Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 223
Thinks with your thought, desires with your desire,
And lives upon your living. Where you go
You bear me with you; where your face is set
Mine eye takes outlook, and where falls your foot
I tread beside you silent. O, this day
Shall be to us as the crown o’ the wave that turns
And bears inshore the lading of our lives
With all the might of its great heart that breaks
And brings us into harbour; we shall stand
High on the beach where it was spent, and praise
The faithful hour that served us; yea, even this
Shall be a dear one to us, held fast at heart
When all the pain and doubt of it is dead,
And lovingly remembered; you shall look
From your high place beside your humble love
With kingly eye on this dead day, and think
How she that set her crown about your head
And put her own beneath your foot, as now
Bade you fare forth, and kissed you.
BOTHWELL.
I am returned,
Ere I pass forth, already in my heart,
With my cause crowned; I cannot doubt of speed
Who have your face before mine eyes as fire
And keep your words’ heat in mine ear to burn
If I should shrink, and sting my spirit alive
For love’s and shame’s sake. When we meet at night,
A king’s kiss will I set upon these lips
That seal me royal ere I part. Farewell.
Exit.
QUEEN.
I would mine eye were in my heart to go
With that beside him; but the heart it is
Sits now in the eye and follows where it may,
But a street’s length; then part they, and the sight
Turns back, but not the thought; such wings it hath
As the sight hath not, and is subtler nerved
Than the swift spirit of the eye. O my life’s light,
This is not I that looks forth after you
To feed her eyesight, but who leaves you not,
Who rides beside you, breathes out of your lips,
Looks through your eyes and triumphs in your heart,
That unseen and inseparate thing is I.
Look, he is up; how royally he rides,
As no king else on earth! and waves to me
As who should say, Be glad; and glad I am,
Who have the lordliest lover in the world
And the most heart to love him. Ay, that steed
Should be the higher of heart that feels him stride
And moves the merrier-mettled; by none such
Was it before bestridden.
MARY BEATON.
Was not this
Lord Darnley’s horse?
QUEEN.
Ay, when Lord Darnley was.
MARY BEATON.
The horse he loved of all the rest and fed
Ere he bestrode it ever?
QUEEN.
Like enough;
What ails it yet to have eaten of his hand?
It bears not now the worse a better man.
MARY BEATON.
Nay, so it seems: it bounds not as in wrath,
For aught I see, beneath him, but heaves up
A sidelong head toward his new hand, and turns
The light back on him of a joyful eye.
So is it with only beasts that are beloved;
They have not hearts like ours.
QUEEN.
What need they have?
I would have nothing love him as I love,
And had it heart it would; yet I do think
All beasts and men are mad that love him not
As I should surely were I beast or man.
He can no longer see my handkerchief;
Let us go in: I will not sit and wait
With the street’s hustling faces in my sight.
Exeunt.
Scene V. The High Court of Justice in the Tolbooth
Bothwell, with Ormiston and others attending, at the bar; Argyle presiding as
Lord Justice; Lindsay as assessor; Caithness, Cassilis, Rothes, Arbroath,
Maxwell, Herries, and others, as jury; Robert Cunningham as spokesman for
Lennox.
ORMISTON aside to Bothwell.
Fie, look not down so at your feet, my lord;
What devil is this that irks you? in your face
A fool might read you what you are; why, so
Might a man look that were now going to death.
Hold up your face for God’s sake and look blithe;
Alas and aye woe worth them that devised
The thing that shall make all us mourn, I trow,
For you that now look sadly.
BOTHWELL.
Hold your peace;
I would not yet it were to do; I have
An outgate any way whereby to pass,
As ye shall know, and soon. Trouble me not.
ARGYLE.
My lords, ye have heard how to the indictment read
The accused who stands at his own instance here
Returns his plea of guiltless; and thereon
The accuser next invoked to approve his charge,
Nor answering nor appearing, leaves no cause
For us to judge; but here in his default
Is risen his servant to sustain his part
And unawares among us unrequired
Take up this charge here fallen, or stretch at least
Some form across of pretext wide enough
To cover with excuse this lack of charge,
Which else might seem with emptiness of cause
To mock your judgments; wherefore, if ye will,
He stands to plead before us.
CAITHNESS.
We are content.
ROBERT CUNNINGHAM.
My lords, I am here but in my master’s name,
The earl of Lennox, to declare what cause
This day constrains his absence; which in brief
Is first the brief time given for so great work,
Next that he stands now naked of his friends
And fellowship of servants to maintain
His honour with the surety of his life;
And having help of no friend but himself,
He hath laid on me commandment to desire
A day sufficient for that weight of cause
Which he shall have to keep it; and if hence
Your lordships at this present shall proceed,
Here I protest that if the assize to-day,
By their twelve persons that upon this charge
Shall enter now on panel, speak him clear
Who stands accused for murder of the king,
It shall be wilful error in men’s eyes
And not abuse of ignorance, by this cause
That all men know him for murderer; and hereto
Upon this protestation I require
Of your high court a document to stand
And set my lord’s right here on register
And those men’s wrong who put it by to-day.
ARGYLE.
This is some reason if the ground be good
Whereon his protest is built up, to excuse
Default of witness by defect of time;
But here that ground is shaken, that we find,
By letters of his own writ to the queen,
My lord of Lennox earnest to bring on
With forward expedition as of fire
This cause for trial, and by all pleas intent
To enforce this court make haste, and being convoked
Despatch with breathless justice and short stay
The work wherein he seems to accuse us now
For too much heat to move too fast, and mar
The perfect end of trial with force of speed,
Prevent
ing him of witness. Wherefore then
Was his own will so keen, his plaint so loud,
So strong his protestation, to procure
The speed too late reproached, too soon required?
Here are we met for judgment, whom himself
Bade the queen summon, with insistent heat
And sharp solicitation urged of wrong,
Nay, with the stroke of an imperative tongue,
As though to impel some loth or laggard heart,
And found instead a free and forward will
In her to meet his own; here sits the court,
There stands the man of him or his impeached
To give them loyal answer; where sits he?
Where speaks his proof? where stand his witnesses?
What sentence of what judges shall be given
Where none stands forth to accuse? Here are but words,
Surmises, light and loud and loose, that blow
In the air of nameless lips and babblers’ breath
From ear to ear about the wide-mouthed world;
These are not for our judgment.
CAITHNESS.
We sit here
To find if there be proof or likelihood
More than of common tongues that mark a man
Guilty, and know not why this man or that,
But some name they must have to feed upon;
And in my mind, where witness there is none
Nor prosecution of a personal cause,
Even should we err to find the accused man free,
It were no wilful error, nor this court
In any just man’s sight accountable
As for unrighteous judgment, being cut off
From evidence that it was met to hear;
Which we reject not, but require indeed,
Yet can by no solicitous mean procure.
Moreover, sirs, one flaw there is to note
More evident than these proofs invisible
Even in the letter of the charge, which bears,
Ye see, the ninth day’s date of February,
When all we know that on the tenth it was
This violence, by what hand soe’er, was done:
So that I see not, for my simple part,
How any man, for that which no man did,
Should stand condemned; for at this date assigned
Was no such deed as this done in the world.
MAXWELL.
Why, let the charge be drawn again, and straight;
The court is mocked in this.
CAITHNESS.
How mocked, my lord?
It is necessity of law, to keep
Pure hands by perfect heed of flawless words;
And that you stood the dead man’s friend alive
Gives you not right nor reason to rise up
And tax the reason or the right of law.
MAXWELL.
Right! where is right in all this circumstance,
Or aught but wrong and broken judgment? where
Justice or shame or loyalty, to try
The truth whereon red fraud and violence tread
And smother up the tongueless cry of blood?
Are we not here to judge of murder done,
And either from an innocent brow take off
The spot of its suspicion, or convince
The branded forehead of bloodguiltiness?
Is there no counsel on the part accused
Nor answer of defensive argument
But of close-lipped evasion? and the court
In this forsooth is mocked not! We shall stand
The shameful signs of laughter to the world
And loathing to men loyal, if this pass
With no more trial but mockery, and the land
Sit silent and attaint of innocent blood
Before the face of all men that expect
For our own sake what justice we shall show
Or be defamed for ever.
ARBROATH.
Sirs, meseems
Where no charge is that no response can be,
Where none impeaches, none can stand accused:
And of what mouth what challenge is put forth,
And on what witness what impeachment hangs,
To implead of guilt the man we sit to try?
Herein I say it is the court is mocked,
Even all of us, and all the baffled land,
And most this noble man that unaccused
Stands at our bar and finds not to confront
One witness, nor one enemy to beat back,
But only as ‘twere a wind that sounds, a breath
That shifts and falters in the face of proof,
A blast that envy blows and fear breaks off,
Disabled of its nature, by itself
Frustrate and maimed of its own evil will.
LINDSAY.
Who talks of envious or of fearful heart?
We hear the general judgment of the land
Cry out for trial, and from foreign tongues
Reproach cast on us that we cast off heed;
What should we do for shame if in this cause,
For doubt of one man’s friends or of what power
Might stand behind to buckler him at need,
We durst not move, nor, though the world looked on,
Show but a face of justice?
CASSILIS.
Must we set
Our judgments by the common tongue that strikes
And knows not what the hour is? or become
Thralls to the praise and bondmen to the blame
Of men by no tie blood-bound to our love,
To make our lives look in their foreign sight
Fair, lest they speak us evil? By my head,
No Scot I hold him, but a strange man’s knave,
Whose spirit is shrunk or swollen by their breaths.
ARGYLE.
Well, let the votes be given, and each man’s doom
Affirm if in his true and equal mind
The charge be proven upon my lord or no.
How go the voices?
LINDSAY.
By one half their dooms
The lords here of the jury speak him free
With clear acquittal of bloodguiltiness;
One half is voiceless.
ARGYLE.
He then is proclaimed
Of this high court not guilty, and the charge
On trial stands not good against him. Sir,
The court upon this plea declares for you
You are found free of blood.
BOTHWELL.
My noble lords,
Being proved thus in your judgments clear of crime,
Here on this door will I to-day set up
My personal challenge in mine honour’s right
To meet in arms, before what judge he will,
What gentleman soever undefamed
Shall take upon him to confront my cause.
For their lewd mouths who threat and wear no sword,
Your judgment given to acquit me shall abash
The malice it puts power into mine arm
With might of right to baffle. Sirs, good day.
Exit with Ormiston and his followers.
ARGYLE.
Break up the court; the cause is judged.
MAXWELL to Lindsay.
Is judged?
I know not of such seed what stem will spring,
But that fruit sour as gall and red as blood
For men’s false mouths must of this judgment grow
I would I saw less surely than I see.
Scene VI. The High Street
Burgesses and People
FIRST CITIZEN.
What more of shame is laid up for us? when
Will heaven put forth a hand to touch with fire
These naked sins and shrivel? Have you heard
What last lies bare for judgment?
SECOND CITIZEN.
Is not this half-hour’s shame; each stroke each day
Strikes out a fresh one, that five minutes old
Dies of the next forgotten. Yesterday
Some talk was of the challenge yet, which now
No man casts thought on, though by two good swords
Was battle proffered: by the stout Laird first
Of Tullibardine, in that brother’s name
Whom they for fear have taxed of treason, so
To eschew his proof and peril; he defies
The challenger to combat, and requires
England and France for judges of the field
In person of their sovereigns; this refused,
On such new plea as craven craft may find,
With his queen’s leave the ambassador himself
Of England gladly with his own heart’s will
Would take the personal cause upon him.
FIRST CITIZEN.
What!
Is it for fault of Scots to match and mate
The pride in Bothwell swoln with innocent blood
None but Sir William Drury may be held
Worth his sword’s wrath that walks by night?
THIRD CITIZEN.
Perchance
As for his queen he stands here deputy,
And for our own her champion opposite
Afield with swords’ play or abed with lips’,
They hold the match more equal.
FOURTH CITIZEN.
Nay, this news
Is grey of beard already; hear you not
How by this priestly parliament of ours,
That to beguile us and for no goodwill
Hath in the queen’s name passed its act to affirm
God’s present gospel stablished in this realm,
The murderer lives now twice absolved of blood
And has by voice of prelates and of earls
The assize allowed for good that purged him first,
And shall be loosened of his marriage bond
That twelve months since was tied? his brother-in-law
Shall have again his forfeit lands, and see
His sister from her married bed thrust out,
And stir no finger; then without more stay
Who sees not where the adulterer’s foot shall climb
And by what head his own be pillowed? nay,
These papers hung against our walls by night
Are tongues that prophesy but truth; ye saw