Poems and miscellanies selected from the writings of Miss Eliza Townsend Printed but not published |
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| 5. | ACT V. |
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 | Poems and miscellanies selected from the writings of Miss Eliza Townsend |  |
254
ACT V.
Scene 1.
The English camp before Berwick. A distant view of the town, castle, river, with its vessels of war, &c.Tent of Edward III.
(Enter Donaldus, advancing, and speaks.)
DONALDUS.
Why ever thus, when called to exercise
My awful function, feel I such reluctance?
The dread decrees I utter are not mine,
And I believe them fully merited
And equitably ordered. Spite of this,
The weakness lingers still. Would that the prophet
Had mastered more the man! A Voice, they call me;
Would I were but a voice! I should not then—
Appointed to confront this throned transgressor
Just reeking from the gory spectacle
To angels and to men his wrath had raised—
Be conscious to aught other than his crimes,
Nor reck their threatened penal expiation.
Yes, let me think on the unnumbered wrongs
His mad career of conquest hath inflicted
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He meditates—till it shall rouse to rage
The spirit of the North, and raise within me
All the avenger.
[Goes to the entrance of the tent.
Edward of England!
EDWARD.
Who art thou, bold one?
DONALDUS.
Edward of England!
EDWARD.
Ha! what rash intruder
Invades our presence thus? Where are my guards?
DONALDUS.
Thy guards are vigilant; but they shrank back
When they regarded me.
(Neville enters to them and speaks.)
NEVILLE.
My liege, 'tis he;
That awful One I spake of. (To the king.)
EDWARD.
In Heaven's name!
What art thou, man?
256
I am the voice of one
To thee, O king, sent from the King of kings,
To speak thy doom. And I, too, am a monarch,
And wield a sceptre; though no outward ensigns
Blazon it forth. The Future is my kingdom!
I stretch my sceptre o'er its darkling realm,
Which none can wrest from me; the arm that seeks it
Must borrow weapons from archangel's armory—
Michael, or Gabriel!
EDWARD.
To the proof, vain boaster!
I dare the utmost that the Prince of Darkness
Speaks by that lying tongue.
DONALDUS.
Blasphemer! pause;
'Tis truth, as sure as thine adulterous mother
Murdered thy recreant father!
EDWARD.
Seize the caitiff! (To guards.)
DONALDUS.
They dare not—cannot! This is not my hour.
Its features have been shown me with the rest,
That when it comes I know, and bid it welcome.
257
Better it had come ere now—nay, better yet,
That thou hadst ne'er been born, than live to slander,
The head of England's chivalry.
DONALDUS.
I meant,
As him on whom the prophet stole had fallen,
But to deliver that I have received
To thee, O king, with prophet passiveness.
But, as one born of Caledonian blood,
Can I stand face to face with thee, thou spoiler,
Nor feel it boiling to be cooled in thine?
But thou art spared to be the scorpion scourge
Of neighboring nations round, till come the end;
When, like that ruthless reptile thou resemblest,
Thy sting shall turn, at last, against thyself.
EDWARD.
Now, by St. George and Christendom's seven champions!
Half of thy prophecy contents me well;
What warrior but must wish to prove a scourge
Unto his enemies? Thine other augury,
Sir Soothsayer, we'll withhold our credence from
Till some more special revelation force it.
DONALDUS.
Sir King, but late thou didst command me dumb;
Now, wouldst hear on, though hearing should appall thee.
258
Know, then—and this shall be to thee a sign—
Thy son, thy first-born and thy best beloved,
In war thy buckler, and in peace thy star,
Shall die before thine eyes! Nor in the field,
Girt by his glittering host, and cheered to conquest;
(As sets the sun upon the Solway's bed,
With rays of glory round;) the sable prince,
Like fiery comet, whose portentous train
Still terminates in gloom—shall meet his fate.
Low on th' ignoble couch, no more to rise,
'Mid countless pangs, and every pang a death,
Yet death delaying—heart-wrung, drop by drop,
Shall Edward and Phillippa's boast depart!
Yet for her sake, erewhile thy better angel,
Whose interposing pity saved from death
The burghers of Calais, (and, present here,
Had surely saved those unoffending striplings!)
For this the vials of the wrath to come
Shall not be all poured out upon thy person,
But part on thy posterity. Yet, know
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Even to its bitterest dregs. In token of it,
The conquests thou hast gained thou shalt restore
Ere thy career be closed. Thy very blessings
Shall prove thy bane. A numerous progeny,
The joy of other men, shall be to thee
And to thy realm the rankest seed of strife;
Like to those horrid teeth once sown in earth,
Whence sprang up armed men. Not Scotland, then,
But thy own England be the seat of war.
The feuds once fostered between Scot and Scot,
Clansman and chieftain, prince and people here,
By arts of thine and of thine emissaries,
Shall tenfold be returned on English heads.
I look! thy sworn successor dies by piecemeal,
The ling'ring death of famine! at the hands
Of his own brutal subjects, trained by thee
To direst deeds. I see that ancient tower,
Reared by the noblest Cæsar of the twelve,
What time he conquered Britain, though he failed
To conquer Caledon. That tower in ward
The sacred majesty of England holds,
And o'er him stands the crooked Plantagenet,
(Monstrous at once in body and in soul,)
His coward weapon in his captive's heart.
Again that tower! the same foul shape appears,
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Are 'reft of crown and life! But what of these?
Kings, princes, people, all are whelmed alike
In one vast tide of war. The crime of Cain
Renewed in each, ungraced with the remorse
Of the first man-slayer. Bosworth! Tewksbury!
Your fields are full before me. In mine ears
The clash of armor and the tramp of steeds,
And the fierce shout of triumph, strangely mingled
With the death-shriek, are there! The paler rose
Is bathed in blood, the while its sanguine sister
Glares with a deeper dye. This shall befall,
Tyrant, the latest limit of thy line;
Until, at length, athwart to England's sky,
Our northern light, our Stuart star shall gleam!
A hundred years of havoc shall avenge
The Wife of Seaton and the Siege of Berwick!
I am aware that the conquest of Calais did not occur till twelve or fifteen years after the date of this piece, at the invasion of Scotland by Edward III.; but the temptation to commemorate an illustrious woman, to whom literature no less than humanity is so much indebted, (the foundress of Queen's College, and the patroness of Chaucer,) prevailed with me to hazard the anachronism; which, however, is hardly such in the mouth of one to whom the future was as the past.
END OF THE TRAGEDY.
| Poems and miscellanies selected from the writings of Miss Eliza Townsend | |