Wept; then came one we wot of clad in black
And smiling, and laid hands on me more cold
Than is a snake’s kiss or the grave’s, and thrust
Between that severed head, weeping and crowned,
That mourned upon me, and mine eyes that watched,
Her own strange head wrapped widow-like and wan
In habit of one sorrowing, but with lips
That laughed to kiss me; and therewith at once
Your face as water flowed out of my sight,
And on mine own I felt as drops of blood
Falling, but if your tears they were or hers
Or either’s blood I knew not; on mine eyes
The great dead night shut doorwise like a wall,
And in mine ears there sprang a noise of chains
And teeth ground hard of prison-grates that jarred
And split as ‘twere with sound my heart, which was
As ice that cleaves in sunder; for there came
Through that black breathless air an iron note
Of locks that shut and sounded, and being dumb
There left me quick entombed in stone, and hid
Too deep for the day’s eyeshot; then I woke
With the sea’s roaring and the wind’s by night
Fresh in my sense, and on my travailing heart
A weight of walls and floors and upper earth
That held me down below the breach o’ the sea
Where its tide’s wash kept witness overhead
How went the scornful days and nights above
Where men forgot me and the living sun
As a dead dog passed over.
QUEEN.
What, alone?
She went not with you living underground
To sit in chains and hear the sea break? nay,
She would not cast you off. This was your love,
Your love of her and need of her sweet sight,
That brought her so upon your sleep, and made
Your sense so fearful of all things but this,
And all else heard and seen so terrible
But her face only: she should comfort you,
Whom I should bring to wreck; why, so she said,
Saying how she had loved you whom I loved not; yea,
Her eyes were sad, she said, that saw forsooth
So little love between us: this sweet word,
This word of hers at parting, this it was
Of which your dream was fashioned, to give sign
How firm she sits and fast yet in your heart,
Where I was never.
BOTHWELL.
Well, how be it soe’er,
I would not dream again this dead dream out
For less than kingly waking: so good night,
For I will sleep alone.
QUEEN.
No, with my heart,
That lies down with you though it sleeps not. Go,
And dream of no less loving prayer than mine
That calls on God for sleep to comfort you
And keep your heart from sense of aught more hard
Than her great love who made it.
Exit Bothwell.
’Tis a night
That puts our France into my mind; even here
By those warm stars a man might call it June,
Were such nights many: their same flower-bright eyes
Look not more fair on Paris, that mine own
Again shall hardly look on. Is it not strange
That in this grey land and these grievous hours
I should so find my spirit and soul transformed
And fallen in love with pain, my heart that was
Changed and made humble to his loveless words
And force as of a master? By my faith,
That was till now fixed never and made as fire
To stand a sunlike star in love’s live heaven -
A heaven found one in hue and heat with hell -
I had rather be mishandled as I am
Of this first man that ever bound me fast
Than worshipped through the world with breaking hearts
That gave their blood for worship. I am glad
He sometime should misuse me; else I think
I had not known if I could love or no.
If you could love man with my heart as now,
You would not mock nor marvel.
MARY BEATON.
No, not then.
QUEEN.
It is not in your heart: there lies not power
In you to be for evil end or good
The strange thing that is I.
MARY BEATON.
There does not, no,
Nor can lie ever: could I love at all,
It were but as mean women, meanly; so
I do the best to love not.
QUEEN.
Hark! what noise?
Look forth and see.
MARY BEATON.
A sound of men and steeds;
The ring is round us; hark, the cry of Hume,
There Lindsay, and there Mar.
QUEEN.
Call up my lord:
I will not go to vex him; but do you
Haste and awake them.
Exit Mary Beaton.
Be it not in mine eyes
That he first sees death risen upon his sleep,
If we must die; being started out of rest,
If he should curse me, were my heart not slain
With the opening of his eyes in wrath on mine?
Re-enter Mary Beaton
MARY BEATON.
My lord is raised and fled; but in the press
The lord of Cranston’s son that slept with him
Is fallen by flight into the enemy’s hands,
Who cry out for him yet as hounds that quest,
And roar as on their quarry.
QUEEN.
Fled, and safe?
MARY BEATON.
Ay, past their hands’ reach that had rent him else;
Be sure he is forth, and free, or you should hear
More triumph in these cries.
QUEEN.
God, thou art good!
Fling wide the window: I will know of them
If they be come to slay me. - What, my lords!
Are all these men of mine that throng by night
To make such show of service, and present
Strange offices of duty? Where are ye
That are chief ushers to their turbulent love
Who come thus riotously to proffer it?
Which is first here? a bold man should he be
That takes unbidden on him such desert -
Let me not say, a traitor.
LINDSAY without.
Where is he,
The traitor that we seek? for here is none
But in your bosom.
QUEEN.
Here then ends your search,
For here am I; and traitors near enough
I see to pierce the bosom that they seek,
Where never shall be treason till its blood
Be spilt by hands of traitors that till now
Durst never rise so near it.
LINDSAY.
Give him forth,
Or we will have these walls down.
QUEEN.
What, with words?
Is there such blast of trumpets in your breath
As shook the towers down of the foes of God
At the seventh sounding? yet we stand and laugh
That hear such brave breath blown and stormlike speech
Fly round our ears: is it because your war,
My lords, is waged with women, that ye make
Such woman’s war on us?
MAR without.
Madam, we come
To take you from his hand that is your shame,
And on his shameful head revenge that blood
Which was shed guiltless; hither was he fle
d,
We know, into your shelter: yield him up,
Ere yet worse come than what hath worst come yet.
QUEEN.
There is none here to die by you but I,
And none to mock you dying. Take all your swords;
It is a woman that they came to slay,
And that contemns them; go not back for fear;
Pluck up your hearts; one valiant stroke or twain,
And ye are perfect of your work, and I
For ever quit of treason; and I swear,
By God’s and by his mother’s name and mine,
Except ye slay me presently, to have
Such vengeance of you and my traitors all
As the loud world shall ring with; so to-night
Be counselled, and prevent me, that am here
Yet in your hands; if ye dare slay me not,
Ye are dead now here already in my doom:
Take heart, and live to mock it.
MAR.
He is fled.
Here boots us not to tarry, nor change words
With her that hath such vantage as to know
We have missed our prize and purpose here, which was
To take the traitor that is fled, and bring
Whither we now ride foiled, to Edinburgh,
Thence to return upon them.
LINDSAY.
Hear yet once;
You, madam, till our day be set of doom,
Look to the adulterer’s head that hence is flown,
Whose shame should now stand redder in your face
Than blushes on his hand your husband’s blood,
And cleave more fast; for that dead lord’s revenge
Will we make proclamation, and raise up
The streets and stones for vengeance of your town
That sits yet sullied with bloodguiltiness
Till judgment make it clean; whose walls to-night
Myself for fault of better ere I sleep
Will scale though gates be fastened, and therein
Bring back and stablish justice that shall be
A memory to the world and unborn men
Of murder and adultery.
QUEEN.
Good my lord,
We thank you for the care you have and pains
To speak before you smite; and that so long,
The deed can follow not on the swift word
For lack of spirit and breath to mate with it;
So that they know who hear your threat betimes
What fear it bears and danger, and for fear
Take counsel to forestall it. Make good speed;
For if your steed be shod but with fleet speech,
Ere you shall stride the wall of our good town
Its foot may trip upon a traitor’s grave.
MARY BEATON.
They ride fast yet; hear you their starting cry?
QUEEN.
For each vile word and venomous breath of theirs
I will desire at my lord’s hand a head
When he shall bring them bound before my foot.
If thou hast counsel in thee, serve me now:
I must be forth, and masked in such close wise
As may convey me secret to his side
Whence till our wars be done I will not part,
Nor then in peace for ever: in this shape
I should ride liable to all eyes and hands
That might waylay me flying; but I will play
As in a masque for pastime, and put on
A horseboy’s habit or some meaner man’s
That wears but servant’s steel upon his thigh
And on his sleeve the badge but of a groom,
And so pass noteless through toward Haddington
Whither my lord had mind to flee at need
And there expect me. Come; the night wears out;
The shifting wind is sharper than it was,
And the stars falter. Help me to put off
This outward coil of woman; my heart beats
Fast as for fear a coward’s might beat, for joy
That spurs it forth by night on warriors’ ways
And stings it with sharp hope to find his face
That shall look loving on me, and with smiles
Mock the false form and cheer the constant heart
That for his love’s sake would be man’s indeed.
ACT IV
John Knox
Time: June 15 and 16, 1567
Scene I. Carberry Hill
The Queen, Bothwell, and Soldiers
QUEEN.
I would this field where fate and we must cross
Were other than it is; but for this thought,
On what ill night some score of years ago
Here lay our enemy’s force before that fight
Which made next day the face of Scotland red
And trod her strength down under English feet,
I would not shrink in this wide eye of dawn,
In the fair front of such a summer’s day,
To meet the mailed face of my traitor’s host
And with bared brows outbrave it.
BOTHWELL.
Keep that heart,
For fear we need it; look beyond the bridge
There at this hill’s foot on the western bank
How strong they stand under the gathering light;
I have not seen a battle fairer set
Or in French fields or these our thirstier lands
That feed unslaked on blood.
QUEEN.
They grow now green,
These hills and meadows that with slain men’s lives
Have fed the flocks of war; come ten years yet,
And though this day should drench them with more death
Than that day’s battle, not a stain shall stand
On their fresh face for witness. Had God pleased
To set a strong man armed with hands to fight
And on his head his heritage to keep,
Sworded and crowned a king, in my sad stead,
To fill the place I had not might to hold,
And for the child then bitterly brought forth
Unseasonable, that being but woman born
Broke with the news her father’s heart, who died
Desperate in her of comfort, had he sent
The warrior that I would be, and in time
To look with awless eye on that day’s fight
That reddened with the ruin of our hopes
The hour that rocked my cradle, who shall say
The scathe of Pinkie Cleugh and all that blood
Had made the memory so unfortunate
Of that which was my birth-time? Being a man,
And timelier born to better hap than mine,
I might have set upon that iron day
Another mark than signs it in our sight
Red with reproach for ever.
BOTHWELL.
Ay, my queen?
These four nights gone you met me soldierlike
Escaped from Borthwick, whence I brought you in,
Three darkling hours past midnight, to Dunbar,
Where you put off that sheath of fighting man
For this poor woman’s likeness yet you wear,
Wherein you rode with your six hundred men
To meet at Haddington but two days since
These sixteen hundred border folk I led
And pass with me to Seyton; did you find
Your life more light in you or higher your heart
Inside that habit than this woman’s coat
That sits so short upon you?
QUEEN.
By my life,
I had forgot by this to be ashamed
Of the strange shape I ride in, but your tongue
Smites my cheek red as is this scanted weed
Wherein I mask my queenship; yet God knows
I had liefer ride thus forth toward such a day
Than hide my sick heart and its fears at home
In kinglier garments than this mask of mine,
Thus with my kirtle kilted to the knee
Like girls that ride in poor folks’ ballads forth
For love’s sake and for dangers’ less than mine.
Yet had I rather as your henchman ride
At your right hand and hear your bridle ring
Than sit thus womanly to watch men strike.
BOTHWELL.
There will be parleying first; I have word of this,
That they set forth at heaviest of the night
From Edinburgh to cross our march betimes,
And by the French ambassador your friend
At Musselburgh were overtaken, whence
We look for news by him what hearts they bear,
What power and what intent; he hath ta’en on him
To stand between our parts as mediator
And bear the burden of our doubtful peace;
We must fight mouth to mouth ere hand to hand,
But the clean steel must end it.
QUEEN.
Now would God
I had but one day’s manhood, and might stand
As king in arms against this battle’s breach
A twelve hours’ soldier, and my life to come
Be bounded as a woman’s; all those days
That must die darkling should not yet put out
The fiery memory and the light of joy
That out of this had lightened, and its heat
Should burn in them for witness left behind
On those piled ashes of my latter life.
O God, for one good hour of man, and then
Sleep or a crown for ever!
BOTHWELL.
By God’s light,
The man that had no joy to strike for you
Were such a worm as God yet never made
For men to tread on Kiss me; by your eyes
And fiery lips that make my heart’s blood hot,
I swear to take this signet of your kiss
As far into the fight as man may bear,
And strike as two men in mine arm and stroke
Struck with one sense and spirit
QUEEN.
If I might change
But this day with you in your stead to strike
And you look on me fighting, as for me
You have fought ere this last heat so many a prize,
Or for your own hand ere your own was mine,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 229