Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 212
To feel them strange and insupportable;
I know now how men live without a heart.
Does your wound pain you?
BOTHWELL.
What, I have a wound?
QUEEN.
How should one love enough, though she gave all,
Who had your like to love? I pray you tell me,
How did you fight?
BOTHWELL.
Why, what were this to tell?
I caught this reiver, by some chance of God,
That put his death into mine hand, alone,
And charged him; foot to foot we fought some space,
And he fought well; a gallant knave, God wot,
And worth a sword for better soldier’s work
Than these thieves’ brawls; I would have given him life
To ride among mine own men here and serve,
But he would nought; so being sore hurt i’ the thigh
I pushed upon him suddenly, and clove
His crown through to the chin.
QUEEN.
I will not have you
Henceforth for warden of these borders, sir:
We have hands enow for that and heads to cleave
That but their wives will weep for.
BOTHWELL.
Have no fear;
This hour had healed me of more grievous wounds;
When it shall please you sign me to your side,
Think I am with you.
QUEEN.
I must ride - woe’s me!
The hour is out. Be not long from me, love;
And till you come, I swear by your own head
I will not see the thing that was my lord
Though he came in to Jedburgh. I had thought
To have spoken of him, but my lips were loth
To mar with harsh intrusion of his name
The least of all our kisses. Let him be;
We shall have time. How fair this castle stands!
These hills are greener, and that singing stream
Sings sweeter, and the fields are brighter faced,
Than I have seen or heard; and these good walls
That keep the line of kingdom, all my life
I shall have mind of them to love them well.
Nay, yet I must to horse.
BOTHWELL.
Ay must you, sweet;
If you will ride thus fifty mile a day,
But for your face you should be man indeed.
QUEEN.
But for my face?
BOTHWELL.
If you will make me mad -
QUEEN.
I dare not dwell with madmen; sir, farewell.
BOTHWELL.
But for your love and for its cruelty,
I would have said, you should be man.
QUEEN.
Alas!
But for my love? nay, now you speak but truth;
For I well knew there was no love in man.
But we grow idle in this our labouring time;
When we have wrought through all the heat o’ the day,
We may play then unblamed, and fear no hand
To push us each from other; now farewell.
Scene IX. The Queen’s Lodging at Jedburgh
The three Maries
MARY CARMICHAEL.
What, will she die? how says this doctor now?
MARY SEYTON.
He thinks by chafing of her bloodless limbs
To quicken the numbed life to sense again
That is as death now in her veins; but surely
I think the very spirit and sustenance
That keeps the life up current in the blood
Has left her as an empty house for death,
Entering, to take and hold it.
MARY BEATON.
I say, no;
She will not die of chance or weariness;
This fever caught of riding and hot haste
Being once burnt out, as else nought ails her, will not
Leave her strength tainted; she is manly made,
And good of heart; and even by this her brain,
We see, begins to settle; she will live.
MARY CARMICHAEL.
Pray God she may, and no time worse than this
Come through her death on us and all her land
Left lordless for men’s swords to carve and share;
Pray God she die not.
MARY BEATON.
From my heart, amen!
God knows and you if I would have her die.
MARY SEYTON.
Would you give up your loving life for hers?
MARY BEATON.
I shall not die before her; nor, I think,
Live long when she shall live not.
MARY SEYTON.
A strange faith:
Who put this confidence in you? or is it
But love that so assures you to keep life
While she shall keep, and lose when she shall lose
For very love’s sake?
MARY BEATON.
This I cannot tell,
Whence I do know it; but that I know it I know,
And by no casual or conjectural proof,
Nor yet by test of reason; but I know it
Even as I know I breathe, see, hear, feed, speak,
And am not dead and senseless of the sun
That yet I look on: so assuredly
I know I shall not die till she be dead.
Look, she is risen.
Enter the Queen, supported by attendants
QUEEN.
What word was in your lips?
That I must die?
MARY SEYTON.
Heaven hath not such hard heart.
QUEEN.
I think I shall not, surely, by God’s grace;
Yet no man knows of God when he will bring
His hour upon him. I am sick and weak,
And yet unsure if I be whole of mind.
I think I have been estranged from my right wits
These some days back; I know not. Prithee tell me,
Have I not slept? I know you who you are;
You were about me thus in our first days,
When days and nights were roseleaves that fell off
Without a wind or taint of chafing air
But passed with perfume from us, and their death
Had on it still the tender dew of birth.
We were so near the sweet warm wells of life
We lay and laughed in bosom of the dawn
And knew not if the noon had heat to burn
Or the evening rain to smite us; being grown tall,
Our heads were raised more near the fires of heaven
And bitter strength of storms; then we were glad,
Ay, glad and good. Is there yet one of you
Keeps in her mind what hovers now in mine,
That sweet strait span of islanded green ground
Where we played once, and set us flowers that died
Before even our delight in them was dead?
Now we are old, delights are first to die
Before the things that breed them.
MARY SEYTON aside.
She roams yet.
MARY BEATON.
I do remember.
QUEEN.
Yea, I knew it; one day
We wrangled for a rose’ sake and fell out
With tears and words protesting each ’twas she,
She ’twas that set it; and for very wrath
I plucked up my French lilies and set foot
On their gold heads, because you had chafed me, saying
Those were her flowers who should be queen in France,
And leave you being no queen your Scottish rose
With simpler leaves ungilt and innocent
That smelt of homelier air; and I mind well
I rent the rose out of your hand and cast
Upon the river’s running; and a thorn
Pie
rced through mine own hand, and I wept not then,
But laughed for anger at you and glad heart
To have made you weep, being worsted. What light things
Come back to the light brain that sickness shakes
And makes the heaviest thought that it can hold
No heavier than a leaf, or gossamer
That seems to link two leaves a minute, then
A breath unlinks them; so my thoughts are: nay,
And should not so; it may be I shall die,
And as a fool I would not pass away
With babbling lips unpurged and graceless heart
Unreconciled to mercy. Let me see
That holy lord I bade be not far off
While I lay sick - I have not here his name -
My head is tired, yet have I strength at heart
To say one word shall make me friends with God,
Commending to him in the hour of unripe death
The spirit so rent untimely from its house
And ere the natural night lay hold on it
Darkly divided from the light of life.
Pray him come to me.
MARY BEATON.
It is my lord of Ross
The queen would see? my lord is at her hand.
Enter the Bishop of Ross
QUEEN.
Most reverend father, my soul’s friend, you see
How little queenlike I sit here at wait
Till God lay hand on me for life or death,
With pain for that gold garland of my head
Men call a crown, and for my body’s robe
Am girt with mortal sickness: I would fain,
Before I set my face to look on death,
Mine eyes against his eyes, make straight the way
My soul must travel with this flesh put off
At the dark door; I pray you for God’s grace
Give me that holy help that is in you
To lighten my last passage out of sight.
For this world’s works, I have done with them this day,
With mine own lips while yet their breath was warm
Commending to my lords the natural charge
Of their born king, and by my brother’s mouth
To the English queen the wardship of her heir,
And by the ambassador’s of France again
To his good mistress and my brother king
The care of mine unmothered child, who has
No better friends bequeathable than these:
And for this land have I besought them all,
Who may beseech of no man aught again,
That here may no man for his faith be wronged
Whose faith is one with mine that all my life
I have kept, and fear not in it now to die.
BISHOP OF ROSS.
Madam, what comfort God hath given his priests
To give again, what stay of spirit and strength
May through their mean stablish the souls of men
To live or die unvexed of life or death,
Unwounded of the fear and fang of hell,
Doubt not to have; seeing though no man be good
But one is good, even God, yet in his eye
The man that keeps faith sealed upon his soul
Shall through the bloodshedding of Christ be clean.
And in this time of cursing and flawed faith
Have you kept faith unflawed, and on your head
The immediate blessing of the spouse of God.
Have no fear therefore but your sins of life,
Or stains and shadows such as all men take,
In this world’s passage, from the touch of time,
Shall fall from off you as a vesture changed
And leave your soul for whiteness as a child’s.
QUEEN.
I would have absolution ere I die,
But of what sins I have not strength to say
Nor hardly to remember. I do think
I have done God some service, holding fast
Faith, and his Church’s fear; and have loved well
His name and burden set on me to serve,
To bear his part in the eye of this thwart world
And witness of his cross; yet know myself
To be but as a servant without grace
Save of his lord’s love’s gift; I have sinned in pride,
Perchance, to be his servant first and fight,
In face of all men’s hate and might, alone,
Here sitting single-sceptred, and compel
For all its many-mouthed inveteracy
The world with bit and bridle like a beast
Brought back to serve him, and bowed down to me
Whose hand should take and hale it by the mane
And bend its head to worship as I bade,
I, first among his faithful; so I said,
And foolishly; for I was high of heart;
And now, behold, I am in God’s sight and man’s
Nothing; but though I have not so much grace
To bind again this people fast to God,
I have held mine own faith fast and with my lips
Have borne him witness if my heart were whole.
BISHOP OF ROSS.
Therefore shall he forget not in your hour
Nor for his child reject you; and shall make
The weight and colour of your sins on earth
More white and light than wool may be or snow.
QUEEN.
Yea, so my trust is of him; though as now
Scarce having in me breath or spirit of speech
I make not long confession, and my words
Through faintness of my flesh lack form; yet, pray you,
Think it but sickness and my body’s fault
That comes between me and my will, who fain
Would have your eye look on my naked soul
And read what writing there should be washed out
With mine own heart’s tears, and with God’s dear blood,
Who sees me for his penitent; for surely
My sins of wrath and of light-mindedness,
And waste of wanton will and wandering eyes,
Call on me with dumb tongues for penitence;
Which I beseech you let not God reject
For lack of words that I lack strength to say.
For here as I repent and put from me
In perfect hope of pardon all ill thoughts,
So I remit all faults against me done,
Forgive all evil toward me of all men,
Deed or device to hurt me; yea, I would not
There were one heart unreconciled with mine
When mine is cold; I will not take death’s hand
With any soil of hate or wrath or wrong
About me, but being friends with this past world
Pass from it in the general peace of love.
MARY BEATON.
Here is some message from the world of friends
Brought to your brother: shall my lord come in?
QUEEN.
What lord? ye have no lord of any man
While I am lady of all you. Who is this?
Message? what message? whence?
Enter Murray
MURRAY.
From Edinburgh
Your husband new alighted in sharp speed
Craves leave of access to your majesty.
QUEEN.
By heaven, I had rather death had leave than he.
What comes he for? to vex me quick or dead
With his lewd eyes and sodden sidelong face
That I may die again with loathing of him?
By God, as God shall look upon my soul,
I will not see him. Bid him away, and keep
Far off as Edinburgh may hold him hence
Among his fellows of the herded swine
That not for need but love he wallows with
To expend his patrimony of breath and blood
/>
In the dear service of dishonouring days.
MURRAY.
Let him but bide the night here.
QUEEN.
Not an hour;
Not while his horse may breathe. I will not see him.
MURRAY.
Nay, for the world’s sake, and lest worse be said;
Let him sleep here and come not in your sight.
QUEEN.
Unless by some mean I be freed of him
I have no pleasure upon earth to live.
I will put hand to it first myself. My lord,
See how this ill man’s coming shakes my soul
And stains its thoughts with passionate earth again
That were as holy water, white and sweet,
For my rechristening; I could weep with wrath
To find between my very prayer and God
His face thrust like a shameful thought in sleep.
I cannot pray nor fix myself on heaven
But he must loose my hold, break up my trust,
Unbind my settled senses, and pluck down
My builded house of hope. Would he were dead
That puts my soul out of its peace with God.
Comfort me, father; let him not have way;
Keep my soul for me safe and full of heaven
As it was late. - See that you rid him hence,
I charge you, sir, with morning.
MURRAY.
Yea, I shall;
‘Twere best he saw you not.
QUEEN.
I think so. Hark!
Who is there lighted after him? I heard -
Nay, he is sick yet, wounded; yet I heard -
Pray God he be not risen too soon, to ride
With his wound’s danger for my sickness’ sake.
MARY BEATON.
It is my lord the warden.
QUEEN.
What, I knew it -
So soon so far, and with such speed! Ay, never
Had queen so ill befriended of her own
So fast a friend and loving. I will see him;
I am stronger than I was. Give me your hands;
I can stand upright surely. Come you in
And help to attire me like a living queen;
These are as grave-clothes. One go bring me word
How he looks now, if weak or well indeed,
If stout of cheer or tired. Say, for his coming