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 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
ACT III.
Scene I.—Castle of Compiègne.
Louis, King of France, John of Salisbury, Llewellen.K. Louis.
No need of pleading, sirs: I know the man:
I met him first breasting the tides of war,
And more admired, than joyed to see his banner
That still made way when others tacked and veered
On that large-labouring sea. In peace I found him
A loyal man, and honest, lofty-souled,
And resolute in his purpose. Never father
So loved, methought, a son, as he his king,
Who brave, but erring, plays this day a part
Not knightly, and not Christian. Sirs, he's hot,
And notes, methinks, but half of that great word,
‘Be wroth, yet sin not.’ Send me here your primate!
France loves the noble foe.
John of Sal.
May it please your Highness,
The primate stands resolved to light no flame
Betwixt two kings now happily at one:
He lacks not therefore grateful heart to France,
That great old land which shall not cease from greatness
While faithful to its God. He hastes to Sens.
K. Louis.
I love the man or distant or close by,
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Tell him no girl-lip in my France hath ever
Trembled more sweetly ere it owned the truth,
Than this old heart for joy when came the news
He trod our shores secure.
Scene II.—The Palace at Sens.
Pope Alexander III. in consistory with the cardinals. Becket, Herbert of Bosham, and other English priests. The Abbot of Pontigny.Bec.
Most holy father, vicar of our Lord,
And ye the princely senate of the Church,
I have too long your patience taxed: I deemed
That, kings impugning, I was bound in honour
To impugn my proper sin at Clarendon,
And justice do to him who did me wrong.
His ‘Royal Customs,’ new compared with her
Whose years are from of old, have precedents
Which show but late their teeth. Abuse was borne
When tyrants played the kitten, not the tiger.
To make exception law, concede of right
Whate'er old time, enforced or heedless, suffered,
This were to wrest the past by fraudulent gloss
As heretics wrest Scripture.
The Pope.
Justly reasoned—
The Church might trust the king that served the Church
Like Charlemagne: Antiochus, or Herod
Shall have his right;—not more!
Bec.
I grant this also:
O'er-ripe corruption breeds foretold disease:
Church wealth abounds; it brought the hireling first;
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Card. Will.
My lord archbishop,
Though young in the episcopate, is wise;—
‘Where lies the carcase, there the eagles flock:’
Noting that truth, his Grace would share Church lands
With nobles and with kings.
Bec.
My lord, not so!
In troubled days like these, if bandit barons
Fierce from the cup, rode forth o'er waste and wild
All unconfronted by the Church's barons
Like them large-landed, and with knights in train,
The landless priest should keep not his own skin.
We must not yield to wrong.
Card. Will.
I understand not:
My lord the archbishop late at Clarendon
Connived, he said—
The Pope.
Brother, forbear that theme!
The primate made the Christian expiation
In sackcloth and in ashes forty days.
Her.
My lord went later to a second council:
Of that he hath not spoken;—bid him speak.
The Pope.
What council?
Bec.
At Northampton it was held:
There, fooled no longer, I denounced those Customs
Whereof last eve I laid the list new-writ
For judgment at your footstool.
The Pope.
I have read them.
Six might be borne, though bad: the rest are impious;
Servile to kings, seditious 'gainst the Church:
Well skilled they all lead up to one—the worst—
They bar appeal to this most Holy See,
My glory which I yield not to another,
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That great appeal removed, by secular hands
The arteries of the Church were knotted up,
Yea, and to fragments torn that sacred body
Whose life is in the whole. For this cause, God
Diffused among realms one single Church,
That unity might be its life's true pledge,
A thing too vast to be engorged by any.
That Church enslaved, what next? The Faith must vanish!
For on the Church's witness rests the truth,
And if that Church be stifled in the embrace
Of any fleshly realm—engulfed—absorbed—
Who shall receive her words?
Card. Will.
Yea verily,
From the whale's belly when the prophet speaks
Who hears is quick of ear.
The Pope.
The realm thus sinning
Ere long shall be partaker with the worm;
The blind-worm is its sister, and corruption
Its mother, and the dust its winding-sheet;
For power, earth-born, shall back once more to earth.
O witless kingdoms! scorn ye then that kingdom,
Forth from whose womb ye issued—still your stay,
The sole not born from mortal lust or pride;
The kingdom of one God in Persons Three;
The kingdom of the creed and of the prayer;
The kingdom of commandments just and wise;
The kingdom of the three great Virtues winged
Which gaze on heaven; the eight Beatitudes
Which walk the earth disguised, sowing God's joy;
The Sacraments, those seven great gates of God
Betwixt the worlds of spirit and flesh;—the kingdom
Wherein God's angels wait upon His poor,
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My son, what saith your England to these Customs?
Bec.
I deem the people sound: gravely they love
Their ancient laws and immemorial freedom.
The nobles, save the noblest, back the king:
Their faith is flawless; but too lax their manners
To love a righteous law.
The Pope.
How stand your clergy?
Bec.
The poor are true, the rich are panic-stricken:
We have corruptions: I had hoped ere long
To have pruned the worst away:—they grow and flourish:
My sin has found me out!
The Pope.
Your sin? What sin?
Bec.
The king, who willed that I should be archbishop,
Was urgent with the Canterbury monks:
They raised no plaint; yet some denied their freedom:
More late I too had doubts. To break my staff
In danger's hour had been a coward's part:
The danger's past; this hour I lodge that staff
In the strong hand of Peter's successor;
Be his to make decision.
[The cardinals converse among themselves.
Card. Will.
Holy Father,
Methinks the island prelate judges well,
Yea, and with prudence of the lands most seasoned:
He speaks more sagely than King Henry's envoy
Whose Latin raised, last eve, a passing smile.
King Henry's wrath once lulled—
The Pope.
It shall not be!
The Church gives honour—this the world should know—
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Who chides himself for lacking angel's heart,
Witnessed a man's heart in the Church's war;
She shall not fail him. Fit he is for rule:
His valour proved it, and his meekness proved it,
Bearing from one that served him just rebuke
As Peter bare from Paul, and, since his time,
Popes many in this chair from humblest teachers.
Brother, resume your charge, and reign once more
Where reigned of old Augustine. For this fight,
Which shall not prove a flying season's sport,
All qualities are yours, save one—discretion.
Your life was long a life of courts, and camps,
And splendours of this world: at Pontigny,
A holier seat, find rest. Its reverend abbot
Will give you welcome.
Abbot of Pon.
Happy house is ours,
Welcoming a confessor!
Bec.
The fast monastic,
The ascetic garb, and labour in the fields
Teach me humility!
The Pope.
You shall not miss it;
Your sacred habit be it mine to send:
It shall be honest serge.
Scene III.—The Palace at Rouen.
Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, Richard Brito, Hugh de Moreville, courtiers and ladies.Fitz-Urse.
As good as dead!
De Tracy.
The three-days'-strangled dog
But fouls the air: his bark is heard no more.
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At Sens the Sacred College frowned upon him;
The Pope disfrocked him; forth he fled by night
To mate him with the antipope: to-day
He lies in dungeon bound.
Lady.
Some swear he's mad;
I think he's wedded.
De More.
No; though secularised;—
He keeps a Flemish farm.
Fitz-Urse
(to De Broc, entering).
What news from home?
Some three weeks since you won the king's permission
To drive that traitor's kin from England's shores.
De Broc.
I bide my time. When winter snows fall fast
That vermin brood shall face it.
[Departs.
Courtier.
Month by month
His hate grows stronger.
Fitz-Urse.
Ay, there's cause for that.
Cour.
The ravished Church lands and the heiress 'scaped?
Fitz-Urse.
And cause beside. On some pretence of law
De Broc drave forth Idonea from the house
Of Becket's sister, Becket three months primate:
The maid took sanctuary in Canterbury.
Instant they sued her as a royal ward;
Judgment against her went. The day had come,
And round the minster knights and nobles watched:
The chimes rang out at noon: then from the gate
Becket walked forth, the maiden by his side;—
Ay, but her garb conventual showed the nun!
They frowned, but dared no more. The king was wroth,
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With face storm-black. Henry burst forth in laughter;
The infection spread—we laughed till heaven's broad vault
Laughed back to hear us. Well, De Broc's my friend:—
There's reason good that hate in him should prosper.
Scene IV.—A room in the Abbey of Pontigny.
Becket, Herbert of Bosham, Llewellen, abbot and monks.Bec.
Praise be to God, and praise to her, His daughter,
This abbey chaste and kind of Pontigny,
That washed the wanderer's weary feet, and found
A country for the exile! Reverend abbot,
I longed for this immersed in secular cares,
I longed for this throned on Augustine's seat,
A still retreat for penitence and prayer,
A quiet cell for books and meditation:
These things are mine.
Abbot.
My lord, your holy joy
To us is both a kindling and a warning:
Our life is hard; you teach us hardest life
Should be the sweetest. Heavenly is our hope;
Your joy reminds us heaven is round us ever,
Had we but faith to feel it. O my lord!
God grant that custom harden not in you
That sense to-day so tender; for, the edge
Of spiritual sensibilities made blunt,
Our spiritual world becomes a leaf frost-curled;
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We starve 'mid manna showers.
Bec.
I have put aside
The canon law, and study lore dogmatic:
It better feeds the soul. I see once more
Paris, that holy city!
Abbot.
Once 'twas holy.
Bec.
My mother, when I went to Paris first,
A slender scholar bound on quest of learning,
Girdling my gown collegiate, wept full sore;
Then laid on me this hest;—both early and late
To love Christ's Mother and the poor of Christ,
That so her prayer in heaven and theirs on earth
Beside me moving as I walked its streets,
Might shield me from its sins.
Abbot.
Men say your mother
Loved the poor well, and still on festivals,
Laying her growing babe in counter-scale,
Heaped up an equal weight of clothes and food,
Which unto them she gave.
Bec.
She trained my sister
To live an angel on the earth. Lo, there!
The red morn widens through the falling snows,
And the storm rocks your towers! What then? The spring
Once more will come and wake that earliest flower
Whose white is purer for its rim of green;
The thrush will sing again.
Her.
Your sycamore,
Large-leaved, once more will roof you as you read
Those psalms that shook the Solomonian Temple,
The Apostolic letters which made glad
The young and foe-girt churches of the Lord,
And, dearer yet, the Gospels whose warm lips
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O'er earth.
Bec.
And learn at last to be a Christian!
Monk
(entering).
The Holy Father
Has sent that promised habit to his Grace,
Likewise these letters.
Llew.
By Saint David, good!
The hood is filled with snow! The Pope knows well
Some heads are hot!
Bec.
I kiss this habit's edge;—
Herbert, what say the letters?
Her.
(reading).
‘At one blow
King Henry confiscates the primate's goods,
Farms, manors, castles, rents.’
Bec.
Now God be praised!
Her.
(reading).
‘His name is blotted from the service-books;
Lastly, his friends are banished, kith and kin,
The old, the young, the cleric and the lay,
Widows and babes in arms, four hundred all;
His sister, sickness-worn; the nun Idonea;—
This day they plough the bleak, snow-blinded sea,
Oath-bound to bear their wail beneath the gates
Of him their exile's cause, so named.’
Monk.
Hark! hark!
Another Monk
(rushing in).
A famished English host is wailing round us!
They beat the gates; they swarm into the courts;
They bear with them a woman three hours dead,
Demand my lord the primate.
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Scene V.—Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.
The Empress, John of Oxford.John of Oxf.
Chiefly for pride his enemies arraign him:
Great madam, pride not always is a vice:
His pride is pride a son may well be proud of:
He says, ‘The daughter of earth's wisest king
Was greatest when she put her greatness off;
Is greater now, ruling through this strong arm,
Than if, as once, she from her standard shook
Dominion on the winds.’
Empress.
King Henry's daughter
Should know some policy. I have lived, and reigned,
Done much, borne much, and in these later years
Much striven to win that docile heart which makes
Affliction's fruit, experience, profitable.
My end, they say, draws near. My son well knows it,
And yet he comes not nigh.
John of Oxf.
His Highness grieves
He walked not by your counsel touching Becket,
Who, changed from better promise, plots and schemes
Made blind by lust of power, and greed beside
Of gold which perisheth.
Empress.
It may be so:
Much that I know of Thomas I mislike;
But what I know I know through men that hate him.
Such knowledge I distrust.
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(entering).
May it please your Highness,
A priest from Pontigny.
[John of Salisbury enters, accompanied by a veiled nun.
Empress.
You are come, I think,
Sir, from that abbey where the primate late
Of England, lives recluse?
John of Sal.
Illustrious lady,
The primate hath not ceased to be the primate.
In Oxford, madam, that religious seat
When learning, tested, mounts the grades of merit,
Men say it graduates. Virtue, like learning,
Boasts its degrees of merit, tried and proved:
Its university is wide as earth:
My lord the primate hath proceeded exile;—
The next degree, who knows?
Empress.
I honour, sir,
Your frank, yet grave accost: I honour, too,
What under that I note, a loving zeal
For him you call your friend. Scant friends to me
Your primates and your prelates proved in England:
My father king, they made their oath to me:
My father dead, they crowned revolted Stephen:
And though the usurper's brother, Henry of Winton,
More late my champion proved—that arm of might
Which waved my banner o'er the English realm—
He wrung from me concessions first; and, last,
Condoned his brother's crime and re-enthroned him.
John of Sal.
Madam, that time erroneous, and unblest—
Empress.
Back to our theme. I never loved your primate:
I deemed him for my son a dangerous friend,
230
I strenuously withstood. I saw in Thomas
One that, installed in Canterbury's chair,
Might shake a younger throne. I would your primate
Had let the Royal Customs be, and warred
Against the ill customs of the Church. 'Tis shame
To ordain a clerk in name that lacks a cure,
Whom idleness must needs ensnare in crime;
Scandal—and worse—to screen an erring clerk,
More fearing clamour than the cancer slow
Of inly-wasting sin. Scandal it is
When seven rich benefices load one priest,
Likeliest his soul's damnation.
John of Sal.
Scandals indeed!
And no true friend to Thomas is the man
Who palliates such abuses. For this cause,
Reluctantly he grasped Augustine's staff
Therewith to smite them down. Madam, the men
Who brand them most are those who breed the scandals:
The primate warred on such. The king, to shield them,
Invoked the Royal Customs.
Empress.
Some are old.
John of Sal.
Old by the Norman reckoning, not the Saxon.
Empress.
Sir, sir, I know that cry: my throne it cost me!
Penitent London, with the prodigal's zeal
Had spread to me its arms; rebellion's head
Lay bruised beneath my feet; one common joy
Beamed from the fronts of cleric, noble, serf:
Sir, 'mid this new-born zeal a shout arose—
‘The laws of good King Edward, not the Norman!’
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Return we to those Customs. Some are old.
John of Sal.
Madam, at heart all sin is old as Cain.
What profit, lady, on the Judgment Day,
If kings that erred can say, ‘By lineal right
That sin to me hereditary came,
And I entailed it on my latest heir!’
Save—save your son!
Empress.
The king advised not with me.
How many are those Customs you condemn?
John of Sal.
Madam, sixteen are registered. Lo! one:
‘We suffer not appeal to Peter's chair.’
Madam, Christ said to Peter, ‘Strengthen thou
Thy brethren:’ later, ‘Feed My sheep and lambs.’
Shall England's Church, Augustine's child and Rome's,
Be sundered from his aid?
Empress.
Now, God forbid!
John of Sal.
The next: ‘No bishop shall depart the realm
Without the king's consent.’ Such laws in force,
Church councils are no more.
Empress.
That Custom's novel!
John of Sal.
The next: ‘No baron holding from the Crown,
Whate'er his crime, shall feel the Church's censure
Without the king's approval.’ Madam, Christ
Gave to the Church His keys, and bade her use them,
That virgin thus her precinct might remain,
Her feast unstained. The great exempt, the mean,
Must share their license.
Empress.
Sir, that Custom's old,
Yet should be rarely used, nor shield the sinner:
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Else were God's temple to a tavern changed,
Or den of thieves.
John of Sal.
The next: ‘When bishoprics
Are vacant, till the king hath willed the election,
Their rents remain with him.’
John of Oxf.
(rising).
May it please your Highness,
Humbly I take my leave.
Empress.
Sir, fare you well!
[John of Oxford departs.
These Customs are in part of recent date;
In part are ancient, and throughout are strained:
My son has erred, enrolling them as laws;
Not thus my father wrought—has erred besides
Requiring from the bishops pledge to keep them:
We kept, till now, rule and exception both;
They housed together in uneasy friendship:
Your primate errs, I think, in nobler sort:
Let him endure the earlier of those Customs,
So they remain unwrit.
John of Sal.
Madam, your words
Are truth and peace.
Empress.
I ever loved truth well;
Alas, not peace! Yet gladly, ere I die
Would I have portion with the peace-makers.
John of Sal.
Madam, speak then those words of peace once more,
But to your son.
Empress.
He listens not to me.
John of Sal.
There is one listening region in his heart:
It hears a whisper low. He loves his children:
There touch him! There I touched him—not in vain.
233
The king's wrath burned: two days I strove to slake it,
The Great Seal lying on the ground before him:
None dared to lift it. Thus I spake at last:
‘Pride is the sin of kings: that pride infects
Their babes; drags down on them their parents’ penance.
Your grand-sire had a son—but one—Prince William:
He from his sire had caught the haughty heart,
And oft in childhood sware, “When I am king
These English boors, harnessed like ox or ass,
Shall cleave the ‘Norman's glebe!’” He ne'er was king!
God's sea-waves o'er him closed.’ While thus I spake
The prince ran by; his father's eye pursued him—
That hour his heart was changed.
Empress.
My son has left me.
Sir, there are sorrows greater than my sire's
Then when he wept his son: Henry's will live,
And to his father be as mine to me.
I must not more detain you, sir. Commend me
Unto my lord the primate.
John of Sal.
Royal lady,
This youthful nun—Idonea is her name,
And something of her history may have reached you—
Is missioned with a message to your ear:
The maid is true: may God protect your Highness!
[John of Salisbury bows low, and departs.
Empress.
I pray you lift your veil: that hand, I think,
Derives from ancient lineage, and like light
Shows on your sable garb.
[Idonea lifts her veil.
Derives from ancient lineage, and like light
Shows on your sable garb.
There's rest in gazing
Upon a countenance nor by passions marred,
Nor fretted by perplexities of thought.
You are older than you seem. You have known great grief,
Yet mourned nor husband dead nor lover false:
I deem you orphan.
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Nor fretted by perplexities of thought.
You are older than you seem. You have known great grief,
Yet mourned nor husband dead nor lover false:
I deem you orphan.
Ido.
I have lost my parents.
Empress.
And recently, I think?
Ido.
My second mother
Expired but few weeks since. She was of those
Exiled of late—the primate's widowed sister;—
In the great storm she died.
Empress.
That churl De Broc
Outstepped his warrant.
Ido.
'Mid celestial choirs
One note is added to her song on earth—
The sweetest! I have heard it in my dreams,
And walked the long day after as on air.
Not now she sings alone the peace of heaven,
The bliss of saints; she sings their joy not less
Who share on earth the Saviour's crown of thorns.
What other joy like that of sacrifice?
Without it love were nought! In death she lay
A lovely shape that seemed to smile in sleep,
And placid as the snowy fields around.
Her brother raised this crucifix from her breast
And bade me bear it to you. ‘Let her wear it
In death,’ he said, ‘and it will bring her peace;
And, wearing it, let her win back her son,
Who walks in ways of death.’
Empress.
Flatterers, not friends,
Are now my son's advisers. I could wish
That late-born hatred 'twixt him and the primate
Changed to old love.
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O lady, deem it not!
The primate hate your son! How many a time
Have I not heard him praise the king's high heart;
His wit at years when others chase their follies;
His prescient thought; his knowledge won from all,
Drawn in with every breath; his wind-like swiftness,
Now here, now there; persistence iron-nerved,
Pliant at need, but with resilience still
Back-springing to a purpose of that height
Which makes ambition virtue. Shake from him
But two fierce passions which convulse his spirit—
Anger was one, he did not name the other—
No prince there reigns like him.
Empress.
The heart of Thomas
Was ever large; that know I well.
Ido.
Full oft
I have heard him cast the royal horposcope:
‘Let him be England's king, a child of England!
If all the world beside were his for realm
The solid centre's there; his home be England!
Let him sun out its virtues with his love;
Strike off its bonds; unite its rival races;
Restore old usages; replant the poor
In those huge forests now the hunter's spoil;
Be loved at English hearths, from those fair cliffs
England's white girdle, to her mountain thrones;
His name be honoured in her fields and farms,
And minsters gathering, as the parent bird
Gathers its young, the growing cities round them,
Honoured by all her brave, industrious sons,
So Christian-like in manners and in mind,
So grave in deeds, and yet so merry-hearted,
And in their plainness kind.’
Empress.
My son's ambition
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Who hopes so much for him must love him truly.
I hope; but fear. In Thomas he had found
At least an honest friend, and fearless friend,
A counsellor by private aims untainted.
Ido.
A mother's counsel—
Empress.
He revered it once:
That queen of his hath slain his reverence;
That woman with five realms and fifty devils,
Who witched him to her love. She loved him never;
And with her strident voice and angry eyes
Scared from her soon his heart. A faithfuller husband
Had been obsequious less. A wife! a wife!
You on whose brow virginity is throned
Are liker to a wife than Eleanor!
In that obdurate will, and lawless humour,
And shallow heart, despite all marriage bonds
Wifehood's true spirit had been impossible
Even had she loved him well! A married mistress
Let such be called. Prop me this pillow, child,
And put from you that wildered, frightened look.
My father—him I loved the most on earth;—
If wars I moved, if these thin fingers clutched
The sceptre all too tight, 'twas for this cause,
Because his hand had held it!
Ido.
Gracious lady—
Empress.
Come near, and lay your lily cheek near mine,
But touch not mine, or yours will catch its fever.
Fix now your eyes on yonder winding Seine,
Seen 'twixt the crowded city towers. Mark there
How yon unladen barks run down the river:—
So lightly issues forth our youth's emprise
Full-sailed to shores unknown. Mark next how slowly
237
With painful toil, and oars that keep not time:—
Thus—youth gone by—fortunes fulfilled oppress us;
The tide against us works.
O what a beaming shape was he in boyhood!
The sun declines, methinks. Where lodge you, child?
Ido.
I know not, madam.
Empress.
Rest in yonder convent:
I built it, and they love me. Ere you sleep
Give me a prayer. Our faith remains; our prayer
Grows cold with age—at least the prayer of princes.
Maid, I have heard your name; seen you ere now,
But know not where. The Pope hath sent me missives,
Praying mine intercession with my son;—
He hath it; but in limits. Child, farewell!
[Idonea kneels, kisses the Empress' hand, and withdraws.
Scene VI.—The Abbey of Pontigny.
Becket, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham.Bec.
Still, by my soul, I think he may be honest:—
The fraudulent are the weak; the king, we know,
Is strong alike in body and in mind.
John of Sal.
But not, alas! in spirit. ‘Strength to bring forth.’
The lack of faith is oftenest lack of strength,
Of spiritual strength; lack, too, of spiritual courage:
Worldlings are all too craven to believe.
This king lacks faith, and knows not that he lacks it;
At times he's superstitious; never godly:
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Tramples his good. His youth had soaring aims—
Bec.
Still unfulfilled. We must have patience with him!
God gives to man his threescore years and ten,
Then patient stands to see if in those years
His snail-paced creature makes one hour's advance.
I counted patience once man's humblest virtue;
I grow to deem of it as marvellous most
Of all God's attributes. Return to Henry!
His forefathers, like him, when wroth, were mad:
His empire's vaster far than theirs; his pride
Proportionately entempested. I think it—
I hope it, honest error.
Her.
The spirit of Bernard
Hangs on this pure and hallowed air. Your brow
Was furrowed once; to-day it wears no frown:
His Holiness did well to send you hither.
Bec.
Leisure and peace, and communings with God
Above the glebe new-turned, when fresh and sweet
Rises earth's breath, and in the thicket near
The unimpatient bird-song, evening-lulled,
Is soberer than at dawn, must help, I think,
Attuned by daily offices divine,
And faces calm wherein the chaunt lives on
When psalms are o'er—must help to soften hearts
How hard soe'er, and softening them, to brighten.
Here learn we that, except through sin of man,
There's evil none on earth—not pain, not scorn,
Not death! Were Christ her law this earth were heaven.
Lo there! How well they name this stream ‘Serene!’
Serene it wanders from the chestnut forests,
239
Serene it slides along the convent walls:
It counts the hours;—mark, as the sun descends,
How those gold lime-stems burn within its mirror
In colonnade that scorns imperial halls!
This spot is surely holier than men know;
I think some saint died here!
John of Sal.
Yet here, even here,
The battle of all ages lies before us!
Bec.
Well know I that, my friend. This eve I mused
On war, with heart at peace.
Her.
Beneath yon beech
You read a book—
Bec.
Saint Anselm's. Holy souls
This book hath holier made; for me, a sinner,
It serves a humbler part. My lot is war:
But close beside me scoffs a voice malign,
‘Thy youth vain-glorious sought the tented field
From haughty stomach or from angry spleen;
So now; for nought thou rend'st the world asunder.’
In doubt I stand: then comes to me this book,
And saith, ‘Thy cause is Anselm's: who was he?
This was no brawler, and no voice of war:
This was a soul that in the cloistral shade
Had reached the sixth fair decade of his life,
O'erstepped the threshold of the eternal Sabbath;
This was a virgin spirit, one to whom
Man's praise seemed blot and blame; an infant spirit
Whose meekness nothing earthly could perturb;
An angel spirit that, with feet on earth,
Saw still God's face in heaven—
Certes he sought no battles; yet he found them;
240
An exiled man, or fronting hostile kings.’
The tempter leaves me; and my strength returns;—
But lo, Guarine, our abbot!
John of Sal.
Slow his step:—
Bec.
I had forgotten; but I know it all:
The king has sworn, unless they drive me hence,
To war on each Cistercian house in England.
Solve we this good man's doubt.
The Abbot
(joining them).
Alas, my lord—
Bec.
My kind and generous friend, we part tomorrow!
God wills it thus, not any earthly king:
We have had our rest. It nerves us for that toil
Which summons us once more.
The Abbot.
Pavia's bishop
And Citeaux's abbot fear—
Bec.
Draw near me, friend:
The morn your predecessor left this abbey,
Lifted, reluctant, to the pastoral charge,
I at Saint Stephen's altar said my mass;
And, offering my thanksgiving there— But no!
When next at Lyons, ask my lord archbishop;
He stood behind a pillar, and heard all.
Brother, farewell. God guard this temple well!
His Spirit be its light till Christ shall come
To judge the world: and if through Satan's fraud,
The wrath of kings, the madness of the people,
It suffer wrong, may He with His own hand
Once more uplift it to a tenfold glory
Which shall not fail or fade. Once more, farewell.
[All depart, except Herbert.
Her.
(alone).
Ten talents lodged in that large honest hand
241
And then that Bleeding Hand closed down above them;
And, last, the inquest of those Eyes divine
Cleansing his soul! Our Thomas has not hid
Those talents ten in napkin, or in earth:
Therefore the red rose of that palm nail-pierced
Grows larger daily on his own. That's well!
Peter and Paul shall press that hand in heaven.
How oft he says, ‘My youth had much to expiate.’
How few or make or will the expiation!
It comes to him in measure without stint:
His place in heaven shall be among the crowned,
Not them that break her glebe.
Scene VII.—A bay window in the Palace at Le Mans.
King Henry, John of Oxford.K. Hen.
I am ill at ease, good John. Some fate malignant
Drags still my fortunes from their starry way
And drowns them in the mist. His kinsfolk's exile
Blackened my name with Christendom's abhorrence;
The traitor's self, cast forth from Pontigny,
Stands stronger than before.
Of all my foes this man alone, this Becket,
Hath marred and dwarfed me in my own esteem;
And for that cause I hate him—and will hate.
It may be I was rash. My mother thinks so,
A politic head that never loved the priests:
She warns me to revolt not 'gainst the Church
Lest God should rouse my sons, in turn revolted,
One day to plague their sire.
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May it please you, sir,
Sickness, a superstitious thing, and death,
Whose coming shadow casts a ghostly semblance
On commonest shapes, perturb her mind, else strong.
Likewise she listens to that nun Idonea.
K. Hen.
My barons in this battle with the Church
Serve me with soul divided. Becket's eye
Went through them at Northampton. Becket's legate:—
Ere long the man will hurl a Censure forth:
My bishops weep and wail to me to spare them
Nor dash them broken 'gainst the canon law:
The Emperor wanes; his antipope wastes daily:
The Pope is waxing, and he knows his power.
I have lit my camp-fires on a frozen flood;—
Methinks, the ice wears thin.
John of Oxf.
Retreat is none.
K. Hen.
I have resolved to send an embassy
To Rome. What say you?
John of Oxf.
Who shall be its head?
His Grace of York, or Gilbert?
K. Hen.
Gilbert! Gilbert!
Gilbert's a knave that slips between two stools:
His youth had soarings: if for each tenth step
He took in sanctity, or seemed to take,
He could have ta'en but one in honest dealing,
The man had reached a sort of crazy saintship:
For greatness of this world courage he lacks.
Nor York, nor Gilbert! Guess again.
John of Oxf.
I cannot.
K. Hen.
You are my choice. Make strong this embassy:
Save weakness every fault is pardonable:
Within this paper are your orders writ:
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Those lines which keep our citadel intact,
The essence and the pith of all I strove for.
Be this your chart.
John of Oxf.
Sire, if it please your Highness,
This battle, though a hard one, shall be gained,
Two things conditioned—freedom and a purse.
Cramp not my movements: definite rules and limits
I never loved. This day the skilfullest hand
In tracing such should weave but nets to snare
Your royal purpose, or a rope to choke it.
The serpent's finer wisdom helps us oft
No more than plain simplicity of doves;
The fox's vulgarer craft serves then our need.
Leave terms to me; but grant me wide credentials:
The Pope will claim both pledge and oath; I give them;
Their import others can decide more late
Wiselier than I; your Grace hath wits scholastic:
With such the royal conscience shall consult,
The Censures first recalled.
K. Hen.
I see it, John.
Your counsel's deep.
[A horn is heard.
John of Oxf.
The prince returned from chase!
[Prince Henry rides up with attendants bearing a dead stag, and stops under the window.
P. Hen.
Father, against your will or with your will,
This stag, my first, finds way to my old master.
[Gallops on.
K. Hen.
He's gone! 'Tis for that boy my soul I peril!
244
Scene VIII.—Vezelay.
Becket, John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham, Abbot of Pontigny.Bec.
My patience less hath served him than disserved:
He stands upon the imminent verge of schism,
Transacts, conspires, with that revolted prelate
Who, with the Emperor and his antipope,
Stands third in Satan's court. Lo, here his letter
This hour arrived in cypher from Cologne!
[He reads.
John of Sal.
(reading it).
‘Pope Alexander, and his cardinals false,
Who prop that traitor Thomas, from this hour
Shall boast mine aid no more.’ What say ye, sirs?
Her.
A legate's powers are yours.
Bec.
I heeded seldom
My personal wrongs; but thus to trade with sin,
In huckstering sort to barter Christian honour,
Or simulate the crime he dares not act—
I say 'tis foul, 'tis foul!
Her.
At Clarendon
A second council meets. The bishops there
Must swear—so wills their lord—to eschew henceforth
All laws not royal, all appeals to Rome:
Our English Church shall stand with bleeding flank
From Christendom down-cloven.
Bec.
(rising).
One time in me
Passions of earth commixed with zeal divine:
That time should now be past. At Pontigny
245
In reverence delved the dark breast of the earth
From which we came, to which we shall return:
My vanities, I trust, are dead.
Abbot.
They are.
Bec.
Then action's time is come. At Soissons late
I watched three nights before three saintly shrines,
Praying for strength. It comes to me this hour.
England no more shall lie a corse: a spirit
Shall lift once more that head blasphemers spurn;
To that dried arm the flesh shall come as flesh
Pure in the child. No more the wail shall rise
From vacant minsters, abbeys sold like farms,
Deserted village churches, Christian babes
Amerced of Christian food. Bring forth the parchments!
From him the crowned transgressor to the least
The Censure falls on all.
Arch. of Sens
(entering).
Your Grace has heard it?—
The English king lies sick.
Bec.
Lies sick—alas!
I war not on the sick.
John of Sal.
The king excepted,
The Censure's naught. The heart of England burns,
And waits that stroke which, troubling not allegiance
In civil things, keeps pure the things of God:
A frost will fall upon that fiery heart,
The chiefest culprit spared.
Bec.
Let fall what may,
I strike not him that's down. My lord archbishop,
You come in time to hear the unrighteous banned
For crimes reiterate and denounced long since.
We sever from the Church the Church's foes,
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Richard of Ilchester, Thomas Fitz-Bernard,
Joceline of Salisbury bishop, Hugh St. Clare,
De Luci, yokemate in the guilt of others,
Joceline of Ballol, and, of baser sort,
Bandit, not knight, De Broc, one time a monk.
Sirs, write ye down the sentence: be it hung
On all the city gates through France and England;
From all the altars be it sounded forth
With tapers flung to the earth.
Scene IX.—A street in Southampton.
The Bishop of London, the Bishop of Salisbury.B. of Sal.
Becket's awake!
A storm and in our teeth!—
Let us give blow for blow!
Gil.
My lord, we dare not!
That Censure, like a dragon's tongue in the dust,
Hath sucked us insects up! The best is cowed:
Who swaggered three weeks since, to-day walks softly
As one that mourns his mother. Bend we must;
I fling me at his feet.
B. of Sal.
Ill-favoured Fortune
Leaves us no choice. Wait we for better winds.
Scene X.—Abbey of St. Colombe, near Sens.
Becket, Archbishop of Sens, Herbert of Bosham.Arch. of Sens.
Your king was fierce against you once, my lord;
At last his winter turns to spring.
Bec.
He changes:
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We have a better augury: his heart
Is good, and only on the good in man
The better can be built. The king, when crowned
At Gloucester, laid his crown upon the altar,
And vowed no more to wear it. Late when sick,
Deeming death near he chose for burial-place
No sepulchre of kings, but some poor church
Where slept a saint of God.
Her.
Meantime o'er England
The breath of God hath blown. The Royal Customs
Find not this hour an adulating tongue.
The bishops, vassals late of servile fear,
Through holier fear have burst that baser bond
And rush across the sea to pledge new faith.
Here comes a friend from Rome;—How stand we there?
If well, then all is well.
John of Sal.
(entering).
My lord, ill news!
The royal Swearer swore his way through all;
Let John of Oxford bear that name for ever!
The cardinals stared, the Holy Father doubted;
His doubts were vain; once more the Swearer swore,
Alternative was none save hollow peace
Or war without a foe.
Bec.
What swore this Swearer?
John of Sal.
He swore that compact with the antipope
Against King Henry charged was false as hell:
One youthful cardinal called him ‘Valiant Swearer;’
The rest sat statue-still.
Bec.
What swore he next?
John of Sal.
He swore the king should grant the Pope's demands
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To adjudicate our cause. His brother envoys
Banned him as traitor: but they railed in English,
And so he took no harm.
Bec.
The Pope replied,
‘Long since, and unsolicited by man,
My legate I appointed; he hath judged;
Remains but this—to enforce a righteous sentence.’
Replied not thus the Pope?
John of Sal.
Alas, not so!
Bec.
Have they no names? those arbiters—those legates?
John of Sal.
The Cardinal William and the Cardinal Otho.
Bec.
The first, mine enemy declared; the last,
A doubtful friend. Victory in victory's hour,
Dries up, like Jonah's gourd!
This new commission supersedes the old.
How stands the Censure?
John of Sal.
Men in peril of death
Until their case is sifted are absolved.
Bec.
All Wales aflame once more, who walks not perilled?—
The Censure's censured, and my name is made
A laughter to the world.
John of Sal.
This pact is secret;
In name your powers remain.
[An Attendant enters with a letter for Becket.
Bec.
From Rouen's bishop.
(Reads)
‘“Trust not in princes,” wear they mitre or crown!
King Henry maddens with his Roman triumph;
He boasts the names of those who clutched his gold
Extols the Pope; to England hastes; reports
249
The freedom of speech used by Becket was as great as that tolerated by him. It is thus that he wrote to his envoy at Rome on the appointment of the two legates whose commission virtually suspended his own legatine authority. The translation is that given in Mr. Hurrell Froude's valuable history of Becket's struggle, p. 242: ‘If this be true, then without doubt his lordship the Pope has suffocated and strangled, not only our own person, but himself and every ecclesiastic of both kingdoms; yea, both Churches together, the Gallican and the English. For what will not the kings of the earth dare against the clergy, under cover of this most wretched precedent? And on what can the Church of Rome rely, when it thus deserts and leaves destitute the persons who are making a stand in its cause, and contending for it even unto death.’ In a similar tone is his letter ‘To all the Cardinals’ written on the same occasion. (Ibid. 248-250.)
‘Smooth speeches are not for the wretched, nor guarded words for the bitter in soul. May my bitter thoughts be pardoned, my wretchedness indulged. It is our belief, most holy fathers, that you stand in high places, as God's delegates, to put aside injustice, to cut off presumption, to relieve the sorrowing priesthood, and stop the way against its persecutors; to assist the oppressed and punish the oppressors. . . . Trust then to me, my beloved lords, . . . resume your strength, gird yourselves with the Word of the Most High as with a sword. . . . This is the Royal way, this is the way that leadeth to life, this is the way that you must walk in if ye would follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ and the footsteps of His apostles whose vicars ye are. It is not by craft, it is not by wise schemes that the Church is to be governed, but by justice and by Truth.’
This remarkable freedom of speech neither implied nor was supposed to imply the slightest want of reverence on the part of Becket to the Holy See. Pope. Alexander received it as meekly as Becket himself had received the friendly reproof of his faithful cross-bearer, Llewellen.
There's one at least in Rome whom I can trust,
One near the Pope—in my name write, and thus:
‘Once more Barabbas is released; once more—
No, no; not thus:’ I should not have forgotten;
His realm is Christendom's unmeasured orb,
That which it is, and that which it shall be;
To him earth's kingdoms are but provinces,
Revolted some, within his Master's kingdom.
He must be patient, lest, in raising one,
He spurn its neighbour, tottering. Woe is me!
I am an islander with narrow heart,
And England-rooted eyes. I see my country,
Her laws made null by modern usages,
Her Scriptures by traditions slain of men,
Her poor down-trampled 'neath a bestial hoof;
Yea, scandals worse than these—subverted virtue;
Honour, long-outraged, ceasing from its shame;
The salt o' the earth daily its savour losing,
Self-sentenced to be trodden down by men.
Write thus—they'll guess but little how my heart
Beneath the words lies bleeding—‘Holy Father!
The endurance and the hopes of years are lost;
Henceforth what malefactor fears Church censures?
Who rises o'er the fear of worldly censors?
Sequestrated are seven fair English sees,
Abbeys untold.’ Men bid me to be patient!
Tell them that time makes patience sin; the years
Work for the foe, not us.
An Attendant
(entering).
Two cardinal legates,
But late commissioned from the Holy See,
Desire my lord the primate.
[Cardinal William of Pavia and Cardinal Otho enter.
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Please it your Grace,
In northward progress to King Henry's court
We make delay, zealous once more to see you
And learn your Grace's judgment of this time.
Bec.
My lords, your Eminences both are welcome.
John of Salisbury
(to the Archbishop of Sens.
Was ever change like that? But now his face
Was as a tempest's heart; 'tis now a heaven
Incapable of cloud.
Arch.
The princely nature,
The oppression past, regains its native calm
As by some natural law.
Card. Otho.
My lord archbishop,
A mutinous world uplifts this day its front
Against Christ's Vicar! Save this France and England,
I know not kingdom sound. The antipope,
Propped by the emperor—
Bec.
Name him not! That puppet,
Like frailer favourites of the Imperial fancy,
Shall have his day and pass.
Card. Will.
My lord archbishop,
We, uninspired, and shaped of common clay,
Can judge the present by the past alone,
And deem the Church sore set. Your English king,
Faithful till now, at last—we know it—wavers,
Nay makes his bargain with the antipope:
He was your pupil, through your wisdom wise;
He was your playmate, mirthful at your jest:
Your minstrel, ever singing of your praise;
From height to height he raised you. If he looked
For grateful love, a credulous hope is venial:
He says that you have raised two realms against him,
Flanders, and France.
251
Your Eminence may hear
From sources surer than that insect swarm
Which buzzes round the tingling ears of greatness,
From Louis, King of France, that from the first
I counselled him to peace. Lord cardinal,
My sin is this: to stand a living man
Where welcomer were a corpse—
I, not his flatterers, love my king and serve him
Speaking that truth which not to speak to kings,
Who seldom hear it, is the crown of treason;
Traitors are they, not I.
Card. Will.
The king complains
That you reject as new his Royal Customs.
Bec.
I bid him to reject that vice of kings
Which strangles earliest laws by modern Customs:
My lord, that vice is pride; that pride is royal,
But not the royallest royalty—not the lasting;
I bid him but to fling from him that vice,
And reign a great, sane king.
Card. Will.
A text there is
That ‘we are nothing better than our sires:’
Why not, my lord, in general terms engage
That what past prelates to their kings conceded
Therein you'll stint him not? In days like these,
The royal hand a-dipping in your dish,
Some plausible pretence—
Bec.
I ever scorned
Your plausible pretence. My lord, that water
Wherein of old the unjust judge washed his hands
Then when the Just before him stood condemned
With crown of mockery and a reed His sceptre,
Is extant still on this our earth, and streams
Perennial from that fountain-head accursed
By him that day infected, through all lands,
252
The font where specious virtue finds again
Her sin original, and to Christ's foe
Is unctuously baptized. Barbaric I—
Child of the northern forest, not of plains
In balms and oil redundant. I long since
Have known this thing and scorned it.
Card. Will.
Lord archbishop,
That freedom which the Pope from you permits
I need not grudge. In turn I too speak plainly:
My lord, through you the Church is ill at ease,
All Christendom perturbed. Resign, my lord!
Taranto, Southern Italy's chief see,
A northern saint its founder, lacks a shepherd,
And spreads to you her arms.
Bec.
Lord cardinal,
The chair of Peter in its own good time
Shall judge these Royal Customs. When that Voice,
At times commixed with baser sounds, sends forth
Authentic and oracular o'er the earth
Its great award, there lives not who shall bend
A humbler forehead to that hest than I.
If that award should free from servile yoke
My country and her Church, then sit who will
In Saint Augustine's chair. If that award
Should throne the ill use, Augustine's chair dishonour,
I ask no see in Italy or France,
By Seine, or Tiber, or the Tyrrhene wave;
I claim a hermit's cell 'mid England's woods,
Or where her wave-worn rocks are desolate most,
Therein to sing my penitential psalms,
Poor vespers of a life ill-spent. Till then
I flee not from my post.
Card. Otho.
My lord archbishop,
253
And bid your Grace farewell.
[The cardinals depart, attended by all except John of Salisbury.
Bec.
(after long musing).
Is no one near?
John of Sal.
My lord, I stand beside you.
Bec.
In yonder cloudless heaven the sun still shines;
The birds sing still; the peasant breaks the clod;
Not less a change hath fallen upon the earth—
Fear naught!
John of Sal.
I trust that all may yet go well.
Bec.
I looked for trials—ay, but not from him:—
The good French king will be the next to leave me.
(After a pause)
All shall go well—but in another sort
Than I had hoped till now. My vow is made.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |