University of Virginia Library

Anne Boleyn landing at the Tower. Sir William Kingston , Guards.
QUEEN.
Here—here, then, all is o'er!—Oh! awful walls,
Oh! sullen towers, relentless gates, that open
Like those of Hell, but to receive the doom'd,
The desperate—Oh! ye black and massy barriers,
But broken by yon barr'd and narrow loopholes,
How do ye coop from this, God's sunshine world
Of freedom and delight, your world of woe,
Your midnight world, where all that live, live on
In hourly agony of death! Vast dungeon,
Populous as vast, of your devoted tenants!
Long ere our bark had touch'd the fatal strand,
I felt your ominous shadows darken o'er me,
And close me round; your thick and clammy air,
As though 'twere loaded with dire imprecations,
Wailings of dying and of tortured men,
Tainted afar the wholesome atmosphere.

KINGSTON
(to the Guard).
Advance your halberds.

QUEEN.
Oh! Sir, pause—one look,
One last long look, to satiate all my senses.
Oh! thou blue cloudless canopy, just tinged
With the faint amber of the setting sun,
Where one by one steal forth the modest stars
To diadem the sky:—thou noble river,
Whose quiet ebb, not like my fortune, sinks
With gentle downfall, and around the keels
Of those thy myriad barks mak'st passing music:—
Oh! thou great silent city, with thy spires
And palaces, where I was once the greatest,
The happiest—I, whose presence made a tumult
In all your wondering streets and jocund marts:—
But most of all, thou cool and twilight air,
That art a rapture to the breath! The slave,
The beggar, the most base down-trodden outcast,
The plague-struck livid wretch, there's none so vile,
So abject, in your streets, that swarm with life—
They may inhale the liquid joy Heaven breathes—
They may behold the rosy evening sky—
They may go rest their free limbs where they will:
But I—but I, to whom this summer world
Was all bright sunshine; I, whose time was noted
But by succession of delights—Oh! Kingston,
Thou dost remember, thou wert then Lieutenant,
'Tis now—how many years?—my memory wanders—
Since I set forth from yon dark low-brow'd porch,
A bride—a monarch's bride—King Henry's bride!
Oh! the glad pomp, that burn'd upon the waters—
Oh! the rich streams of music that kept time
With oars as musical—the people's shouts,
That call'd Heaven's blessings on my head, in sounds
That might have drown'd the thunders—I've more need
Of blessing now, and not a voice would say it.

KINGSTON.
Your Grace, no doubt, will long survive this trial.

QUEEN.
Sir, Sir, it is too late to flatter me:
Time was I trusted each fond possibility,
For hope sate queen of all my golden fortunes;
But now—

KINGSTON.
Day wears, and our imperious mandate
Brooks no delay—advance.

QUEEN.
Back, back, I say!—
I will not enter! Whither will ye plunge me?
Into what chamber, but the sickly air
Smells all of blood—the black and cobweb'd walls
Are all o'ertraced by dying hands, who've noted
In the damp dews indelible their tale
Of torture—not a bed nor straw-laid pallet
But bears th'impression of a wretch call'd forth
To execution. Will ye place me there,
Where those poor babes, their crook-back'd uncle murder'd,
Still haunt?—Inhuman hospitality!
Look there! look there! fear mantles o'er my soul
As with a prophet's robe, the ghostly walls
Are sentinel'd with mute and headless spectres,
Whose lank and grief-attenuated fingers
Point to their gory and dissever'd necks,
The least a lordly noble, some like princes:
Through the dim loopholes gleam the haggard faces
Of those, whose dark unutterable fate
Lies buried in your dungeons' depths; some wan
With famine, some with writhing features fix'd
In the agony of torture.—Back! I say:
They beckon me across the fatal threshold,
Which none may pass and live.

KINGSTON.
The deaths of traitors,
If such have died within these gloomy towers,
Should not appal your Grace with such vain terrors;
The chamber is prepared where slept your Highness
When last within the Tower.

QUEEN.
Oh! 'tis too good
For such a wretch—a death-doom'd wretch as me.
My Lord, my Henry—he that call'd me forth
Even from that chamber, with a voice more gentle
Than flutes o'er calmest waters—will not wrong
Th'eternal Justice—the great law of Kings!
Let him arraign me—bribe as witnesses
The angels that behold our inmost thoughts,
He'll find no crime but loving him too fondly;
And let him visit that with his worst vengeance.
Come, Sir, your wearied patience well may fail:
On to that chamber, where I slept so sweetly,
When guiltier far than now. On—on, good Kingston.