Call once upon us; not this gift or this,
Or what best likes us or were gladliest given
Or might most honourably be parted with
For our more credit on her best behalf,
Doth she we serve, this land that made us men,
Require of all her children; but demands
Of our great duty toward her full deserts
Even all we have of honour or of life,
Of breath or fame to give her. What were I
Or what were you, being mean or nobly born,
Yet moulded both of one land’s natural womb
And fashioned out of England, to deny
What gift she crave soever, choose and grudge
What grace we list to give or what withhold,
Refuse and reckon with her when she bids
Yield up forsooth not life but fame to come,
A good man’s praise or gentleman’s repute,
Or lineal pride of children, and the light
Of loyalty remembered? which of these
Were worth our mother’s death, or shame that might
Fall for one hour on England? She must live
And keep in all men’s sight her honour fast
Though all we die dishonoured; and myself
Know not nor seek of men’s report to know
If what I do to serve her till I die
Be honourable or shameful, and its end
Good in men’s eyes or evil; but for God,
I find not why the name or fear of him
Herein should make me swerve or start aside
Through faint heart’s falsehood as a broken bow
Snapped in his hand that bent it, ere the shaft
Find out his enemies’ heart, and I that end
Whereto I am sped for service even of him
Who put this office on us.
PAULET.
Truly, sir,
I lack the wordy wit to match with yours,
Who speak no more than soldier; this I know,
I am sick in spirit and heart to have in hand
Such work or such device of yours as yet
For fear and conscience of what worst may come
I dare not well bear through.
PHILLIPPS.
Why, so last month
You writ my master word and me to boot
I had set you down a course for many things
You durst not put in execution, nor
Consign the packet to this lady’s hand
That was returned from mine, seeing all was well,
And you should hold yourself most wretched man
If by your mean or order there should spring
Suspicion ‘twixt the several messengers
Whose hands unwitting each of other ply
The same close trade for the same golden end,
While either holds his mate a faithful fool
And all their souls, baseborn or gently bred,
Are coined and stamped and minted for our use
And current in our service; I thereon
To assuage your doubt and fortify your fear
Was posted hither, where by craft and pains
The web is wound up of our enterprise
And in our hands we hold her very heart
As fast as all this while we held impawned
The faith of Barnes that stood for Gifford here
To take what letters for his mistress came
From southward through the ambassador of France
And bear them to the brewer, your honest man,
Who wist no further of his fellowship
Than he of Gifford’s, being as simple knaves
As knavish each in his simplicity,
And either serviceable alike, to shift
Between my master’s hands and yours and mine
Her letters writ and answered to and fro;
And all these faiths as weathertight and safe
As was the box that held those letters close
At bottom of the barrel, to give up
The charge there sealed and ciphered, and receive
A charge as great in peril and in price
To yield again, when they drew off the beer
That weekly served this lady’s household whom
We have drained as dry of secrets drugged with death
As ever they this vessel, and return
To her own lips the dregs she brewed or we
For her to drink have tempered. What of this
Should seem so strange now to you, or distaste
So much the daintier palate of your thoughts,
That I should need reiterate you by word
The work of us o’erpast, or fill your ear
With long foregone recital, that at last
Your soul may start not or your sense recoil
To know what end we are come to, or what hope
We took in hand to cut this peril off
By what close mean soe’er and what foul hands
Unwashed of treason, which it yet mislikes
Your knightly palm to touch or close with, seeing
The grime of gold is baser than of blood
That barks their filthy fingers? yet with these
Must you cross hands and grapple, or let fall
The trust you took to treasure.
PAULET.
Sir, I will,
Even till the queen take back that gave it; yet
Will not join hands with these, nor take on mine
The taint of their contagion; knowing no cause
That should confound or couple my good name
With theirs more hateful than the reek of hell.
You had these knaveries and these knaves in charge,
Not I that knew not how to handle them
Nor whom to choose for chief of treasons, him
That in mine ignorant eye, unused to read
The shameful scripture of such faces, bare
Graved on his smooth and simple cheek and brow
No token of a traitor; yet this boy,
This milk-mouthed weanling with his maiden chin,
This soft-lipped knave, late suckled as on blood
And nursed of poisonous nipples, have you not
Found false or feared by this, whom first you found
A trustier thief and worthier of his wage
Than I, poor man, had wit to find him? I,
That trust no changelings of the church of hell,
No babes reared priestlike at the paps of Rome,
Who have left the old harlot’s deadly dugs drawn dry,
I lacked the craft to rate this knave of price,
Your smock-faced Gifford, at his worth aright,
Which now comes short of promise.
PHILLIPPS.
O, not he;
Let not your knighthood for a slippery word
So much misdoubt his knaveship; here from France,
On hint of our suspicion in his ear
Half jestingly recorded, that his hand
Were set against us in one politic track
With his old yoke-fellows in craft and creed,
Betraying not them to us but ourselves to them,
My Gilbert writes me with such heat of hand
Such piteous protestation of his faith
So stuffed and swoln with burly-bellied oaths
And God and Christ confound him if he lie
And Jesus save him as he speaks mere truth,
My gracious godly priestling, that yourself
Must sure be moved to take his truth on trust
Or stand for him approved an atheist.
PAULET.
Well,
That you find stuff of laughter in such gear
And mirth to make out of the godless mouth
Of such a twice-turned villain, for my part
I take in token of your certain trust,
And make therewith mine own assurance sure
,
To see betimes an end of all such craft
As takes the faith forsworn of loud-tongued liars
And blasphemies of brothel-breathing knaves
To build its hope or break its jest upon;
And so commend you to your charge, and take
Mine own on me less gladly; for by this
She should be girt to ride, as the old saw saith,
Out of God’s blessing into the warm sun
And out of the warm sun into the pit
That men have dug before her, as herself
Had dug for England else a deeper grave
To hide our hope for ever: yet I would
This day and all that hang on it were done.
Exeunt.
Scene III. Before Tixall Park
Mary Stuart, Mary Beaton, Paulet, Curle, Nau, and Attendants.
MARY STUART.
If I should never more back steed alive
But now had ridden hither this fair day
The last road ever I must ride on earth,
Yet would I praise it, saying of all days gone
And all roads ridden in sight of stars and sun
Since first I sprang to saddle, here at last
I had found no joyless end. These ways are smooth,
And all this land’s face merry; yet I find
The ways even therefore not so good to ride,
And all the land’s face therefore less worth love,
Being smoother for a palfrey’s maiden pace
And merrier than our moors for outlook; nay,
I lie to say so; there the wind and sun
Make madder mirth by midsummer, and fill
With broader breath and lustier length of light
The heartier hours that clothe for even and dawn
Our bosom-belted billowy-blossoming hills
Whose hearts break out in laughter like the sea
For miles of heaving heather. Ye should mock
My banished praise of Scotland; and in faith
I praised it but to prick you on to praise
Of your own goodly land; though field and wood
Be parked and parcelled to the sky’s edge out,
And this green Stafford moorland smooth and strait
That we but now rode over, and by ours
Look pale for lack of large live mountain bloom
Wind-buffeted with morning, it should be
Worth praise of men whose lineal honour lives
In keeping here of history: but meseems
I have heard, Sir Amyas, of your liberal west
As of a land more affluent-souled than this
And fruitful-hearted as the south-wind; here
I find a fair-faced change of temperate clime
From that bald hill-brow in a broad bare plain
Where winter laid us both his prisoners late
Fast by the feet at Tutbury; but men say
Your birthright in this land is fallen more fair
In goodlier ground of heritage: perchance,
Grief to be now barred thence by mean of me,
Who less than you can help it or myself,
Makes you ride sad and sullen.
PAULET.
Madam, no;
I pray you lay not to my wilful charge
The blame or burden of discourtesy
That but the time should bear which lays on me
This weight of thoughts untimely.
MARY STUART.
Nay, fair sir,
If I, that have no cause in life to seem
Glad of my sad life more than prisoners may,
Take comfort yet of sunshine, he methinks
That holds in ward my days and nights might well
Take no less pleasure of this broad blithe air
Than his poor charge that too much troubles him.
What, are we nigh the chase?
PAULET.
Even hard at hand.
MARY STUART.
Can I not see between the glittering leaves
Gleam the dun hides and flash the startled horns
That we must charge and scatter? Were I queen
And had a crown to wager on my hand,
Sir, I would set it on the chance to-day
To shoot a flight beyond you.
PAULET.
Verily,
The hazard were too heavy for my skill:
I would not hold your wager.
MARY STUART.
No! and why?
PAULET.
For fear to come a bowshot short of you
On the left hand, unluckily.
MARY STUART.
My friend,
Our keeper’s wit-shaft is too keen for ours
To match its edge with pointless iron. – Sir,
Your tongue shoots further than my hand or eye
With sense or aim can follow. – Gilbert Curle,
Your heart yet halts behind this cry of hounds,
Hunting your own deer’s trail at home, who lies
Now close in covert till her bearing-time
Be full to bring forth kindly fruit of kind
To love that yet lacks issue; and in sooth
I blame you not to bid all sport go by
For one white doe’s sake travailing, who myself
Think long till I may take within mine arm
The soft fawn suckling that is yeaned not yet
But is to make her mother. We must hold
A goodly christening feast with prisoner’s cheer
And mirth enow for such a tender thing
As will not weep more to be born in bonds
Than babes born out of gaoler’s ward, nor grudge
To find no friend more fortunate than I
Nor happier hand to welcome it, nor name
More prosperous than poor mine to wear, if God
Shall send the new-made mother’s breast, for love
Of us that love his mother’s maidenhood,
A maid to be my namechild, and in all
Save love to them that love her, by God’s grace,
Most unlike me; for whose unborn sweet sake
Pray you meantime be merry. – ‘Faith, methinks
Here be more huntsmen out afield to-day
And merrier than my guardian. Sir, look up;
What think you of these riders? – All my friends,
Make on to meet them.
PAULET.
There shall need no haste;
They ride not slack or lamely.
MARY STUART.
Now, fair sir,
What say you to my chance on wager? here
I think to outshoot your archery. – By my life,
That too must fail if hope now fail me; these
That ride so far off yet, being come, shall bring
Death or deliverance. Prithee, speak but once;
Aside to Mary Beaton.
Say, these are they we looked for; say, thou too
Hadst hope to meet them; say, they should be here,
And I did well to look for them; O God!
Say but I was not mad to hope; see there;
Speak, or I die.
MARY BEATON.
Nay, not before they come.
MARY STUART.
Dost thou not hear my heart? it speaks so loud
I can hear nothing of them. Yet I will not
Fail in mine enemy’s sight. This is mine hour
That was to be for triumph; God, I pray,
Stretch not its length out longer!
MARY BEATON.
It is past.
Enter Sir Thomas Gorges, Sir William Wade, and Soldiers.
MARY STUART.
What man is this that stands across our way?
GORGES.
One that hath warrant, madam, from the queen
To arrest your French and English secretary
And for more surety see yourself removed
To present ward at Ti
xall here hard by,
As in this paper stands of her subscribed.
Lay hands on them.
MARY STUART.
Was this your riddle’s word?
To Paulet.
You have shot beyond me indeed, and shot to death
Your honour with my life. – Draw, sirs, and stand;
Ye have swords yet left to strike with once, and die
By these our foes are girt with. Some good friend –
I should have one yet left of you – take heart
And slay me here. For God’s love, draw; they have not
So large a vantage of us we must needs
Bear back one foot from peril. Give not way;
Ye shall but die more shamefully than here
Who can but here die fighting. What, no man?
Must I find never at my need alive
A man with heart to help me? O, my God,
Let me die now and foil them! Paulet, you,
Most knightly liar and traitor, was not this
Part of your charge, to play my hangman too,
Who have played so well my doomsman, and betrayed
So honourably my trust, so bravely set
A snare so loyal to make sure for death
So poor a foolish woman? Sir, or you
That have this gallant office, great as his,
To do the deadliest errand and most vile
That even your mistress ever laid on man
And sent her basest knave to bear and slay,
You are likewise of her chivalry, and should not
Shrink to fulfil your title; being a knight,
For her dear sake that made you, lose not heart
To strike for her one worthy stroke, that may
Rid me defenceless of the loathed long life
She gapes for like a bloodhound. Nay, I find
A face beside you that should bear for me
Not life inscribed upon it; two years since
I read therein at Sheffield what good will
She bare toward me that sent to treat withal
So mean a man and shameless, by his tongue
To smite mine honour on the face, and turn
My name of queen to servant; by his hand
So let her turn my life’s name now to death,
Which I would take more thankfully than shame
To plead and thus prevail not.
PAULET.
Madam, no,
With us you may not in such suit prevail
Nor we by words or wrath of yours be moved
To turn their edge back on you, nor remit
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 249
