University of Virginia Library

Scene I.—The Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.

The Empress, Idonea.
Empress.
Speak on, my child. Windsor's old oaks once more
While you discoursed of all your merry staghunts
Above me sighed, and kindlier airs than those
Which now I breathe with pain. Speak thou; I listen.
Had I but had such brother! Yours is dead:
Such loss means this, that he—none else—shall walk
Beside you still, when all save him are grey,
In youth unchanged.

Ido.
Not Time itself could change him!
That light which cheers me still from eyes unseen,
That wild sweet smile around imagined lips,
A moment's breathless, magic visitation,
Which falls upon me like a kiss and flies,
Are brighter not with everlasting youth
Than was his spirit. Mind he seemed, all mind!
In childhood, flower and weed and bird and beast
Nature's fair pageant to the eye of others,
To him were that and more. Old Bertram said
There lurked more insight in his pupil's questions
Than in conclusions of the sage self-styled.
He never had grown old!

Empress.
Boyhood might be
Fair as that girlhood poet-sung, and bright
Besides with action, courage, frank defiance
Conquering all ill, nor touched by maiden fear—
Oftenest its autumn chokes its spring. I trust
Your brother's youth was faithful to his boyhood.

Ido.
Faithful! O madam, how much more than faithful!
Vivacities of young intelligence
Were merged, not lost, in kindlings of a soul
Where Thought and Love seemed one. He trod an earth
The Saviour's; yea, and Mary's. All things shone
Beauteous to him, for God shone clear through all:
His longing was to free the Tomb of Christ
Fighting in Holy Land. Death's early challenge
Pleased him as well! ‘Thank God! that Holy Land
Was dear,’ he said;—‘more dear, more near, is Heaven!’

Empress
(after a long silence).
At twenty years—had my son died at twenty—
The last great day alone can answer that:
I did my best that time: I did it late
To stay that fatal war 'twixt him and Becket
Which inly wastes him like an atrophy—
Thenceforth you were alone.

Ido.
Not that first month:
Near me that time he seemed—a spiritual nearness
Impossible, I think, to flesh and blood:
Terrestrial life returned. 'Twas then I wept.

Empress.
Peace came at last.

Ido.
'Twas in a church, one even:
The choir had closed their books; but still on high
Rolled on the echoes of their last ‘Amen.’
Something within me sobbed, ‘Amen, so be it.’
I wept no more.

Empress.
Nay, nay, the dead have claims:
I love not those who cheat them of their due.
Child, grief is grief.

Ido.
I clasped it as God's gift,
And 'twixt my bosom and my arms it vanished.
Some wound seemed staunched. My body still was weak:
Wintry the woods: yet in my soul the more
God's happy spring made way. Slowly within me
My childhood's wish returned—to live a nun:
I deemed it first presumption; yea temptation;
It changed to hope. Faint was that hope, and like
The greening verge of some young tree in March,
When all its bulk is dark.

Empress.
With such a brother
Either you ne'er had stooped to earthly love,
Or love in you had lacked its earthlier part:
You hoped to be a nun: at last hope conquered.

Ido.
By hindrance helped. I seem to you unwedded:
Yet when the irrevocable vow was breathed
'Twas as a bride I felt—His bride, for Whom
Love grows divine through unreserved Obedience.
My brother too—while we were children both,
In loving, I obeyed him. Some there were
Who mocked me with the name of ‘Little wife.’
I weep him still; yet laugh at mine own tears
Knowing that he I weep is throned in heaven.

Empress.
A more than kingly lot!

Ido.
And yet how great
Is each day's commonest lot when judged aright!
Our convent looks on cottage-sprinkled vales:
Far, far below, now winds the marriage pomp,
The funeral now. O, who could see such things,
Nor help the world with prayer?

Empress.
What see you, child?

Ido.
An Eden, weed-o'ergrown, but still an Eden;
Man's noble life—a fragment, yet how fair!
My father, pilgrim once in southern lands,
Groping 'mid ruins found a statue's foot,
And brought it home. I gazed upon it oft
Until its smiling curves and dimpled grace
Showed me the vanished nymph from foot to brow,
Majestical and sweet. Man's broken life
Shows like that sad, sweet fragment.

Empress.
Life, my child,
In times barbaric is a wilderness:
In cultured times a street, or wrangling mart:
We bear it, for we must. 'Tis best in youth:
The weariness of life perplexes age:
The dust accumulate is worse than anguish:
We know not where the stain, but feel all stain.

(Looks at her long and adds)
O'er you some fifteen years may pass like five:
Die then if you are wise.
Ido.
O madam, madam,
God made man's life: it is a holy thing!
What builds us up that life? The Virtues, first;
That sisterhood divine, brighter than stars,
And diverse more than stars, than gems, than blossoms;
Diverse, yet each so wonderful, so fair:
The Virtues are our life in essence; next,
Those household ties which image ties celestial;
Lastly, life's blessed sorrows. These alone
Rehearse the Man of Sorrows; these alone
Fit us for life with Him.

Empress.
To you man's life
Is prospect, child: to me 'tis retrospect:
They that best know it neither love nor hate:
It hath affections, sorrowful things and sweet:
My share was mine, as daughter and as mother:
It hath its duties, stately taskmasters,
Exacting least in age, when, thanks to God,
At last the unselfish heart is forced upon us
Our time for joy gone by. It hath its cares:
It hath its passions—mine was once ambition;
And, lastly, it hath death.

Ido.
And death is peace.

Empress.
Then death and sleep are things, alas, unlike:
Unpeaceful dreams make my nights terrible—
Pale spectres of past days. Last night I seemed
Once more, as one whom midnight dangers scare,
To rush 'mid blinding snows with frozen feet
O'er the rough windings of an ice-bound river,
The shout of them that chased me close behind,
The wolf-cry in the woods.

Ido.
That flight from London,
Madam, was yours in sleep.

Empress.
Once more I dreamed:
Once more I fled through false and perjured lands,
Insurgent coasts of rebels vowed to slay me;
I lay within a coffin, on a bier,
With feet close tied. Fierce horsemen galloped past;
At times the traveller or the clown bent o'er me,
And careless said, ‘A corpse.’

Ido.
In such sad seeming
You 'scaped from Bristol.

Empress.
Worse, far worse, remained;
I heard once more the widows' wail at Gloucester;
At Winchester and Worcester once again
Above the crackling of the blazing roofs
I heard the avenging shout that hailed me queen,
And, staying not the bloodshed, shared the sin.
That hour of dream swelled out to centuries;
A year so racked would seem eternity:—
Our penance may prove such.

Ido.
Madam, your strength—

Empress.
A place there is which fits us for that heaven
Where nought unclean can live: else were we hopeless.
How think you of that region?

Ido.
Madam, thus:
That bourne is peace, since therein every will
Is wholly one with His, the Will Supreme;
Is gladness, since deliverance there is sure;
Is sanctity, since punishment alone
Of sin remains—sin's every wish extinct—
And yet is pain not less.

Empress.
There should be pain;—
Speak on; speak truth; I ne'er had gifts of fancy:
Truth is our stay in life, and more in death.

Ido.
'Tis pain love-born, and healed by love. On earth
Best Christian joy is joy in tribulations:
In that pure realm our grief hath root in joy:
'Tis pain of love that grieves to see not God.

Empress.
Here too sin hides from us God's face; yet here
Feebly we mourn that loss.

Ido.
So deeply here
Man's spirit is infleshed! Two moments are there
Wherein the soul of man beholds its God;
The first at its creation, and the next
The instant after death.

Empress.
It sees its Judge.

Ido.
And, seeing, is self-judged, and sees no longer:—

Readers of the higher poetry will hardly need to be reminded of a passage in Cardinal Newman's ‘Dream of Gerontius,’ by which, or by Saint Catherine of Genoa's beautiful Treatise on Purgatory, this line was probably suggested.

Yet rests in perfect peace. As some blind child,
Stayed in its mother's bosom, feels its safety,
So in the bosom of the love eterne,
Secure, though sad, it waits the eternal Vision,
The over-bending of that Face divine
Which now—now first—it knows to be its heaven,
That primal thirst of souls at last re-waked,
The creature's yearning for its great Creator.

Empress.
Pray that these pains may help me towards that Vision!
Till these my later years I feared not death:
Death's magnanimity, as death draws nigh,
Subdues that fear. My hope is in the Cross.
Whate'er before me lies, the eternal justice
Will send my pain, the eternal love console,
And He who made me prove at last my peace.
I hope so: at my best I think 'tis so.
Farewell! Return at morn; your words, your looks
Have brought me help. Be with me when I die.