I bade them tell you I was sick; the sun
Pains me. Sit here.
K. Hen.
There’s no sick show in you.
Sing still, and I will sit against your feet
And see the singing measure in your throat
Moved evenly; the headband leaves your hair
Space to lie soft outside.
Ros.
Stoop then and touch
That I may bind it on your hands; I would
Fain have such hands to use so royally.
As you are king, sir, tell me without shame
Doth not your queen share praise with you, show best
In all crowned ways even as you do? I have heard
Men praise the state in her and the great shape;
Yet pray you, though you find her sweet enow,
Praise her not over-measure; yet speak truth;
But so I would not have you make her praise
The proper pleasure of your lips, the speech
Found best in them; yet do not scant her so
That I may see you tender of my pain,
Sparing to gall my wits with laud of her.
K. Hen.
O sweet, what sting is this she makes in you?
A Frenchwoman, black-haired and with grey lips
And fingers like a hawk’s cut claw that nips
One’s wrist to carry — is this so great a thing
As should wring wet out of your lids?
Ros.
I know
That for my sake you pinch her praises in,
Starve her of right; do not so fearfully;
I shall best love you if you praise her, seeing
I would not have you marry a worse face,
Say, than mine even; therefore be liberal,
Praise her to the full, till you shall see that I
Fall sick upon your words, bid them be pitiful
And bruise not me.
K. Hen.
I will not praise her to you.
Show me a little golden good of yours,
But some soft piece of gracious habit grown
Common with you, quite new with me and sweet.
It is the smell of roses where you come
That makes my sense faint now; you taste of it,
Walk with it always.
Ros.
Hark, the rain begins,
Slips like a bird that feels among shut leaves;
One — two; it catches in the rose-branches
Like a word caught. Now, as I shut your eyes,
Show me what sight gets first between the lids,
So covered in to make false witness true.
Speak, and speak faith.
K. Hen.
I think this first; here once
The hard noon being too strong a weight for us,
We lay against the edges of slant leaves
Facing the grass, our bodies touching them,
Cooled from the sun, and drank cold wine; you had
A straight gown flaked with gold i’the undersleeves;
And in your throat I caught the quick faint red
Drunk down, that ran and stained it out of white,
A long warm thread not coloured like a vein
But wine-coloured; this was a joy to see.
O little throat so tender to show red,
Would you not wear my lips as well, be kissed
To a soft mark if one but touched you so?
I will not touch; only to feel you fast,
Lie down and take your feet inside both hands,
Untie your hair to blind both eyes across —
Yea, there sweet, kiss me now.
Ros.
Do but stoop yet
And I will put my fingers where the hair
Is mixed upon the great crown’s wearing-place;
Sir, do you think I must fall old indeed
First of us two? look how between my wrists
Even about the purplest beat of them
This lean scant flesh goes in. I am grown past love;
The breath aches each way in my sobbing sides
When I would sing, and tears climb up my throat
In bitter breaks like swellings of round fruit
From the rind inwards, and my pulses go
Like fits of singing when the head gives way
And leaves pure nought to stammer in spoilt lips,
Even for this and my sad patience here
Built up and blinded in with growing green,
Use me not with your eyes untenderly,
But though I tire you, make you sigh at me,
Say no blame overloud; I have flowers only
And foolish ways to get me through the day,
And songs of yours to piece with weeping words
And famish and forget. Pray you go now,
I am the abuse of your compassion.
K. Hen.
I am gone presently; but for this space
Give me poor leave to love you with mine eyes
And feasted expectation of shut lips.
God help! your hair burns me to see like gold
Burnt to pure heat; your colour seen turns in me
To pain and plague upon the temple-vein
That aches as if the sun’s heat snapt the blood
In hot mid measure; I could cry on you
Like a maid weeping-wise, you are so fair
It hurts me in the head, makes the life sick
Here in my hands, that one may see how beats
Feverous blue upon my finger-tips.
Touch me now gently; I am as he that saith
In the great song sick words and sorrowful
Of love’s hard sweet and hunger of harsh hours;
Your beauty makes me blind and hot, I am
Stabbed in the brows with it.
Ros.
Yea, God be good,
Am I fair yet? but say that I am fair,
Make me assured, praise me quite perfectly
Lest I doubt God may love me something less
And his hot fear so nip me in the cheek
That I burn through. Nay, but go hence; I would
Even lose the sweet I love, that I may lose
The fear of losing it.
K. Hen.
I am gone quickly.
You know my life is made a pain to me
With angry work, harsh hands upon my life
That finger in the torn sad sides of it
For the old thorn; touch but my face and feel
How all is thwarted with thick networking
Where your lips found it smooth, clung soft; there, now,
You take some bruise and gall of mine clear out
With a cool kissing mouth.
Ros.
I had a will
To make some chafing matter with your pride
And laugh at last; ay, also to be eased
Of some small wrath at your harsh tarriance;
But you put sadness softly in my lips
With your marred speech. Look, the rain slackens yet.
K. Hen.
I will go now that both our hearts are sweet
And lips most peaceable; so shall we sleep
Till the next honey please them, with a touch
Soft in our mouths; sing once and I am gone.
Ros.
I will sing something heavy in the word
That it may serve us; help me to such words.
The marigolds have put me in my song,
They shine yet redly where you made me it.
Hélas, madame, ayez de moi merci,
Qui porte en cœur triste fleur de souci;
N’est plus de rose, et plus ne vois ici
Que triste fleur.
M’est trop grand deuil, hélas, dans cette vie;
Car vieil espoir me lie et me délie,
Et triste fleur m’est force, ô belle amie,
Porter en cœur.
&nb
sp; See the rain! have you care to ride by this?
Yea, kiss me one strong kiss out of your heart,
Do not kiss more; I love you with my lips,
My eyes and heart, your love is in my blood,
I shall die merely if you hold to me.
IV. Ante-Chapel at Shene.
Choir-music from within. In the passage outside, Arthur, a boy of the choir, reading.
Enter Sir Robert de Bouchard.
Bouchard.
She spares me time to think of it; well, so
I pull this tumbled matter square with God,
What sting can men’s mouths hurt me with? What harm
Because the savour of undieted sense
Palates not me? the taste and smell of love
Sickens me, being so fed with its keen use
That delicate divisions of soft touch
Feel gross to me as dullest accident?
That way of will most men take pleasure in
It tires my feet to walk. Then for the harder game —
Joust where the steel swings, fight that clears up blood,
I want the relish too; being no such sinewed ape,
Blunder of brawn and jolted muscle-work,
As beats and bleeds about his iron years,
Anoints his hide with stupid lust and sleep,
Fattens to mould and dies; rubs sides with dust,
Ending his riddle. I have seen time enough,
Struck blows and tricked and paid and won and wrought,
I know not well why wrought. A monk, now — there’s right work;
Dull work or wise, body and head keep up;
I should have pulled in scapular and alb
To shut my head up and its work, who knows?
Arthur(outside).
They told me I should see the king come in;
I shall not get the words out clear enough, —
No time, I doubt. I wonder will he wear
Chain-mail or samite-work? I would take mail —
A man fares best in good close joints of mail.
Fautor
— I seem to catch it up their way;
This time I’ll come off clear yet. One rhyme sticks —
(He repeats.)
Fautor meus, magne Deus, quis adversùm tibi stabit?
Parùm ridet qui te videt; sponsam sponsus accusabit;
Sicut herbam qui superbam flatu gentem dissipabit,
Flectit cœlum quasi velum quo personam implicabit.
There, all straight out, clean forthright singing, this;
I’ll see the king in the face and speak out hard
That he shall hear me. Last time all fell wrong;
I had that song about the lily-plants
Growing up goodly in their green of time
With gold heads and gold sprinkles in the neck
And God among them, feeding like a lamb
That takes out sin; so I let slip his name —
Euh! I can touch the prints of the big switch;
One, six, twelve, — ah! the sharp small suckers stung
Like a whole hive loose, as Hugh’s arm swung out.
Good for this king that I shall see to have
Fine padded work and silk seats pillow-puft
Instead of wood to twist on painfully.
Bouch.
So comes mine answer in; I thank you, Lord;
I’ll none of this. Give men clean work and sleep,
And baby bodies this priest’s blessed way.
But, being so set between the time’s big jaws
To dodge and keep me from the shut o’the teeth,
Shuffle from lip to lip, a shell with priest
For kernel in the husk and rind of knight, —
No chink bit in me, but nigh swallowed whole —
Who says my trick that, played on either, makes
Music for me and sets my head on work,
Is devil’s lesson? Pity that lives by milk
Suckles not me; I see no reason set
To keep me from the general use of things
Which no more holds the great regard of man
Than children spoiling flies. Respect and habit
Find no such tongue against me; I but wear
The raiment of my proper purpose, not
The threadworn coat of use. Even who keeps on
Such garments for the reputation’s want,
Wears them unseamed inside. The boy there now —
Arth.
Yea, I loathe Hugh. Peter he beat, and me —
Me twice, because that day the queen came in
I twisted back my head to thrust well through
The carved work’s double lattice to get sight
Of a tall woman with gold clothes and hair
That shone beyond her clothes; so sharp he smote,
The grim beast Hugh with boarish teeth and hair
All his chin long and where no hair should be!
And Peter pinched and pushed all vespers through
To get my turn and see her. How she went
Holding her throat up, with her round neck out
Curdwhite, no clot in it not smooth to stroke —
All night I shook in sleep for that one thing,
Stirred with my feet and pulled about awry.
I think too she kept smiling with her mouth
(Her wonderful red quiet mouth) and prayed
All to herself. Now that men call a mouth —
And Hugh’s begrimed big lips you call the same
That make a thick smile up with all their fat
Never but when he gets one by the nape
To make him sprawl and weep. How all the hair
Drew the hard shining of the candle-fires
And shone back harder with a flare in it
Through all the plaits and bands. Then Hugh said— “Look,
You Arthur, that white woman with such eyes
Is worse in hell than any devil that seethes;
She keeps the colour of it in her hair
That shakes like flame so. Wait till I get in
And teach the beast’s will in your female flesh
With some red slits in it, to get out loose
In such dog’s ways.” But Hugh lied hard, I think;
For he said after in his damned side-room
What fierce account God made of such a name
And how the golden king that made God songs
Chid at their ways and called them this and that;
And he loved many queens with just such hair
And such good eyes, and had more scores of them
Than I have stripes since last red week on me.
So I can see Hugh lied. For no Jew’s wife
Looked ever so, or found such ways to hold
Her sweet straight body. — But my next — that’s hard.
(Reads.)
Bouch.
Yea, there the snake’s head blinks? yea, doth it there?
O this sweet thorn that worries the kind flesh!
Yea, but the devil’s seedling side-graft, Lord,
That pinches out the sap. — I’ll talk to him.
Enter from the Chapel
Queen Eleanor
.
Qu. El.
Ah, you here, Bouchard? is it well with you
When you hear music? I am hot i’the face;
Kiss me now, Robert, where the red begins,
And tell me, does no music hurt you? Ah —
Will no man stop them?
Bouch.
Speak me lower then;
No time to kiss bad words out on the mouth
As one treads flame out with the heel. Well were it,
That you should keep the purpose in your lips
From knowledge of your eyes; let none partake,
No inquisition of the air get out
One secret, or the imperious sun compel
One word of you. Wisdom doth sheath her hand
&n
bsp; To smite the fool behind.
Qu. El.
I pray you, sir,
Let be your sentence; O, I am sick to death,
Could lie down here and bruise my head with stone,
Cover up hands and feet and die at once.
Nathless I will not have her eyes and hair
Crown-circled, and her breasts embraced with gold,
When the grave catches me. It is mere time,
The mere sick fault of age I limp with; yea,
Time was I had put such fierce occasion on
Like a new scented glove; but now this thing
Tastes harsh as if I drank that blood indeed
Which I’ll not even have spilled in dust; it clings,
Under the lip, makes foul the sense — ha, there,
I knew that noise was close upon my head.
Arthur
(outside).
Matrem pater, fratrem frater, iste condemnabit eum;
Erit nemo quem postremo tu non incusabis reum;
Nihil tactum quod non fractum; fulgor ibit ante Deum;
Mea caro prodest rarò; non est laudi caput meum.
Qu. El.
Say now you love me, Robert; I fear God,
Fear is more bitter than a hurt worm’s tooth,
But if God lets one love me this side heaven
And puts his breath not out, then shall I laugh
I’the eyes of him for mere delight, pluck off
Fear that ties man to patience, white regret,
All mixture of diseasèd purpose, made
To cut the hand at wrist; remorse and doubt
Shall die of want in me.
Bouch.
Too much of this;
Get your eyes back. Think how some ten days gone
He drew loose hair into his either hand
And how the speech got room between their mouths
Only to breathe in and go out; at times,
How she said “Eleanor” to try the name,
Found not so sweet as Rosamond to say;
Perhaps too, “Love, the Frenchwoman gets thin,
Her mouth is something older than her hair;
Count by these petals, pluck them three and three,
What months it takes to rid the sun of her,
And make some grave-grass wealthier;” will you bear
This?
Qu. El.
Do men tie the sword this way, or that?
Were I a knight now I would gird it on
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 186
