foreign favour here
That clothed you with unnatural royalty
And not your proper purple. Forth; you say
I have done this wrong?
DARNLEY.
I do not say you have done
Wise work nor unwise; but howbeit, I say
I had no part in aught of it, nor knew
With what a spur’s prick you provoked her spleen
Who is not stingless to requite it you,
Nor with what scant of reason.
QUEEN.
’Tis sad truth,
She shows no less disquiet mind than yours
Nor a less loud displeasure; she was kind,
She says, well-willed to meward, but my sins,
Unkindliness, and soul’s obduracy,
Have made her soft heart hard; and for this fault
She will not ever counsel me again,
Nor cease to comfort my dear brother’s need
With gold and good compassion: and I have
Eve
n such a sister as brother of her as him,
And love alike and am like loved of them.
He wills me well, she swears, as she herself,
And, I’ll re-swear it, she wills as well as he.
DARNLEY.
Ay, we know whence this well-spring of your will
Takes head and current; who must have brave wars
We know, fair field, broad booty to sweep up,
Space to win spurs in; and what English gold
Must after battle gild his heels with them,
When he shall stand up in my father’s stead
Lieutenant-general for you of the realm:
And who must have your brother’s lands we know,
Investiture must have, and chancellorship,
And masterdom in council. Here he stands,
A worthy witness to it; do you look on me?
Is it not you must be the golden sir,
The counsel-keeper, the sole tongue of the head,
The general man, the goodly? Did you send
Lord Bothwell hard at heel of him cast forth
To make his wrong sweet with sweet-spoken words,
And temper the sharp taste of outrage done
And heat in him of anger, with false breath?
Why made you not your own tongue tunable
Who are native to soft speaking, and who hate
With as good heart as any Scot that hates
England? or is her messenger your fool
To take blows from you and good words alike
As it shall chance him cross your morning mood
Angry or kindly?
QUEEN.
Sir, our chancellor,
We charge you that you answer not the duke.
DARNLEY.
Duke?
QUEEN.
Ay, the duke of Rothsay; whom we pray
Seek otherwhere some seemlier talking-stock
To flush his hot and feverish wit upon.
DARNLEY.
Your chancellor? why went not such a man
With you before the lords of the articles
Now, an hour back, and yet but half day through,
To help you speak the banished lords to death?
Is’t not the heart of the office, to see law
Punish law’s traitors, as you bid them be
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 203