Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 217
Of fears and threats fixed and unshakeable.
What said he to you that has moved you not?
DARNLEY.
Nothing.
QUEEN.
What, you were moved then of his words?
DARNLEY.
I say I was not.
QUEEN.
He said nothing then?
You held discourse but of days foul or fair,
Skies wet or dry, seasons and accidents,
All things and nothing?
DARNLEY.
Would you not know that?
QUEEN.
Even as you list or list not, so would I.
DARNLEY.
What if it please me you should know this not?
QUEEN.
Why, you do wisely, seeing I love you not.
DARNLEY.
I did not say so; I may hold my peace,
Yet not for doubt that irks me of your love.
QUEEN.
Surely you may; good reasons may stand thick
As buds in April in your judgment’s sight
To cover both your counsels from mine eye
That has no lust to invade your secrecies.
DARNLEY.
And if it please me show it, as now it shall,
You will not dread I doubt your love of me.
QUEEN.
I have not heart to dread the doubt I know
You have not heart to harbour of my love.
DARNLEY.
Why, he came here to warn me of my life.
QUEEN.
Your life?
DARNLEY.
Ay, mine; and what now say you to him?
QUEEN.
I say he spake as your good friend and mine.
DARNLEY.
Ay?
QUEEN.
What more kindness could be shown of man
Than in your ear to warn me of your life
If it so stand in peril?
DARNLEY.
What, you think
He told it me to have me tell it you?
QUEEN.
It was done gently, brother-like, for fear
The word of danger being first heard by me
Should strike too sharp upon my slighter soul
And pierce my woman’s sense with such quick pangs
As might dethrone my judgment, shake my wits
To feminine confusion, and by force
Disable my swift thoughts, now maimed with dread,
From their defence and office; he did well
And my heart thanks him, showing you first his fear,
Who are manlike of your mood and mould of mind
And have but for your own life to take thought,
Not for one dearer; as, I know you well,
By mine own heart I know, to have heard of me
Endangered would have killed your heart with fear,
That in your personal peril beats at ease
With blood as perfect as I see you now,
With pulse thus changeless and with cheek thus calm.
Indeed I thank him for it, and twice I thank,
That he would serve you and would scare not me.
Where said he was this danger?
DARNLEY.
Nay, by God,
That would he not say; that I nothing know;
Save by some hint of shoulder or writhed lip
That seemed to shoot at you; and when you sang
He bade me hearken, and would speak no more.
QUEEN.
At me! but if such fire be on his tongue,
It should be forked and set on fire of hell.
At me! but if he be not mad, to you
He shall approve it, instant face to face,
Eye to confronted eye, word against word,
He shall maintain or mark himself for liar,
With his own fire and iron brand the brow
That burned not to belie me.
DARNLEY.
Sweet, not here -
Would I could fight with him! but being o’erthrown
Of my disease already, to what end
Should he come back now save to insult on me
Who have no hand to strike at him again
In championship of you?
QUEEN.
He shall come back,
And twice shall oversay the word he said
In your own ear, or else unswear it. What,
Shall I be put to shame of mine own blood,
To mine own lord in mine own love maligned,
Stricken with slanderous fangs of speech, and stabbed
In my heart’s core of honour, yet lie still
And bleed to death dumb and dishonourable?
Rather let come the deadliest of my kin,
Mine enemies born, and bind and burn me quick,
Or ever I die thus; rather let all
The false blood of my father in strange veins
Be set on fire against me, and its heat
Consume my fame with my frail flesh, and make
My scaffold of my kingdom; rather fall
My naked head beneath the mortal axe,
And with my blood my name be spilt and shed,
Than this charge come upon me.
DARNLEY.
You are stirred
Beyond all right of reason; be not moved:
You see how I believed him.
QUEEN.
And to see
Is my soul’s comfort; but this wound that bleeds
Here in my heart’s heart cannot well be stanched
Till by the tongue that smote me, as men say
That by the anointing of the sword that hurt
The wound it made finds comfort, I be healed.
DARNLEY.
Nay, let him come; I will maintain it to him,
Here, to his face, he warned me of my death
Or present danger in you.
QUEEN.
He shall come.
But lie now down and sleep; I have wearied you.
DARNLEY.
I pray you sing me something then; indeed
I am weary and would forget; but now you sang -
Doth that French song break where you broke it off?
QUEEN.
No, there is more. Sleep, I will sing it you.
Sings.
Sur la grève
Rien ne rêve
Aux naufragés de la nuit;
À la trombe,
Gouffre et tombe,
Au flot qui frappe et qui fuit.
Apaisée
Et baisée
Par les brises sans souci,
Brille et vibre
Au jour libre
La belle mer sans merci.
Tant que dure
La nuit dure
Sur la grève où rit la mort,
Sous l’orage
Flotte et nage
Le jour qui lutte et qui sort.
Pas de brume
Que n’allume
L’astre ou l’éclair des amours;
Pas de flamme
Qui dans l’âme
Brûle ou luise tous les jours.
À l’aurore
Tout se dore,
Tout se fane avant la nuit;
Et que l’heure
Chante ou pleure,
Dans une heure tout s’enfuit.
Coeur sans crainte,
OEil sans feinte,
Quand l’amour met voile au vent,
Sur la plage
Sans naufrage
Est-il revenu souvent?
L’ombre emporte
La nef morte,
Et la joie, et le beau jour;
Trop profonde
Était l’onde,
Et trop faible était l’amour.
The scene closes.
Scene XVIII. Behind Kirk of Field
Bothwell, Ormiston, Hepburn of Bolton, and Hay of Talla
BOTHWELL.
If it be done to-morrow
, we shall stand
The surer that the queen slept here to-night.
Cousin, bring you my knaves from Holyrood
At nightfall to that hinder gate wherethrough
We three shall give you passage with your charge
To the strait garden-plot beyond the walls
Whereto the door that opens from beneath
Shall stand unbolted, and you entering spread
Along the blind floor of the nether vault
The train that shall set all these walls on wing.
ORMISTON.
How said you, that his groom here had the keys?
BOTHWELL.
That under door which lets us down lacks none;
There is no lock to palter with; it needs
But leave the bolt undrawn; and yesterday
By the queen’s order was the door removed
At bottom of the stair, to be instead
A cover for his bath-vat; so there stands
But the main door now.
HEPBURN.
That was well devised:
She sleeps beneath his chamber here to-night?
BOTHWELL.
Ay, to the west.
HAY.
She has the stouter heart.
I have trod as deep in the red wash o’ the wars
As who walks reddest, yet I could not sleep,
I doubt, with next night’s dead man overhead.
BOTHWELL.
We are past the season of divided wills;
Where but one thought is, nothing to be done
Has power to hurt the heart that holds it fast
Or leave the purpose weaker by a wound
Given it of doubt or afterthought: we have
One thing to do, one eye to see it, one hand
To pluck it from the occasion; what he wills
None but a fool would mix his will to achieve
With pain and fear; the mind once shaped and set
That works and yet looks back and weeps to do
Is but half man’s; and all a man’s hath she.
HEPBURN.
Yet woman-moulded outward, clothed upon
As ‘twere with feminine raiment, touched with thoughts
Of female-coloured fashion, woman’s craft:
She sees and thinks on what could touch not us
Nor graze in passing even our skirts of sense:
Takes order for the hangings of his bed
Whom we must kill to her hand, lest water soil
The sable velvet from his bath, and bids
Pluck down and save them; such slight things and strange
As take the thought and hold the eye of girls
Her soul, as full of great things as it is,
As large and fiery, bright and passionate,
Takes no less thought for, and hath heed of these
No less than of high deed and deep desire
Beyond where sight can scale or thought can dive
Of narrower eye and shallower spirit than hers.
BOTHWELL.
Most royal is she, but of soul not all
Uncurbable, nor of all shafts that fly
Scatheless, nor of all shots invulnerable;
She had no part else and no power in us,
No part in all that mingling makes up man,
No power upon our earth who are earthlier made;
She has the more might on men’s ways of soul
Not being almighty, nor from all man’s moods
Divided, but as passion-touched and mixed
With all such moods as men are; nay, not these,
But such as bear the rule of these and lead
Which way they will - women’s; and being so mixed
She is even the more entire, more whole and strong,
Herself and no self other. She nor I
Live now on thoughts and words; the deed it is,
Our deed alone we live by, till being done
It leave us time for life that deals with these.
I will be with you ere night fall again
Within the town-wall; thither get you now,
And doubt not of us.
ORMISTON.
Doubt not you to find
All ready by the night and need: farewell.
Exeunt all but Bothwell.
BOTHWELL.
The time is breathless; earth sees heaven as chill
In the after air declining from high day.
I would the winds would muster, or the sun
Show half an eye-blink of his face that hangs
Now downward to the sea, curbed in with cloud,
And with a brief breath fire the rack that flies.
Why should not flame break over Arthur’s Seat
This hour, and all the heaven with burning tongues
Cry from the world’s height to the under line
That ends it for us gazing? If the sky
Had speech as it hath fire, or night or day
Voice to declare God’s pleasure or his wrath
With their dumb lips of light, from moon or sun
Or the mute mouths of stars, would earth that heard
Take thought and counsel of the cause, to stir
Men’s hearts up for our deed’s sake here? I am wrought
Out of myself even by this pause and peace
In heaven and earth, that will not know of us
Nor what we compass; in this face of things,
Here in this eye of everduring life
That changes not in changing, fear and hope,
The life we live, the life we take, alike
Decline and dwindle from the shape they held,
Their import and significance; all seem
Less good and evil, worth less hate and love,
Than we would have them for our high heart’s sake.
How shall this day when all these days are done
Seem to me standing where it sets my feet?
Nay, whence shall I behold it? or who knows
What crest or chasm, what pit or pinnacle,
Shall feel my foot or gulf my body down,
Bear up or break me falling? Fall or stand,
At least I live not as the beasts that serve,
But with a king’s life or man’s death at last
Make all my travails perfect; and a queen,
The fairest face I have loved and fieriest heart,
Shines with my star or sets.
Enter Paris
What sends she now?
PARIS.
I came to know if you stand fixed indeed,
Sir, for to-morrow.
BOTHWELL.
For to-morrow, man;
What ails him at to-morrow?
PARIS.
My dread lord,
Nought ails me but as part of your design;
But I beseech you by your trust of me,
What says this while my lord of Murray?
BOTHWELL.
He!
He will nor help nor hinder - but all’s one.
PARIS.
He is wise.
BOTHWELL.
But is it to tell me he is wise
That you bestow your own wise tongue on me?
Came you to advise me or to show my trust
How cracked a casket I have closed it in
Who trusted in so white a heart as yours?
PARIS.
I have a message -
BOTHWELL.
Well, the message, then;
And as you are wise, make me not wroth to-day,
Who am but foolish.
PARIS.
Sir, the queen by me
Wills you to know that from her husband’s mouth
She is assured there came here yesterday
To him her brother. Abbot of St. Cross,
To warn him of some danger.
BOTHWELL.
From his mouth!
Had ever mouth such hunger to eat dust?
/> Well, it shall soon be filled and shut; what else?
PARIS.
She has taxed hereof her brother -
BOTHWELL.
What, by word?
PARIS.
No, but by note she let him wist she knew it.
Now he denies again his word aloud -
BOTHWELL.
He does the wiselier; there your tongue struck right;
She has wise men to brethren.
PARIS.
And desires
To prove it on the accuser’s body, being
Once whole again to meet him.
BOTHWELL.
A fair proof:
Doth either sword seek mine for second?
PARIS.
Nay;
But the queen bade me tell you he should go
To her lord’s chamber for his challenge’ sake
And do that thing ye wot of.
BOTHWELL.
Tell the queen
I will speak to him. We must not mar our hand;
Say I will see him before the morrow morn.
Howbeit, it shall be well but for a night
To put our present purpose back, and see
If chance or craft will mend our hand again.
Who strikes most sure strikes deepest; say I go
To try this brother’s edge; if he be sure,
He shall well serve us as a glove to wear
And strike, and have the whiter hands to show.
Exeunt severally.
Scene XIX. Darnley’s Chamber
Darnley and Nelson
DARNLEY.
I never had such evil dreams as now.
Save for the terror of them and after pain,
I durst well swear I had not slept to-night.
NELSON.
You have slept seven hours.
DARNLEY.
I have been seven years in hell;
Mine eyes are full yet of the flames, my flesh
Feels creep the fire upon it; even my heart
Is as a sere leaf shrunken.