QUEEN.
I will not part from hence; here will I see
What man dare do upon me.
ATHOL.
Hear you not
How the cry thickens for your blood? this night
Scarce has time left to save you.
QUEEN.
I will die.
MORTON.
Madam, your will is no more now the sword
That cuts all knots in sunder: you must live,
And thank the force that would not give you leave
To give your foes the blood they seek to spill.
Here every hour’s is as an arrow’s flight
Winged for your heart; if in these clamorous walls
You see this darkness by the sun cast out,
You will not see his light go down alive.
QUEEN.
What men are ye then, that have made my life
Safe with your oaths, that walled it round with words,
Fenced it with faith and fortressed it with air
Made of your breaths and honours? When ye swore,
I knew the lie’s weight on your lips, and took
My life into mine hand; I had no thought
To live or ride among you but to death,
And whither ye have led me to what end
Nor I nor God knows better than I knew
Then when ye swore me safe; for then as now
I knew your faith was lighter than my life,
And my life’s weight a straw’s weight in the wind
Of your blown vows. Pledge me your faith to this,
That I shall die to-night if I go forth
And if I stay live safe, and I will go
In trust to live, being here assured to die.
MORTON.
We swore to save you as you swore again
To cast the traitor from you, and divorce
Your hand for ever from the blood on his;
And with that hand you wrote to him last night
Vows of your love and constant heart till death
As his true wife to serve and cleave to him.
The boy that should have borne your letter lacked
Faith to be trusty to your faithless trust,
And put it in our hand.
QUEEN.
Why, so I thought;
I knew there was no soul between these walls
Of child or man that had more faith than ye
Who stand their noblest; nor shall one soul breathe,
If here ye put not out my present life,
When I come back, that shall not burn on earth
Ere hell take hold of it.
MORTON.
It is well seen,
Madam, that fear nor danger can pluck forth
Your tongue that strikes men mad with love or scorn,
Taunted or tempted; yet it shall not wrest
Death from men’s hands untimely; what was sworn,
That you should live, shall stand; and that it may,
To-night must you part hence; this lord and I
Will bring you through to Holyrood afoot
And be your warders from the multitude
As you pass forth between us; thence to Leith,
And there shall you take water and ere dawn
Touch at Burntisland, whence some twenty miles
Shall bear you to Lochleven and safe guard
On the Fife border; he that has your charge
Is one not trusted more than tried of us,
Sir William Douglas, in whose mother’s ward
At Kinross there shall you abide what end
God shall ordain of troubles: at this need
No kindlier guard or trustier could secure
The life we pluck out of the popular mouth
That roars agape to rend it. You must go,
QUEEN.
Must I not too go barefoot? being your queen,
Ye do me too much grace: I should be led
In bonds between you, with my written sins
Pinned to my forehead, and my naked shame
Wrapt in a shameful sheet: so might I pass,
If haply I might pass at all alive
Forth of my people’s justice, to salute
With seemly show of penance her chaste eyes
Whom ye have chosen for guard upon her queen
And daughter of the king her paramour,
Whose son being called my brother I must call,
Haply, to win her favour and her son’s
And her good word with him as mediatress,
My father’s harlot mother. Verily,
Ye are worthy guardians of fair fame, and friends
Fit to have care of reputation, men
That take good heed of honour; and the state
That hath such counsellors to comfort it
Need fear no shame nor stain of such reproach
As makes it shrink when with her lords’ good will,
Advised of all tongues near her and approved,
A queen may wed the worthiest born of men
Her subjects, and a warrior take to wife
One that being widowed of his hand and help
Were such a thing as I am. From my lord
I held my kingdom; now my hand lacks his,
What queen am I, and what slaves ye, that throng
And threat my life with vassals, to make vile
Its majesty foregone with abject fear
Of my most abject? yet though I lack might
Save of a woman friendless and in bonds,
My name and place yet lack not, nor the state
And holy magic that God clothes withal
The naked word of king or queen, and keeps
In his own shadow, hallowed in his hand,
Such heads unarmed as mine, that men may smite
But no man can dishallow. In this faith,
Not to your faith I yield myself for fear,
But gladly to that God’s who made of me
What ye nor no man mightier shall unmake,
Your queen and mistress. Lead me through my streets
Whose stones are tongues now crying for my blood
To my dead fathers’ palace, that hath oped
On many kings and traitors; it may be
I shall not see these walls and gates again
That cast me out; but if alive or dead
I come back ever to require my part
And place among my fathers, on my tomb
Or on my throne shall there stand graved for aye
The living word of this day’s work and that
Which is to wreak me on it: and this town
Whence I go naked in mine enemies’ hands
Shall be the flame to light men’s eyes that read
What was endured and what revenged of me.
ACT V
The Queen
Time: From July 20, 1567, to May 16, 1568
Scene I. Holyrood
Morton and Maitland
MORTON.
I know not yet if we did well to lay
No public note of murder on the queen
In this our proclamation that sets forth
But the bare justice of our cause, and right
We had to move against her; while her act
Stands yet unproven and seen but by surmise,
Though all but they that will not seem to know
May know the form and very life of it,
She hath a sword against us and a stay
In the English hearts and envious hands that wait
To strike at us, and take her name to gild
And edge the weapon of their evil will
Who only are our enemies, and stand
Sole friends of hers on earth; for France, we see,
Will be no screen nor buckler for her, though
Fire were now lit to burn her body, or steel
Ground sharp to shear her neck: from Catherine’s mouth
Had Murray not assurance, and from him
Have we not word that France will stir no foot
To save or spill her blood? England alone
By her new-lighted envoy sends rebuke
Made soft and mixed with promise and with pledge
Of help and comfort to her against our part
Who by this messenger imperiously
Are taxed and threatened as her traitors; this
Must we now answer with a brow as free
And tongue as keen, seeing how his queen in him
Desires the charge and wardship of our prince
Which we must nowise grant.
MAITLAND.
For fear’s sake, no,
Nor for her threats, which rather may pluck on
More present peril, of more fiery foot,
To the queen’s life; yet surer might we stand
Having the crown’s heir safe and girt about
With foreign guard in a strange land, than here
Rocked in the roar of factions, his frail head
Pillowed on death and danger; which once crushed,
And that thin life cut off, what hand puts forth
To take the crown up by successive right
But theirs that would even now dip violent hand
In the dear heart’s blood of their kinswoman,
That it might take this kingdom by the throat
When she were slain? and rather by our mean
Would they procure her slaying than by their own
Make swift the death which they desire for her,
And from our hands with craft would draw it down
By show of friendship to her and threat of arms
That menace us with mockery and false fear
Of her deliverance by their swords, whose light
Being drawn and shining in our eyes should scare
Our hearts with doubt of what might fall if she
Stood by their help rekingdomed, and impel
Even in that fear our hands to spill her blood
That lag too long behind their wish, who wait
Till seeing her slain of us they may rise up
Heirs of her cause and lineage, and reclaim
By right of blood and justice and revenge
The crown that drops from Stuart to Hamilton
With no more let or thwart than a child’s life
Whose length should be their pleasure’s: and with these
Against our cause will England league herself
If yet the queen live prisoner of our hands
And these her kin draw swords for her; but they,
Though England know not of it, nor have eye
To find their drift, would mix their cause with ours,
If from the queen’s head living we should pluck
The royal office, and as next in blood
Instate them regents; who would reign indeed
Rather by death’s help if they might, and build
On her child’s grave and hers their regency,
Than rule by deputation; yet at need
Will be content by choice or leave of us
To take the delegated kingdom up
And lack but name of king: which being installed
I doubt they think not long to lack, or live
Its patient proxies ever. So the land,
Shaken and sundered, looks from us to these,
From these again to usward, and hears blown
Upon the light breath of the doubtful hour
Rumours of fear which swell men’s hearts with wrath
To hear of southern wars and counsels hatched
That think with fright to shrink them up, and bind
Their blood’s course fast with threats. Let England know,
Her menace that makes cold no vein of ours
May heat instead the centre and the core
Of this land’s pulse with fire, and in that flame
The life we seek not and the crown it wears
Consume together. France will rest our friend
Whether the queen find grace to live in bonds
Or bleed beneath our judgment; he that comes
On errand thence to reconcile with us
Her kin that stand yet on the adverse part
Hath but in charge to do her so much good
As with our leave he may, and break no bond
That holds us firm in friendship; if we will,
She may be held in ward of France, and live
Within the bound there of a convent wall
Till death redeem her; but howe’er he speed
Who hath commission with what power he may
To make of our twain factions one such league
As may stand fast and perfect friend with France,
And in what wise by grace of us he may
To do our prisoner service and entreat
That grace to drop upon her, this main charge
He needs must keep, to hold allied in one
Scotland and France, and let our hand not plight
Fresh faith instead with England; so for us
From France looks forth no danger though she die,
For her no help; and these void English threats,
That bring no force to back them but their own
And find not us unfriended, do but blow
The embers that her life still treads upon
Which being enkindled shall devour it.
MORTON.
Ay,
And each day leaves them redder from the breath
That through the land flies clamorous for her blood
From lips which boast to bear upon them laid
The live coal burning of the word that God
Gives them to speak against her; the south towns
Are full of tongues that cry on our delay
To purge the land plague-stricken with her life;
He first who never feared the face of man,
John Knox, and Craig his second, fill men’s ears
With words as arrows edged and winged to slay;
And all the wide-mouthed commons, and more loud
The women than their men, stretch their shrill throats
With cries for judgment on her: and herself,
As parcel of the faction for her death,
Takes part with them against her friends, and swears
To the English envoy who was charged by stealth
To plead with her for mercy on her life
And privily persuade her, as we find,
To cast out Bothwell from her secret thought,
She would die first ere so divorce her soul
From faith and hope that hangs on him and feeds
Her constant spirit with comfort which sustains
His child alive within her; for she thinks
Haply to move men’s hearts even by the plea
That hardens them against her, being believed,
For the false fruit’s sake of her fatal womb,
The seed of Bothwell, that with her should burn
Rather than bring forth shame, and in this land
Become a root of wars unborn and fire
Kindled among our children.
MAITLAND.
Nay, this plea
Can be but somewhile to defend her life
And put back judgment; never could she think,
Though love made witless whom the world found wise,
His seed might reign in Scotland.
MORTON.
We are not
So barren of our natural brood of kings
As to be grafted from so vile a stock
Though he were now cut off who grows yet green
Upon the stem so shaken and pierced through
With cankers now that gnaw the grain away;
Nor if the child whom whatsoe’er he be
We for the kingdom’s comfort needs must seem
To take for true-begotten, and receive
/> As issued of her husband’s kingly blood,
Should live not to take up with timely hand
The inheritance whereto we hold him born,
Should the crown therefore by his death derive
To the queen’s kin, or hand of Hamilton
Assume the state and sway that slides from his:
His father hath a brother left alive,
The younger son of Lennox, who might put
More hopefully his nephew’s title on
Than leave it for the spoil of hungry hands
That would make war upon our present state,
Unseat the rule of stablished things, unmake
The counsel and the creed whereby we stand,
And Scotland with us, firm of foot and free
Against the whole face of the weaponed world:
But this boy’s crown shall be a golden ring
To hoop and hold our state and strength in one
And with the seemly name of king make sure
The rent bulk of our labouring commonwealth
And solder its flawed sides; his right of reign
Is half our gift who reign in him, and half
His heritage of blood, whose lineal name
Shall not by note of usurpation strike
With strangeness or offence the world’s wide ear
That hears a Stuart our prince’s uncle crowned
In the dead child’s succession, and this state
Made safe in him and stable to sustain
What chance abroad may range or breed at home
Of force to shake it.
MAITLAND.
While the child lives yet,
A nearer hope than of his father’s kin
Looks fairer on us; yet in that life’s wreck
This rope might hold at need.
MORTON.
Ay, or we fall,
Who stand against the house of Hamilton
In this man’s name; his kinsman Ruthven, Mar,
Myself and Athol, who sustain his cause
Against their part alone.
MAITLAND.
So do you well;
Yet had I rather on the queen’s appeal,
In her dead father’s and her young child’s name
Pleading for life, with proffer to resign
Her kingdom to the council’s hands or his
Whom it may mark for regent, she might live
Even yet our titular queen, and in her name
The council govern of our trustiest heads,
While in safe ward of England or of France
Far from his kindred might her son grow safe,
And under strange and kindlier suns his strength
Wax ripe to bear a kingdom; to this end
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 235