Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 227
The Queen and Bothwell; Mary Beaton and Arthur Erskine in attendance
QUEEN.
Are you yet wroth?
BOTHWELL.
Are you yet wise? to know
If I be wroth should less import than this
Which I would fain find of you.
QUEEN.
By my life,
I think I am but wise enough to know
That witless I was ever.
BOTHWELL.
Ay, but most,
You mean, to wed me, that am graceless more
Than witless you that wedded, in men’s eyes
Who justliest judge of either; yet, by God,
Had I not grace enough to match with you,
I must have less than in their minds I have
And tongues of them that curse me; but what grief
Wrings now your heart or whets your tongue, that strikes
When the heart stirs not?
QUEEN.
Nay, no grief it is
To be cut off from all men’s company,
Watched like a thief lest he break ward by night,
My chamber door set round with men-at-arms,
My steps and looks espied on, hands and feet
Fettered as ‘twere with glances of strange eyes
That guard me lest I stray; my ways, my words,
My very sleep their subject.
BOTHWELL.
You were wont
To walk more free; I wot you have seen fair days
When you lived large i’ the sun, and had sweet tongues
To sing with yours, and haply lips and eyes
To make song sweeter than the lute may; now
’Tis hard that you sit here my woeful wife,
Who use you thus despitefully, that yet
Was never queen so mated with a groom
And so mishandled; have you said so?
QUEEN.
I?
BOTHWELL.
Who hath put these words else in men’s mouths, that prate
How you lie fast in prison? I did know
A woman’s tongue keen as her faith was light,
But faith so like the wind spake never yet
With tongue so like a sword’s point.
QUEEN.
No, my lord?
’Tis well that I should hear so first of you
Who best may know the truth of your worst word.
BOTHWELL.
Is it no truth that men so speak, and you,
By speech or silence or by change of face,
By piteous eyes or angry, give them cause
To babble of your bonds? What grace you show
Toward others is as doubt and hate of me
In these our enemies’ sight, who see it and swear
You are kept in ward here of my will, and made,
Out of no trust or love but force and fear,
Thrall to my hand. Why, being but two days wed,
Must there be cause between us of dispute
For such a thing as this man, in whose name
I am crossed and slighted of your wanton will?
QUEEN.
If he be worth no more than you conceive,
What grace I do him can hurt you?
BOTHWELL.
I conceive!
Why, what worth is he with you, that I should
Conceive the least thought of him? Were I hurt,
Assure yourself it would be to his death;
Lay that much to your heart.
QUEEN.
My heart is killed.
I have not where to lay it.
BOTHWELL.
Pray you, no tears;
I have seen you weep when dead men were alive
That for your eye-drops wept their hearts’ blood out;
So will not I. You have done me foolish wrong
And haply cast your fame for food to hounds
Whose teeth will strip it hour by hour more bare
Whereon they have gnawed before.
QUEEN.
What have I done?
Speak.
BOTHWELL.
Nay, I will, because you know not: hark,
You are even too simple and harmless; being man’s wife,
Not now the first time, you should buy more wit
Though with less innocence; you have given a gift,
Out of your maiden singleness of soul
And eye most witless of misconstruing eyes,
Where you should not: this is strange truth to you,
But truth, God help us! that man’s horse who was
Your husband, and whose chattels, place, and name
Lie in my hold I think now lawfully
Whence none is like to wring them, have you given
Out of my hand to one of whom fame saith
That by the witness of a northland witch
He when I die must wed you, and my life
Shall last not half a year; for in your bed
Must lie two husbands after me, and you
Shall in your fifth lord’s lifetime die by fire.
Now, being but third and least in worth of these,
I would not have you die so red a death,
But keep you from all fresh or fiercer heat
Than of my lips and arms; for which things’ sake
I am not blithe, so please you, to behold
How straight this lay lord abbot of Arbroath
Sits in your husband’s saddle. Pardon me
That with my jealous knowledge I confound
Your virginal sweet ignorance of men’s minds,
Ill thoughts and tongues unmannerly, that strike
At the pure heart which dreams not on such harm;
It is my love and care of your life’s peace
Makes me thus venturous to wage words with you,
And put such troublous things in your fair mind,
Whereof God wot you knew not: and to end,
Take this much of me; live what life you may
Or die what death, while I have part in you,
None shall have part with me; nor touch nor word
Nor eye nor hand nor writing nor one thought
The lightest that may hang upon a look
Shall man get of you that I know not of
And answer not upon him. Be you sure
I am not of such fool’s mould cast in flesh
As royal-blooded husbands; being no king
Nor kin of kings, but one that keep unarmed
My head but with my hand, and have no wit
To twitch you strings and match you rhyme for rhyme
And turn and twitter on a tripping tongue,
But so much wit to make my word and sword
Keep time and rhyme together, say and slay.
Set this down in such record as you list,
But keep it surer than you keep your mind
If that be changing: for by heaven and hell
I swear to keep the word I give you fast
As faith can hold it, that who thwarts me here
Or comes across my will’s way in my wife’s,
Dies as a dog dies, doomless. Now, your pleasure;
I prate no more.
QUEEN.
Shall I be handled thus?
BOTHWELL.
You have too much been handled otherwise;
Now will I keep you from men’s hands in mine,
Or lack the use of these.
QUEEN.
What, to strike me?
You shall not need; give me a knife to strike
That I may let my life out in his eye,
Or I will drown myself.
BOTHWELL.
Why, choose again;
I cross you not.
QUEEN.
Give me a knife, I say.
ARTHUR ERSKINE.
Make not our hearts bleed, madam, as they burn
To hear what we hear silent.
BOTHWELL.
Comfort her;
You were her chamber-knight on David’s day.
ARTHUR ERSKINE.
My lord, the reverence that the queen’s sight bears
And awe toward her make me thus slow to set
My hand to do what work my heart bids; else
I would not doubt to stand before your grace
And make such answer as her servant may.
QUEEN.
Forbear him, Arthur; nay, and me; ’tis I
On whom all strokes first fall and sorest smite,
Who most of all am shieldless, without stay,
And look for no man’s comfort. Pray you, sir,
If it be in your will that I cast off
This heavy life to lighten your life’s load
That now with mine is laden, let me die
More queenlike than this dog’s death you denounce
Against the man that falls into your hate:
Though not for love, yet shame, because I was
A queen that loved you: else you should not seem
So royal in her sight whose eyes you serve,
Nor she when I am dead with such high heart
Behold you, nor with such glad lips commend
As conqueror of me slain for her love’s sake
And servant of her living in your love.
Let me die therefore queenlike, and your sword
Strike where your tongue hath struck; though not so deep,
It shall suffice to cleave my heart and end.
BOTHWELL.
Hear you, my queen; if we twain be one flesh,
I will not have this daintier part of it
Turn any timeless hand against itself
To hurt me, nor this fire which is your tongue
Shoot any flame on me; no fuel am I
To burn and feed you; not a spark you shed
Shall kindle me to ruin, but with my foot
Rather will I tread out the light that was
A firebrand for the death of many a man
To light the pile whereon they burnt alive.
What, have I taken it in my hand to scorch
And not to light me? or hath it set fire
To so few lives already that who bears
Needs not to watch it warily and wake
When the night falls about him? Nay, the man
Were twice the fool that these your dead men were,
Who seeing as I have seen and in his hand
Holding the fire I carry through the dark
To be the beacon of my travelling days
And shine upon them ended, should not walk
With feet and eyes both heedful at what hour
By what light’s leading on what ground he goes,
And toward what end: be therefore you content
To keep your flame’s heat for your enemies’ bale,
And for your friend that large and liberal light
That gave itself too freely, shot too far,
Till it was closed as in a lantern up
To make my path plain to me; which once lost,
The light goes out for ever.
QUEEN.
Yea, I know;
My life can be but light now to your life,
And of no service else; or if none there,
Even as you say, must needs be quenched; and would
The wind that now beats on it and the sea
Had quenched it ere your breath, and I gone out
With no man’s blood behind me.
BOTHWELL.
Come, be wise;
Our sun is not yet sunken.
QUEEN.
No, not yet;
The sky must even wax redder than it is
When that shall sink; darkness and smoke of hell,
Clouds that rain blood, and blast of winds that wreck,
Shall be about it setting.
BOTHWELL.
What, your heart
Fails you now first that shrank not when a man’s
Might well at need have failed him?
QUEEN.
Ay, and no;
It is the heart that fired me fails my heart,
And as that bows beneath it so doth mine
Bend, and will break so surely.
BOTHWELL.
Nay, not mine;
There is not weight yet on our adverse part,
Fear not, to bend it.
QUEEN.
Yet it fails me now.
I have leant too much my whole life’s weight on it
With all my soul’s strength, and beneath the fraught
I hear it split and sunder. Let me rest;
I would fain sleep a space now. Who goes there?
MARY BEATON.
A suitor to behold your majesty.
QUEEN.
I will not see him. Who should make suit to me?
Who moves yet in this world so miserable
That I can comfort? or what hand so weak
It should be now my suppliant, or uplift
In prayer for help’s sake to lay hold on mine?
What am I to give aid or alms, who have
Nor alms nor aid at hand of them to whom
I gave not some but all part of myself?
I will not see him.
MARY BEATON.
It is a woman.
QUEEN.
Ay?
But yet I think no queen; and cannot be
But therefore happier and more strong than I.
Yet I will see what woman’s face for grief
Comes to seek help at mine; if she be mad,
Me may she teach to lose my wits and woes
And live more enviable than ye that yet
Have wit to know me wretched.
Enter Jane Gordon
Who is this?
Are you my suitor?
JANE GORDON.
I am she that was
Countess of Bothwell; now my name again
Is that my father gave me.
QUEEN.
Ay, no more;
You are daughter yet and sister to great earls,
And bear that honour blameless; be it enough;
And tell me wherefore by that name you come
And with what suit before me.
JANE GORDON.
Even but this,
To look once on you and to bid farewell
Ere I fare forth from sight.
QUEEN.
Farewell; and yet
I know not who should in this world fare well.
Is the word said?
JANE GORDON.
A little leave at last
I pray you give me: that I seek it not
For love or envy toward my sometime lord
Or heart toward you disloyal now my queen,
Let me not plead uncredited. I came
Surely with no good hope to no glad end,
But with no thought so vile of will as this,
To thrust between your hearts the care of me,
Claim right or challenge pity, melt or fret
Your eyes with forced compassion: I did think
To have kissed your hand and something said for sign
I had come not of weak heart or evil will,
But in good faith, to see how strong in love
They stand whose joy makes joyless all my life,
Whose loving leaves it loveless, and their wealth
Feeds full upon my famine. Be not wroth;
I speak not to rebuke you of my want
Or of my loss reprove you, that you take
My crown of love to gild your crown of gold;
I know what right you have, and take no shame
To sit for your sake humbled, who being born
A poor mean woman would not less have been
By God’s grace royal, and by visible seal
A natural queen of women; but being crowned
You make the throne imperial, and your hand
&n
bsp; Puts power into the sceptre; yea, this head
Of its gold circlet takes not majesty,
But gives it of its own; this may men see,
And I deny not; nor is this but just,
That I, who have no such honour born or given,
Should have not either, if it please you not,
That which I thought I had; the name I wore,
The hand scarce yet a year since laid in mine,
The eye that burned on mine as on a wife’s,
The lip that swore me faith, the heart that held
No thought or throb wherein I had no part,
Or heaved but with a traitor’s breath, and beat
With pulse but of a liar.
BOTHWELL.
Ay, swore I so?
Why, this was truth last year then.
QUEEN.
Truth, my lord?
What does the fire of such a word as this
Between such lips but burn them, as mine ears
Burn that must hear by your device and hers
With what strange flatteries on her prompted lips
This dame unwedded lifts her hand unringed
To abash me with its show of faith, and make
Your wife ashamed at sight of such a love
As yet she bears you that is not your wife?
BOTHWELL.
What devil should prick me to such empty proof
And pride unprofitable? I pray you think
I am no such boy to boast of such a spoil
As chamberers make their brag of. Let her speak
And part not as unfriends.
QUEEN.
Madam, and you
That thus renumber and resound his vows,
To what good end I know not, in our ear,
What would you have of him whom your own will
Rose up to plead against as false, to break
His bonds that irked you and unspeak the word
That held you hand in hand? Did you not pray
To be set free from bondage, and now turn
To question with the hand that you put off
If it did well to loose you?
JANE GORDON.
Truly no;
Nor will I question with your grace in this,
Whether by mine own will and uncompelled
I only would have put that hand away
That I will say would yet have held mine fast