In the proof’s teeth, who are honester than some
You bid be law’s justiciaries of them?
Why went he not? ‘twere no more shame nor praise
Than here to swell in state beside your own.
QUEEN.
Must we crave leave to bid you twice take leave,
Or twice to ask what would you?
DARNLEY.
Truly this,
A mere mean thing, an insignificance,
If you will once more hear - oh, nowise me,
But just the man whose name you take in mouth
To smite me on my face with - Master Knox.
QUEEN.
Are you his usher going before his grace
No less than servant to his master-word?
Or is it penitence and submission makes you
In the holy way of honour and recompense
So high in office with him? Say, this time
For the usher’s sake I’ll speak with the usher’s lord:
Yet if I mind ’twas I bade send for him
To speak of you his servant: for I hear
You did not at first stripe submit yourself
Nor take all penance with all patience, being
Brought hardly in time to harsh humility
Such as we see now; which thing craves excuse
To make you gracious in your master’s eyes,
If it be true - I would not think it were -
You brake in anger forth from the High Kirk,
Being there rebuked, and would not sit at meat,
But past away to hawking in pure rage
After an hour or twain of high discourse
Heard with plain show of sharp unthankfulness;
Which that you now repent and would redeem
I will bear witness for you to your lord
To make your penitential peace with him.
Let him come in.
DARNLEY.
I am no messenger.
QUEEN.
Where is my chamberlain? bid Marnock here -
Let the man in and one man only more,
Whoever it be; we’ll see him privily.
Our chancellor, and our no messenger,
We have no need of to dispute with him.
DARNLEY.
If I go hence -
QUEEN.
Why then you stay not here.
DARNLEY.
But if I go at bidding -
QUEEN.
Why, you go:
With the more speed, the less of tarriance made.
Let me not hold you half-way back: farewell.
Exeunt Darnley and Rizzio.
I have not begun so luckily, nor set
So good a face on the first half of day,
Now to keep terms with mere tongue-traitors more.
Enter John Knox and John Erskine of Dun
So once we are met again, sir, you and I.
Set him before us.
JOHN KNOX.
I am before your grace
Without man’s haling or compulsive word:
Nor at these divers times you have sent for me
Have you found need to use me forcefully.
QUEEN.
Well, let that be; as verily meseems
’Tis I find forceful usage at your hands,
And handling such as never prince has borne
Since first kings were; yet have I borne with it,
Who am your natural princess, and sat by
To hear your rigorous manner of speaking through
As loud against my kinsfolk as myself;
Yea, I have sought your favour diligently
And friendship of my natural subject born
And reconcilement by all possible means;
I have offered you at your own choice and time
Whenso it pleased you ever admonish me
Presence and audience; yea, have shamed myself
With reasonless submission; have endured
The naked edge of your sharp speech, and yet
Cannot be quit of you; but here to God
I make my vow I will be once revenged.
Give me my handkerchief. I should take shame
That he can shame me with these tears, to make
Mine eyes his vassals.
JOHN KNOX.
Madam, true it is
There have been divers seasons of dispute
Between your grace and me, wherein I have never
Found you offended: neither now would find
The offence I sought not; yea, I knew this well,
If it shall please God break your prison-house
And lighten on your disimprisoned soul,
That my tongue’s freedom shall offend you not.
For surely being outside the preaching-place
I think myself no breeder of offence
Nor one that gives man cause of wrath and wrong;
And being therein, I speak not of myself
But as God bids who bids me, speaking plain,
Flatter no flesh on earth. Lo, here I stand,
A single soul and naked in his eye,
Constrained of him, to do what thing he will,
And dare and can none other. Hath he sent me
To speak soft words of acceptable things
In ladies’ chambers or kings’ courts, to make
Their ways seem gracious to them? I wot, no.
I am to bring God’s gospel in men’s ears,
And faith therein, and penitence, which are
The twain parts of it; but the chief o’ the land
And all the main of your nobility
Give God no heed nor them that speak for God
Through flattering fear and ill respect of you;
And seeing if one preach penitence to men
He must needs note the sin he bids repent,
How should not I note these men’s sin who choose
To serve affections in you and wild will
Rather than truth in God? This were lost breath,
To chide the general wrong-doing of the world
And not the very present sin that burns
Here in our eyes offensive; bid serve God,
And say not with what service.
QUEEN.
Nay, but so
What is it to you or any saving me
How this man married to me bears himself?
With what sign-manual has God warranted
Your inquisition of us? What am I
That my most secret sanctuaries of life
And private passages of hours should be
Food for men’s eyes or pavement for men’s feet
To peer and pasture, track and tread upon,
Insult with instance? Am I only bound
To let the common mouth communicate
In my life’s sweet or bitter sacrament,
The wine poured, the bread broken every day?
To walk before men bare that they may judge
If I were born with any spot or no,
And praise my naked nature? to subject
Mine unsubmitted soul subordinate
To popular sight and sentence? What am I
That I should be alone debarred, deposed,
From the poor right of poor men, who may live
Some hour or twain unchallenged of the day
And make to no man answer what they do
As I to mine must render? who is this
That takes in hand such hard things and such high?
Sir, what man are you that I need account
For this word said or that, or such things done,
Only to you or mainly, of myself?
Yea, what are you within this commonwealth?
JOHN KNOX.
A man within it and a subject born,
Madam; and howsoever no great man,
Earl, lord, nor baron to bear rule therein,
Yet has God made me a profitable man.
How abject I seem ever in your eye,
No member of the same unmeritable.
Yea, madam, this pertains not less to me
Than any of all your noble-nurtured men,
To warn men of what things may hurt the same,
So as I see them dangerous: and herein
My conscience and mine office with one tongue
Crave plainness of me: wherefore to yourself
I say the thing I speak in public place,
That what great men soever at any time
Shall be consenting to your lord’s unfaith
Or flattering furtherance of unfaith in you,
They do what in them lieth to cast out Christ,
Banish his truth, betray his liberty
And free right of this realm, and in the end
Shall haply do small comfort to yourself.
And for him too, your husband, it may be
That as he spares not to dishonour God
For your delight, by service of the mass,
God will not spare to smite him by your hand
That faithlessly he fawns on to his loss.
QUEEN.
When was there queen so handled in the world?
I would I could not weep; for being thus used
I needs must never or now. Is this light day?
Am I asleep, or mad, or in a trance,
That have such words to beat about mine ears
And in mine eyes his present face who speaks?
ERSKINE OF DUN.
Madam, I pray your grace contain your mood,
And keep your noble temperance of yourself,
For your high sake and honour, who are held
For excellence of spirit and natural soul
As sovereign born as for your face and place,
Kingdom and kingly beauty; to whose might
The worthiest of the world, all Europe’s chief,
Her choice of crowns, might gladly bow themselves
To find your favour. I beseech you think
That here is no disloyalty designed
Nor thing dishonourable; for were men mad
Whose wits are whole, and false whose faiths are sound,
The very mouth of madness would speak sense,
The very tongue of treason would speak truth,
For love and service of your royalty;
Blind curses bless, and red rebellion bow,
That came to burn and threaten. Do not dream
That a man faithful Godward and well loved
Can be to youward evil-willed, who have
Power on your natural and your born unfriends
To bind their goodwill to you.
QUEEN.
Words, all words;
I am weary of words: I have heard words enough
To build and break, if breath could break or build,
Centuries of men. What would they with me, sir?
These my liege folk that love me to the death,
Their death or mine, no matter - my fast friends
Whose comfortable balms so bruise my head
It cannot hold the crown up - these good hands
That wring my wrist round to wrench out the staff
God set into mine own - these loving lips
That take my name upon them as to kiss
And leave it rank with foam of hateful speech?
Must I be dead deposed, or must I live
Stript shameless, naked to the very name,
A crestless creature and displumed, that feeds
On charities and chances? will they give
Me, their queen born, me, bread or dust to eat,
With a mouth water-moistened or a dry,
Beggared or buried? shall I hold my head
In shameful fief and tenantry of these
For their least wind of any wrath that blows
To storm it off my shoulders? What were I
That being so born should be born such a thing
As bondsmen might bemock the bondage of
And slaves contemn for slavery? Nay, no words:
A word may wound and no word heal again,
As none can me - whom all men’s words may wound -
Who am liable to all buffets of men’s tongues,
All stripes of all their scandals - and was born
To no such fear - and have nor tongue nor wit
To plead and gather favour - no such grace
As may get grace, no piteous skilfulness -
Only my truth and tears - and would to God
My tears and truth for you were wind and fire
To burn and blow corruption from the world,
And leave pure peace to breed where you plant war
And make the furrows fat with pestilence
And the grain swell with treason - but, too sure,
They too can hurt and heal not. I am soul-sick
With shame and bitter weakness; yet, God’s will,
I may take strength about me to put off
Some part of shame. Sir, you that make me weep,
By these my tears and my sharp shame of them
I swear you will not laugh to see me laugh,
When my time comes: you shall not; I will have
Time to my friend yet - I shall see you, sir,
If you can weep or no, that with dry eyes
Have seen mine wet - I will try that - look to it.
JOHN KNOX.
Madam, I speak in very eye of God,
I never took delight in any tears
Shed of God’s creatures; yea, for my self-sake,
I can but very hardly abide the tears
Of mine own boys whom mine own hand and love
Chastens, and much less can take any joy
In this the weeping of your majesty.
But seeing I have given you no offensive cause
Nor just occasion, but have spoken truth
After mine office as mine own place craves
Lest I, God’s man, be mansworn to God’s truth,
I must sustain, howbeit unwillingly,
Rather these tears drawn of your majesty
Than blood of mine own conscience stabbed to death
Or through my silence of my commonwealth
By my dumb treason wounded.
QUEEN.
A fair word -
I thought it was forgotten of men’s mouths
And only lived in the inner heat of the heart
Too sure to want the spelling of their speech.
Sir, you shall find it in my very tears,
This blood you fear for of your commonwealth,
And in the hurts of mine authority
The wounds it lies abed with; what, God help,
Can the head bleed and not the body faint?
Or wherein should the kingdom feel such maim
As in the kingship stricken? there are you,
If you be true man, and each true man born
Subject and circled with the bound of rule,
Hurt to the heart. But heartless things are words;
Henceforth I will not mix my speech with yours
In the way of disputation ever more,
Nor set against your tongue the plea of mine
To reason as its equal. Wait you here,
Here in the chamber: you, sir, come with me
To counsel in my cabinet somewhile;
We will return his answer.
Exeunt Queen and Erskine of Dun.
MARY CARMICHAEL.
She wept sore;
I never saw her spirit, so chafed, so melt
And thaw to such mere passion; this one time
He is sure attainted.
MARY BEATON.
Ay, she fain would dare
Upon the spur of the hour attaint him; yet
What none dare else she durst not; they will put
Force of fair words as bridle in the mouth
Of her wild will and reinless.
She is wise,
And fights not wisdom, but being counselled well
Takes truce with time and tongueless policy.
What, will the man speak to us? he looks so hard
With such fast eyes and sad - I had not thought
His face so great, nor presence.
JOHN KNOX.
Ah, fair ladies,
How fair were this your life and pleasurable
If this might ever abide, and so in the end
With all this gay gear we might pass to heaven:
But fie upon that knave, Death, that will come
Whether we will or will not: and being come,
When he has laid on his assured arrest,
The foul worms will be busy with this flesh,
Be it never so fair and tender; and the soul,
The silly soul shall be so feeble, I fear,
It can bear with it neither gold nor pearl,
Painting of face, garnish, nor precious stones.
MARY BEATON.
Sir, for myself, small joy this were to me
That this life should live ever: nor would I
Care much by praying to stretch my days of life
Into more length, nor much to take with me
Garnish or gold; but one thing I would fain
Have to go gravewards with me and keep it safe,
That you have cast no word or warning on,
And yet women, whose hearts are worldly worn
And by no creed of yours consolable
Nor gladness of your gospel, love its name
As dear as God’s; and its name is but rest.
JOHN KNOX.
Rest has no other name but only God’s.
MARY BEATON.
But God has many another name than rest:
His name is life, and life’s is weariness.
JOHN KNOX.
Ay, but not his; that life has lost his name;
Peace is his name, and justice.
MARY BEATON.
Ah, sir, see,
Can these two names be one name? or on earth
Can two keep house together that have name
Justice and peace? where is that man i’ the world
Who hath found peace in the arms of justice lain
Or justice at the breast of peace asleep?
Is not God’s justice painted like as ours,
A strong man armed, a swordsman red as fire,
Whose hands are hard, and his feet washed in blood?
It were an iron peace should sleep with him,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 204