Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  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;
r />   This was a fair face of a boy’s alive.

  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