Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 255
BELLIÈVRE.
Madam, there stand against the queen of Scots
Already here in England on this charge
So many and they so dangerous witnesses
No need can be to bring one over more:
Nor can the king show such unnatural heart
As to send hither a knife for enemies’ hands
To cut his sister’s throat. Most earnestly
My lord expects your resolution; which
If we receive as given against his plea,
I must crave leave to part for Paris hence.
Yet give me pardon first if yet once more
I pray your highness be assured, and so
Take heed in season, you shall find this queen
More dangerous dead than living. Spare her life,
And not my lord alone but all that reign
Shall be your sureties in all Christian lands
Against all scathe of all conspiracies
Made on her party: while such remedies’ ends
As physic states with bloodshedding, to cure
Danger by death, bring fresh calamities
Far oftener forth than the old are healed of them
Which so men thought to medicine. To refrain
From that red-handed way of rule, and set
Justice no higher than mercy sits beside,
Is the first mean of kings’ prosperity
That would reign long: nor will my lord believe
Your highness could put off yourself so much
As to reverse and tread upon the law
That you thus long have kept and honourably:
But should this perilous purpose hold right on,
I am bounden by my charge to say, the king
Will not regard as liable to your laws
A queen’s imperial person, nor will hold
Her death as but the general wrong of kings
And no more his than as his brethren’s all,
But as his own and special injury done,
More than to these injurious.
ELIZABETH.
Doth your lord
Bid you speak thus?
BELLIÈVRE.
Ay, madam: from his mouth
Had I command what speech to use.
ELIZABETH.
You have done
Better to speak than he to send it. Sir,
You shall not presently depart this land
As one denied of mere discourtesy.
I will return an envoy of mine own
To speak for me at Paris with the king.
You shall bear back a letter from my hand,
And give your lord assurance, having seen,
I cannot be so frighted with men’s threats
That they shall not much rather move my mind
To quicken than to slack the righteous doom
Which none must think by menace to put back,
Or daunt it with defiance. Sirs, good day.
Exeunt Ambassadors.
I were as one belated with false lights
If I should think to steer my darkling way
By twilight furtherance of their wiles and words.
Think you, my lords, France yet would have her live?
BURGHLEY.
If there be other than the apparent end
Hid in this mission to your majesty,
Mine envoys can by no means fathom it,
Who deal for me at Paris: fear of Spain
Lays double hand as ‘twere upon the king,
Lest by removal of the queen of Scots
A way be made for peril in the claim
More potent then of Philip; and if there come
From his Farnese note of enterprise
Or danger this way tending, France will yet
Cleave to your friendship though his sister die.
ELIZABETH.
So, in your mind, this half-souled brother would
Steer any way that might keep safe his sail
Against a southern wind, which here, he thinks,
Her death might strengthen from the north again
To blow against him off our subject straits,
Made servile then and Spanish? Yet perchance
There swells behind our seas a heart too high
To bow more easily down, and bring this land
More humbly to such handling, than their waves
Bow down to ships of strangers, or their storms
To breath of any lord on earth but God.
What thinks our cousin?
HUNSDON.
That if Spain or France
Or both be stronger than the heart in us
Which beats to battle ere they menace, why,
In God’s name, let them rise and make their prey
Of what was England: but if neither be,
The smooth-cheeked French man-harlot, nor that hand
Which holp to light Rome’s fires with English limbs,
Let us not keep to make their weakness strong
A pestilence here alive in England, which
Gives force to their faint enmities, and burns
Half the heart out of loyal trust and hope
With heat that kindles treason.
ELIZABETH.
By this light,
I have heard worse counsel from a wise man’s tongue
Than this clear note of forthright soldiership.
How say you, Dudley, to it?
LEICESTER.
Madam, ere this
You have had my mind upon the matter, writ
But late from Holland, that no public stroke
Should fall upon this princess, who may be
By privy death more happily removed
Without impeach of majesty, nor leave
A sign against your judgment, to call down
Blame of strange kings for wrong to kinship wrought
Though right were done to justice.
ELIZABETH.
Of your love
We know it is that comes this counsel; nor,
Had we such friends of all our servants, need
Our mind be now distraught with dangerous doubts
That find no screen from dangers. Yet meseems
One doubt stands now removed, if doubt there were
Of aught from Scotland ever: Walsingham,
You should have there intelligence whereof
To make these lords with us partakers.
WALSINGHAM.
Nay,
Madam, no more than from a trustless hand
Protest and promise: of those twain that come
Hot on these Frenchmen’s heels in embassy,
He that in counsel on this cause was late
One with my lord of Leicester now, to rid
By draught of secret death this queen away,
Bears charge to say as these gone hence have said
In open audience, but by personal note
Hath given me this to know, that howsoe’er
His king indeed desire her life be spared
Much may be wrought upon him, would your grace
More richly line his ragged wants with gold
And by full utterance of your parliament
Approve him heir in England.
ELIZABETH.
Ay! no more?
God’s blood! what grace is proffered us at need,
And on what mild conditions! Say I will not
Redeem such perils at so dear a price,
Shall not our pensioner too join hands with France
And pay my gold with iron barter back
At edge of sword he dares not look upon,
They tell us, for the scathe and scare he took
Even in this woman’s womb when shot and steel
Undid the manhood in his veins unborn
And left his tongue’s threats handless?
WALSINGHAM.
Men there be,
Your majesty must think, who bear but
ill,
For pride of country and high-heartedness,
To see the king they serve your servant so
That not his mother’s life and once their queen’s
Being at such point of peril can enforce
One warlike word of his for chance of war
Conditional against you. Word came late
From Edinburgh that there the citizens
With hoot and hiss had bayed him through the streets
As he went heartless by; of whom they had heard
This published saying, that in his personal mind
The blood of kindred or affinity
So much not binds us as the friendship pledged
To them that are not of our blood: and this
Stands clear for certain, that no breath of war
Shall breathe from him against us though she die,
Except his titular claim be reft from him
On our succession: and that all his mind
Is but to reign unpartnered with a power
Which should weigh down that half his kingdom’s weight
Left to his hand’s share nominally in hold:
And for his mother, this would he desire,
That she were kept from this day to her death
Close prisoner in one chamber, never more
To speak with man or woman: and hereon
That proclamation should be made of her
As of one subject formally declared
To the English law whereby, if she offend
Again with iterance of conspiracy,
She shall not as a queen again be tried,
But as your vassal and a private head
Live liable to the doom and stroke of death.
ELIZABETH.
She is bounden to him as he long since to her,
Who would have given his kingdom up at least
To his dead father’s slayer, in whose red hand
How safe had lain his life too doubt may guess,
Which yet kept dark her purpose then on him,
Dark now no more to usward. Think you then
That they belie him, whose suspicion saith
His ear and heart are yet inclined to Spain,
If from that brother-in-law that was of yours
And would have been our bridegroom he may win
Help of strange gold and foreign soldiership,
With Scottish furtherance of those Catholic lords
Who are stronger-spirited in their faith than ours,
Being harried more of heretics, as they say,
Than these within our borders, to root out
The creed there stablished now, and do to death
Its ministers, with all the lords their friends,
Lay hands on all strong places there, and rule
As prince upon their party? since he fain
From ours would be divided, and cast in
His lot with Rome against us too, from these
Might he but earn assurance of their faith,
Revolting from his own. May these things be
More than mere muttering breath of trustless lies,
And half his heart yet hover toward our side
For all such hope or purpose?
WALSINGHAM.
Of his heart
We know not, madam, surely; nor doth he
Who follows fast on their first envoy sent,
And writes to excuse him of his message here
On her behalf apparent, but in sooth
Aimed otherwise; the Master I mean of Gray,
Who swears me here by letter, if he be not
True to the queen of England, he is content
To have his head fall on a scaffold: saying,
To put from him this charge of embassy
Had been his ruin, but the meaning of it
Is modest and not menacing: whereto
If you will yield not yet to spare the life
So near its forfeit now, he thinks it well
You should be pleased by some commission given
To stay by the way his comrade and himself,
Or bid them back.
ELIZABETH.
What man is this then, sent
With such a knave to fellow?
WALSINGHAM.
No such knave,
But still your prisoner’s friend of old time found:
Sir Robert Melville.
ELIZABETH.
And an honest man
As faith might wish her servants: but what pledge
Will these produce me for security
That I may spare this dangerous life and live
Unscathed of after practice?
WALSINGHAM.
As I think,
The king’s self and his whole nobility
Will be her personal pledges; and her son,
If England yield her to his hand in charge,
On no less strait a bond will undertake
For her safe keeping.
ELIZABETH.
That were even to arm
With double power mine adversary, and make him
The stronger by my hand to do me hurt –
Were he mine adversary indeed: which yet
I will not hold him. Let them find a mean
For me to live unhurt and save her life,
It shall well please me. Say this king of Scots
Himself would give his own inheritance up
Pretended in succession, if but once
Her hand were found or any friend’s of hers
Again put forth upon me for her sake,
Why, haply so might hearts be satisfied
Of lords and commons then to let her live.
But this I doubt he had rather take her life
Himself than yield up to us for pledge: and less,
These men shall know of me, I will not take
In price of her redemption: which were else,
And haply may in no wise not be held,
To this my loyal land and mine own trust
A deadlier stroke and blast of sound more dire
Than noise of fleets invasive.
WALSINGHAM.
Surely so
Would all hearts hold it, madam, in that land
That are not enemies of the land and yours;
For ere the doom had been proclaimed an hour
Which gave to death your main foe’s head and theirs
Yourself have heard what fire of joy brake forth
From all your people: how their church-towers all
Rang in with jubilant acclaim of bells
The day that bore such tidings, and the night
That laughed aloud with lightning of their joy
And thundered round its triumph: twice twelve hours
This tempest of thanksgiving roared and shone
Sheer from the Solway’s to the Channel’s foam
With light as from one festal-flaming hearth
And sound as of one trumpet: not a tongue
But praised God for it, or heart that leapt not up,
Save of your traitors and their country’s: these
Withered at heart and shrank their heads in close,
As though the bright sun’s were a basilisk’s eye,
And light, that gave all others comfort, flame
And smoke to theirs of hell’s own darkness, whence
Such eyes were blinded or put out with fire.
ELIZABETH.
Yea, I myself, I mind me, might not sleep
Those twice twelve hours thou speak’st of. By God’s light,
Be it most in love of me or fear of her
I know not, but my people seems in sooth
Hot and anhungered on this trail of hers:
Nor is it a people bloody-minded, used
To lap the life up of an enemy’s vein
Who bleeds to death unweaponed: our good hounds
Will course a quarry soldierlike in war,
B
ut rage not hangmanlike upon the prey,
To flesh their fangs on limbs that strive not: yet
Their hearts are hotter on this course than mine,
Which most was deadliest aimed at.
WALSINGHAM.
Even for that
How should not theirs be hot as fire from hell
To burn your danger up and slay that soul
Alive that seeks it? Thinks your majesty
There beats a heart where treason hath not turned
All English blood to poison, which would feel
No deadlier pang of dread more deathful to it
To hear of yours endangered than to feel
A sword against its own life bent, or know
Death imminent as darkness overhead
That takes the noon from one man’s darkening eye
As must your death from all this people’s? You
Are very England: in your light of life
This living land of yours walks only safe,
And all this breathing people with your breath
Breathes unenslaved, and draws at each pulse in
Freedom: your eye is light of theirs, your word
As God’s to comfort England, whose whole soul
Is made with yours one, and her witness you
That Rome or hell shall take not hold on her
Again till God be wroth with us so much
As to reclaim for heaven the star that yet
Lights all your land that looks on it, and gives
Assurance higher than danger dares assail
Save in this lady’s name and service, who
Must now from you take judgment.
ELIZABETH.
Must! by God,
I know not must but as a word of mine,
My tongue’s and not mine ear’s familiar. Sirs,
Content yourselves to know this much of us,
Or having known remember, that we sent
The Lord of Buckhurst and our servant Beale
To acquaint this queen our prisoner with the doom
Confirmed on second trial against her, saying
Her word can weigh not down the weightier guilt
Approved upon her, and by parliament
Since fortified with sentence. Yea, my lords,
Ye should forget not how by message then
I bade her know of me with what strong force
Of strenuous and invincible argument
I am urged to hold no more in such delay
The process of her execution, being
The seed-plot of these late conspiracies,
Their author and chief motive: and am told
That if I yield not mine the guilt must be