Of honour and yourself, to charge these lords
With two so foul and horrible faults, as first
To take your life by partial doom from you,
And then bestow the kingdom where they liked.
MARY STUART.
Well, all is one to me: and for my part
I thank God I shall die without regret
Of anything that I have done alive.
PAULET.
I would entreat you yet be sorry at least
For the great wrong, and well deserving grief,
You have done the queen my mistress.
MARY STUART.
Nay, thereon
Let others answer for themselves: I have
Nothing to do with it. Have you borne in mind
Those matters of my monies that we last
Conferred upon together?
PAULET.
Madam, these
Are not forgotten.
MARY STUART.
Well it is if aught
Be yet at all remembered for my good.
Have here my letter sealed and superscribed,
And so farewell – or even as here men may.
Exeunt Paulet and Drury.
Had I that old strength in my weary limbs
That in my heart yet fails not, fain would I
Fare forth if not fare better. Tired I am,
But not so lame in spirit I might not take
Some comfort of the winter-wasted sun
This bitter Christmas to me, though my feet
Were now no firmer nor more helpful found
Than when I went but in my chair abroad
Last weary June at Chartley. I can stand
And go now without help of either side,
And bend my hand again, thou seest, to write:
I did not well perchance in sight of these
To have made so much of this lame hand, which yet
God knows was grievous to me, and to-day
To make my letter up and superscribe
And seal it with no outward show of pain
Before their face and inquisition; yet
I care not much in player’s wise piteously
To blind such eyes with feigning: though this Drew
Be gentler and more gracious than his mate
And liker to be wrought on; but at last
What need have I of men?
MARY BEATON.
What then you may
I know not, seeing for all that was and is
We are yet not at the last; but when you had,
You have hardly failed to find more help of them
And heartier service than more prosperous queens
Exact of expectation: when your need
Was greater than your name or natural state,
And wage was none to look for but of death,
As though the expectancy thereof and hope
Were more than man’s prosperities, men have given
Heart’s thanks to have this gift of God and you
For dear life’s guerdon, even the trust assured
To drink for you the bitterness of death.
MARY STUART.
Ay, one said once it must be – some one said
I must be perilous ever, and my love
More deadly than my will was evil or good
Toward any of all these that through me should die –
I know not who, nor when one said it: but
I know too sure he lied not.
MARY BEATON.
No; I think
This was a seer indeed. I have heard of men
That under imminence of death grew strong
With mortal foresight, yet in life-days past
Could see no foot before them, nor provide
For their own fate or fortune anything
Against one angry chance of accident
Or passionate fault of their own loves or hates
That might to death betray them: such an one
Thus haply might have prophesied, and had
No strength to save himself.
MARY STUART.
I know not: yet
Time was when I remembered.
MARY BEATON.
It should be
No enemy’s saying whom you remember not;
You are wont not to forget your enemies; yet
The word rang sadder than a friend’s should fall
Save in some strange pass of the spirit or flesh
For love’s sake haply hurt to death.
MARY STUART.
It seems
Thy mind is bent to know the name of me
That of myself I know not.
MARY BEATON.
Nay, my mind
Has other thoughts to beat upon: for me
It may suffice to know the saying for true
And never care who said it.
MARY STUART.
True? too sure,
God to mine heart’s grief hath approved it. See,
Nor Scot nor Englishman that takes on him
The service of my sorrow but partakes
The sorrow of my service: man by man,
As that one said, they perish of me: yea,
Were I a sword sent upon earth, or plague
Bred of aerial poison, I could be
No deadlier where unwillingly I strike,
Who where I would can hurt not: Percy died
By his own hand in prison, Howard by law,
These young men with strange torments done to death,
Who should have rid me and the world of her
That is our scourge, and to the church of God
A pestilence that wastes it: all the north
Wears yet the scars engraven of civil steel
Since its last rising: nay, she saith but right,
Mine enemy, saying by these her servile tongues
I have brought upon her land mine own land’s curse,
And a sword follows at my heel, and fire
Is kindled of mine eyeshot: and before,
Whom did I love that died not of it? whom
That I would save might I deliver, when
I had once but looked on him with love, or pledged
Friendship? I should have died I think long since,
That many might have died not, and this word
Had not been written of me nor fulfilled,
But perished in the saying, a prophecy
That took the prophet by the throat and slew –
As sure I think it slew him. Such a song
Might my poor servant slain before my face
Have sung before the stroke of violent death
Had fallen upon him there for my sake.
MARY BEATON.
Ah!
You think so? this remembrance was it not
That hung and hovered in your mind but now,
Moved your heart backward all unwittingly
To some blind memory of the man long dead?
MARY STUART.
In sooth, I think my prophet should have been
David.
MARY BEATON.
You thought of him?
MARY STUART.
An old sad thought:
The moan of it was made long since, and he
Not unremembered.
MARY BEATON.
Nay, of him indeed
Record was made – a royal record: whence
No marvel is it that you forgot not him.
MARY STUART.
I would forget no friends nor enemies: these
More needs me now remember. Think’st thou not
This woman hates me deadlier – or this queen
That is not woman – than myself could hate
Except I were as she in all things? then
I should love no such woman as am I
Much more than she may love me: yet I am sure,
Or so near surety as all belief may be,
She da
re not slay me for her soul’s sake: nay,
Though that were made as light of as a leaf
Storm-shaken, in such stormy winds of state
As blow between us like a blast of death,
For her throne’s sake she durst not, which must be
Broken to build my scaffold. Yet, God wot,
Perchance a straw’s weight now cast in by chance
Might weigh my life down in the scale her hand
Holds hardly straight for trembling: if she be
Woman at all, so tempered naturally
And with such spirit and sense as thou and I,
Should I for wrath so far forget myself
As these men sometime charge me that I do,
My tongue might strike my head off. By this head
That yet I wear to swear by, if life be
Thankworthy, God might well be thanked for this
Of me or whoso loves me in the world,
That I spake never half my heart out yet,
For any sore temptation of them all,
To her or hers; nor ever put but once
My heart upon my paper, writing plain
The things I thought, heard, knew for truth of her,
Believed or feigned – nay, feigned not to believe
Of her fierce follies fed with wry-mouthed praise,
And that vain ravin of her sexless lust
Which could not feed nor hide its hunger, curb
With patience nor allay with love the thirst
That mocked itself as all mouths mocked it. Ha,
What might the reading of these truths have wrought
Within her maiden mind, what seed have sown,
Trow’st thou, in her sweet spirit, of revenge
Toward me that showed her queenship in the glass
A subject’s hand of hers had put in mine
The likeness of it loathed and laughable
As they that worshipped it with words and signs
Beheld her and bemocked her?
MARY BEATON.
Certainly,
I think that soul drew never breath alive
To whom this letter might seem pardonable
Which timely you forbore to send her.
MARY STUART.
Nay,
I doubt not I did well to keep it back –
And did not ill to write it: for God knows
It was no small ease to my heart.
MARY BEATON.
But say
I had not burnt it as you bade me burn,
But kept it privily safe against a need
That I might haply sometime have of it?
MARY STUART.
What, to destroy me?
MARY BEATON.
Hardly, sure, to save.
MARY STUART.
Why shouldst thou think to bring me to my death?
MARY BEATON.
Indeed, no man am I that love you; nor
Need I go therefore in such fear of you
As of my mortal danger.
MARY STUART.
On my life,
(Long life or short, with gentle or violent end,
I know not, and would choose not, though I might
So take God’s office on me) one that heard
Would swear thy speech had in it, and subtly mixed,
A savour as of menace, or a sound
As of an imminent ill or perilous sense
Which was not in thy meaning.
MARY BEATON.
No: in mine
There lurked no treason ever; nor have you
Cause to think worse of me than loyally,
If proof may be believed on witness.
MARY STUART.
Sure,
I think I have not nor I should not have:
Thy life has been the shadow cast of mine,
A present faith to serve my present need,
A foot behind my footsteps; as long since
In those French dances that we trod, and laughed
The blithe way through together. Thou couldst sing
Then, and a great while gone it is by this
Since I heard song or music: I could now
Find in my heart to bid thee, as the Jews
Were once bid sing in their captivity
One of their songs of Sion, sing me now,
If one thou knowest, for love of that far time,
One of our songs of Paris.
MARY BEATON.
Give me leave
A little to cast up some wandering words
And gather back such memories as may beat
About my mind of such a song, and yet
I think I might renew some note long dumb
That once your ear allowed of. – I did pray,
Aside.
Tempt me not, God: and by her mouth again
He tempts me – nay, but prompts me, being most just,
To know by trial if all remembrance be
Dead as remorse or pity that in birth
Died, and were childless in her: if she quite
Forget that very swan-song of thy love,
My love that wast, my love that wouldst not be,
Let God forget her now at last as I
Remember: if she think but one soft thought,
Cast one poor word upon thee, God thereby
Shall surely bid me let her live: if none,
I shoot that letter home and sting her dead.
God strengthen me to sing but these words through
Though I fall dumb at end for ever. Now –
She sings.
Après tant de jours, après tant de pleurs,
Soyez secourable à mon âme en peine.
Voyez comme Avril fait l’amour aux fleurs;
Dame d’amour, dame aux belles couleurs,
Dieu vous a fait belle, Amour vous fait reine.
Rions, je t’en prie; aimons, je le veux.
Le temps fuit et rit et ne revient guère
Pour baiser le bout de tes blonds cheveux,
Pour baiser tes cils, ta bouche et tes yeux;
L’amour n’a qu’un jour auprès de sa mère.
MARY STUART.
Nay, I should once have known that song, thou say’st,
And him that sang it and should now be dead:
Was it – but his rang sweeter – was it not
Remy Belleau?
MARY BEATON.
(My letter – here at heart!)
Aside.
I think it might be – were it better writ
And courtlier phrased, with Latin spice cast in,
And a more tunable descant.
MARY STUART.
Ay; how sweet
Sang all the world about those stars that sang
With Ronsard for the strong mid star of all,
His bay-bound head all glorious with grey hairs,
Who sang my birth and bridal! When I think
Of those French years, I only seem to see
A light of swords and singing, only hear
Laughter of love and lovely stress of lutes,
And in between the passion of them borne
Sounds of swords crossing ever, as of feet
Dancing, and life and death still equally
Blithe and bright-eyed from battle. Haply now
My sometime sister, mad Queen Madge, is grown
As grave as I should be, and wears at waist
No hearts of last year’s lovers any more
Enchased for jewels round her girdlestead,
But rather beads for penitence; yet I doubt
Time should not more abash her heart than mine,
Who live not heartless yet. These days like those
Have power but for a season given to do
No more upon our spirits than they may,
And what they may we know not till it be
Done, and we need no more take thought of it,
As I no more of death or life to-day
.
MARY BEATON.
That shall you surely need not.
MARY STUART.
So I think,
Our keepers being departed: and by these,
Even by the uncourtlier as the gentler man,
I read as in a glass their queen’s plain heart,
And that by her at last I shall not die.
Scene III. Greenwich Palace
Queen Elizabeth and Davison.
ELIZABETH.
Thou hast seen Lord Howard? I bade him send thee.
DAVISON.
Madam,
But now he came upon me hard at hand
And by your gracious message bade me in.
ELIZABETH.
The day is fair as April: hast thou been
Abroad this morning? ’Tis no winter’s sun
That makes these trees forget their nakedness
And all the glittering ground, as ‘twere in hope,
Breathe laughingly.
DAVISON.
Indeed, the gracious air
Had drawn me forth into the park, and thence
Comes my best speed to attend upon your grace.
ELIZABETH.
My grace is not so gracious as the sun
That graces thus the late distempered air:
And you should oftener use to walk abroad,
Sir, than your custom is: I would not have
Good servants heedless of their natural health
To do me sickly service. It were strange
That one twice bound as woman and as queen
To care for good men’s lives and loyalties
Should prove herself toward either dangerous.
DAVISON.
That
Can be no part of any servant’s fear
Who lives for service of your majesty.
ELIZABETH.
I would not have it be – God else forbid –
Who have so loyal servants as I hold
All now that bide about me: for I will not
Think, though such villainy once were in men’s minds,
That twice among mine English gentlemen
Shall hearts be found so foul as theirs who thought,
When I was horsed for hunting, to waylay
And shoot me through the back at unawares
With poisoned bullets: nor, thou knowest, would I,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 258