Had I let slip this season I had fallen
Naked and sheer to break myself on death,
A cragsman crushed at the cliff’s foot; but now
Chance cannot trip me, if I look not down
And let mine eye swim back among slain fears
To reckon up dead dangers; but I look
High up as is the light, higher than your eyes,
Beyond all eagles’ aeries, to the sun.
ORMISTON.
You will be king?
BOTHWELL.
Was I not crowned last night?
The hand that gave those dead stones wings to fly
Gave wings too to my fortune, and the fire
That sprang then in our faces, on my head
Was as the gold forefigured on a king’s.
Enter Paris
What says the queen? why shak’st thou like a cur?
Speak, beast, or beastlike shalt thou fare with me;
Hast thou not seen her?
PARIS.
Ay, my lord.
BOTHWELL.
Ay, dog?
What said she to those gaping eyes of thine?
PARIS.
My lord, I found her in her mourning bed
New-hung with black; her looks were fresh and staid;
Her fast being broken only with an egg,
Ere she addressed herself again to sleep
She spake but three words with me of yourself,
How might you fare, and when she rose by noon
You should come to her; no more.
BOTHWELL.
So let her sleep;
There are that watch for her. For thine own part,
I charge thee tell me one thing: in thy life
Didst thou pledge ever promise or plight faith
To that dead mask of kingship?
PARIS.
Nay, my lord.
BOTHWELL.
Seest thou not now these gentlemen my friends?
Not one of them but for troth’s sake to me
And loving service hath cast all things off
To do as I shall and to fare as I;
And if thou think’st, whom no faith bound nor love
To serve that fool or come ‘twixt hell and him
To buckler him from burning - if thou think’st,
That art my servant, thou hast sinned toward God
In our offence, this lies not to thy charge
But mine who caused thee do it, and all the lords’
Who with me took this work in all their hands.
And if now thou have will to go thy way,
Thou shalt depart right soon with recompense;
But for all pains that can be put to thee
Thou must not take this on thy tongue again.
PARIS.
My lord, I will not.
BOTHWELL.
Sirs, with me it rests
To take some order for the burial soon
When the queen’s eye hath dwelt upon him dead,
As shall be, lest men say for shame or fear
She would not see him; then with all privy speed
He shall by night be given here to the worms.
His raiment and his horses will I take
By the queen’s gift; for being now highest in place
I will present me kinglike to the time
And come before men royal, who shall know
I stand here where he stood in all their sight;
So seeing at once if I be lord or no
He that shall hate me risen shall need take heart
To strike betimes, or strike not. At this hour
Bold heart, swift hand, are wiser than wise brain.
I must be seen of all men’s fear or hate,
And as I am seen must see them and smite down
Or lie for ever naked underfoot
Down in the dark for them to triumph on.
That will I not; but who shall overthrow
Must kill me kingly, sworded hand to hand,
Not snared with gin or limetwig as a fool,
Nor hurled by night up howling into heaven,
But in the sun’s eye weaponed. Some of you
Go forth and find what noise is in the streets,
What rumours and how tempered on men’s tongues:
When I pass out among them I will take
Some fifty with me to my guard, and ride
As might their king ride. Be it proclaimed abroad
In mine own name and Maitland’s and Argyle’s
Two thousand pounds shall pay that good man’s pains
Who shall produce the murderers of our king
For just and sudden judgment. In few days,
If Mar be not mine unfriend and his own,
Who holds the keys of Stirling, we shall pass
With some of counsel thither, and there bide
Till the first reek of rumour have blown by,
Then call in spring our parliament again.
HEPBURN.
Your heart of hope is great; with God to friend,
A man could speed no better than your hope.
BOTHWELL.
I tell thee, God is in that man’s right hand
Whose heart knows when to strike and when to stay.
I swear I would not ask more hope of heaven
Than of mine own heart which puts fire to me
And of mine own eye which discerns my day.
And seeing the hope wherein I go now forth
Is of their giving, if I live or die,
With God to friend or unfriend, quick or dead
I shall not wake nor sleep with them that fear
Whose lives are as leaves wavering in a wind,
But as a man foiled or a man enthroned
That was not fooled of fortune nor of fear.
Exeunt.
Scene II. Another Room in the same
The body of Darnley lying on a bier. Two men in attendance
FIRST ATTENDANT.
There is no wound.
SECOND ATTENDANT.
Nor hath the fire caught here;
This gown about him is not singed; his face
Is clenched together, but on hair nor cheek
Has flame laid even a finger; each limb whole
And nothing of him shattered but the life.
How comes he dead?
FIRST ATTENDANT.
Tush, tush! he died by chance.
Take thou no pain to know it. For mine own mind,
I think it was his sickness which being full
Broke as a plague-spot breaks and shattered him
And with his fleshly house the house of stone
Which held him dying; his malady it was
That burst the walls in sunder and sent up
A ruin of flaming roofs and floors afire.
SECOND ATTENDANT.
Was not his chamber-fellow’s corpse as his?
FIRST ATTENDANT.
Ay, woundless as they say and unconsumed;
I know not surely. But the blast that made
The good town ring and rock here through her streets
Shook not all sleepers in the house to death;
Three souls have crept forth of the wreck alive
That slept without his chamber.
SECOND ATTENDANT.
What say these?
FIRST ATTENDANT.
What should they say, with thanks for their own hap,
But that this chance is dire and this man dead?
There is no more yet for sage lips to say,
That would not timeless be stopped up with earth.
Enter the Queen and Bothwell
QUEEN.
Leave us, and after take your charge again.
FIRST ATTENDANT.
We must forbear her till her moan be made.
Aside.
Exeunt Attendants.
QUEEN.
Let me look on him. It is marred not much;
BOTHWELL.
It had been better had he died ere man.
QUEEN.
That hardly was he yesterday; a man!
What heart, what brain of manhood had God sown
In this poor fair fool’s flesh to bear him fruit?
What seed of spirit or counsel? what good hope
That might have put forth flower in any sun?
We have plucked none up who cut him off at root,
But a tare only or a thorn. His cheek
Is not much changed, though since I wedded him
His eyes had shrunken and his lips grown wan
With sickness and ill living. Yesterday,
Man or no man, this was a living soul;
What is this now? This tongue that mourned to me,
These lips that mine were mixed with, these blind eyes
That fastened on me following, these void hands
That never plighted faith with man and kept,
Poor hands that paddled in the sloughs of shame,
Poor lips athirst for women’s lips and wine,
Poor tongue that lied, poor eyes that looked askant
And had no heart to face men’s wrath or love
As who could answer either, - what work now
Doth that poor spirit which moved them? To what use
Of evil or good should hell put this or heaven,
Or with what fire of purgatory annealed
Shall it be clean and strong, yet keep in it
One grain for witness of what seed it was,
One thread, one shred enwoven with it alive,
To show what stuff time spun it of, and rent?
I have more pity such things should be born
Than of his death; yea, more than I had hate,
Living, of him.
BOTHWELL.
Since hate nor pity now
Or helps or hurts him, were we not as wise
To take but counsel for the day’s work here
And put thought of him with him underground?
QUEEN.
I do but cast once more away on him
The last thought he will ever have of mine.
You should now love me well.
BOTHWELL.
Ay should I, sweet.
QUEEN.
I think you shall; it were more hard than death
You should not love me.
BOTHWELL.
Nay, not possible.
QUEEN.
I think God never set in flesh of man
Such heart as yours would be to love me not.
BOTHWELL.
Will you give order for his funeral?
QUEEN.
Ay.
But if you loved not - I would know that now
That I might die even this day, and my hands
Shed no more blood nor strive more for your sake;
For if I live whose life is of your love
I shall take on them more of toil and blood,
To stain and tire them labouring all their life.
I would not die bloodguiltier than is need,
With redder hands than these and wearier heart,
And have no love to cleanse and comfort them.
For this man, I forgive him.
BOTHWELL.
For which fault?
QUEEN.
That he touched ever and defiled my life
With life of his and death. I am fain to know
You do not love me for his sake the less
Who so have soiled me with him.
BOTHWELL.
Shall I not
Swear it with him for sponsor to mine oath?
QUEEN.
Kiss me before his face here for a sign.
BOTHWELL.
You have strange doubts and dreams.
QUEEN.
I will not have.
When part we hence, and whither?
BOTHWELL.
I have word
Your careful warden, the grave lord of Mar,
Will hardly give my followers at your prayer
Place to come in to Stirling at our back.
Here now the streets begin to sound and swarm
So that my guard is now for more than pride;
Wherefore I hold it well we take with us
Some friends of our own counsel, as Argyle,
Huntley, my brother-in-law that shall be none,
With Maitland and the archbishop, and set forth
To the lord Seyton’s, who shall give us house
Till this loud world fall stiller than it is.
QUEEN.
Be it where you will, and how; do you but lead,
Would I not follow naked through the world?
For him of whose dead face mine eyes take leave
As my free soul of shameful thought on him,
Let him have private burial some fit night
By David whom he slew. I mind me now
’Tis not a year since I fled forth with him
Even through the graves where he shall lie alone,
And passing through their dusty deadly ways
For some few minutes of the rustling night
I felt his hand quake; he will quake not now
To sleep there all night long. See you to that.
Exeunt.
Scene III. Seyton Castle
Lord Herries and Sir James Melville
HERRIES.
So stands it, sir; she hath put into his hands
Besides the lordship of the port of Leith
The castle’s government of Edinburgh,
Of Inchkeith and Blackness, three master keys
That keep the doors o’ the kingdom; in Dunbar
He sits now lord, and gathers men to hold
By her next gift Dumbarton: while she sends
A privy message for a priest to plead
With the French king, that by his mother’s mouth
And his own hand hath warned her, if her lord
Sleep unrevenged, she being so shamed henceforth
Must hold them for her enemies, and put off
All thought to flee for fear into their guard
From peril of her subjects - even to him
She sends for payment of her dower foregone
Wherewith to levy hireling bands in France
With but her babe for captain called, and be
Fenced round at least with all of these she may,
Of whose despatch none here must know before,
Nor, if these fail her, of her frustrate aim;
Then, ere her mourning month be here played out
With hound and horn and soldierlike delights
To recreate her natural heart and life,
She must repass to Holyrood and meet
The ambassador from England, Killegrew,
Who comes to find folk sorrowing and in fear
With counsel for our peril and our grief,
And falls upon us feasting; and to him
She plights her faith that by this parliament
Shall Bothwell have his trial, and the cause
Be sifted clear in the eyes of all good men;
Wherewith content he parts, or discontent,
I know not, but is gone; and she come back
Takes heed no more than of a harp unstrung
What plaint or plea, what charge or menace comes
From her lord’s father, but to his demand
For convocation of the nobles made
Returns her word their house shall meet in spring,
And puts his charge by lightly as she may.
Of all this nothing in my mind goes well.
MELVILLE.
Nor aught in mine. Your fellows of her faith
Who stand as yet in England on her side
Will fall off from her, hearing what I doubt
All ears will hear too soon: I have shown it her
By
letter sent me from a faithful Scot
That long hath wrought among them on her part
And freely thence wrote all his fear for me
To lay before her, and his grief to hear
Such bruit of her intent as could but slay
The opinion of her judgment, who must lose
By such design God’s favour and her fame,
And in each kingdom that should kiss her hand
Each man’s heart born her heritage, and miss
The noble mark she shot at; I, adjured
Of him that wrote to bring this in her eye,
Gave her to read it, which she gave again,
Silent; then came the secretary to me
A short while thence, and took me by the hand,
Desiring me as by the queen’s desire
To let him see it, who had given him late to know
I had shown her a strange letter, and devised
By mine own counsel for Lord Bothwell’s wreck;
And having read, What thing was in my mind,
He said, to do this, which being known to the earl,
As shortly there was need to fear it should,
Would cause him surely seek my life? and I,
It was a sore thing for true men to see
So good a princess run on utter wreck
And no man be so far concerned in her
As to forewarn of peril: he replied
As one who had newly left her wroth, I had done
More honestly than wisely; bade me fly
Ere the earl came up from dining; and being flown
I know he sought to slay me, who lay hid
Till his main rage was slackened; and the queen,
Who had made him swear to seek no scathe of mine
When at their meeting next she showed it him,
Chid him as who would cause her to be left
Of all her servants; then he swore anew
I should receive no harm; whereof again
Being advertised I spake with her, and showed
She had never done me so much wrong as this,
To make the letter a device of mine
Which came even whence I had given her word; and yet
Had it not come, I had held me bound to speak
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 220