Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Poems

By James Grahame. In Two Volumes

Grahame, James (1765-1811)

VOL. I.

II.

VOL.II.

[section]

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

II. VOL.II.

THE BIRDS OF SCOTLAND.

Per virides passim ramos sua tecta volucres
Concelebrant, mulcentque vagis loca sola querelis.
Buchanan.

I. PART FIRST.

The woodland song, the various vocal quires,
That harmonize fair Scotia's streamy vales;
Their habitations, and their little joys;
The winged dwellers on the leas, and moors,
And mountain cliffs; the woods, the streams, them-selves,
The sweetly rural, and the savage scene,—
Haunts of the plumy tribes,—be these my theme!

Come, Fancy, hover high as eagle's wing:
Bend thy keen eye o'er Scotland's hills and dales;
Float o'er her farthest isles; glance o'er the main;
Or, in this briery dale, flit with the wren,

From twig to twig; or, on the grassy ridge,
Low nestle with the lark: Thou, simple bird,
Of all the vocal quire, dwell'st in a home
The humblest; yet thy morning song ascends
Nearest to heaven,—sweet emblem of his song,
Who sung thee wakening by the daisy's side!

With earliest spring, while yet the wheaten blade
Scarce shoots above the new-fall'n shower of snow,
The skylark's note, in short excursion, warbles:
Yes! even amid the day-obscuring fall,
I've marked his wing winnowing the feathery flakes,
In widely-circling horizontal flight.
But, when the season genial smiles, he towers
In loftier poise, with sweeter, fuller pipe,
Chearing the ploughman at his furrow end,—
The while he clears the share, or, listening, leans
Upon his paddle-staff, and, with raised hand,
Shadows his half-shut eyes, trying to scan
The songster melting in the flood of light.

On tree, or bush, no Lark is ever seen:
The daisied lea he loves, where tufts of grass
Luxuriant crown the ridge; there, with his mate,
He founds their lowly house, of withered bents,

And coarsest speargrass; next, the inner work
With finer, and still finer fibres lays,
Rounding it curious with his speckled breast.
How strange this untaught art! it is the gift,
The gift innate of Him, without whose will
Not even a sparrow falleth to the ground.

And now the assiduous dam her red-specked treasure,
From day to day increases, till complete
The wonted number, blythe, beneath her breast,
She cherishes from morn to eve,—from eve
To morn shields from the dew, that globuled lies
Upon her mottled plumes: then with the dawn
Upsprings her mate, and wakes her with his song.
His song full well she knows, even when the sun,
High in his morning course, is hailed at once
By all the lofty warblers of the sky:
But most his downward-veering song she loves;
Slow the descent at first, then, by degrees,
Quick, and more quick, till suddenly the note
Ceases; and, like an arrow-fledge, he darts,
And, softly lighting, perches by her side.

But now no time for hovering welkin high,
Or downward-gliding strain; the young have chipped,
Have burst the brittle cage, and gaping bills

Claim all the labour of the parent pair.
Ah, labour vain! the herd-boy long has marked
His future prize; the ascent, and glad return,
Oft has he viewed; at last, with prying eyes,
He found the spot, and joyful thought he held
The full-ripe young already in his hand,
Or bore them lightly to his broom-roofed bield:
Even now he sits, amid the rushy mead,
Half-hid, and warps the skep with willow rind,
Or rounds the lid, still adding coil to coil,
Then joins the osier hinge: the work complete
Surveying, oft he turns, and much admires,
Complacent with himself; then hies away
With plundering intent. Ah, little think
The harmless family of love, how near
The robber treads! he stoops, and parts the grass,
And looks with eager eye upon his prey.
Quick round and round the parents fluttering wheel,
Now high, now low, and utter shrill the plaint
Of deep distress.—But soon forgot their woe:
Not so with man! year after year he mourns,
Year after year the mother weeps her son,
Torn from her struggling arms by ruffian grasp,
By robbery legalised.

Low in a glen,
Down which a little stream had furrowed deep,
'Tween meeting birchen boughs, a shelvy channel,

And brawling mingled with the western tide;
Far up that stream, almost beyond the roar
Of storm-bulged breakers, foaming o'er the rocks
With furious dash, a lowly dwelling lurked,
Surrounded by a circlet of the stream.
Before the wattled door, a greensward plat,
With daisies gay, pastured a playful lamb;
A pebbly path, deep-worn, led up the hill,
Winding among the trees, by wheel untouched,
Save when the winter fuel was brought home,—
One of the poor man's yearly festivals.
On every side it was a sheltered spot,
So high and suddenly the woody steeps
Arose. One only way, downward the stream,
Just o'er the hollow, 'tween the meeting boughs,
The distant wave was seen, with, now and then,
The glimpse of passing sail; but, when the breeze
Crested the distant wave, this little nook
Was all so calm, that, on the limberest spray,
The sweet bird chaunted motionless, the leaves
At times scarce fluttering. Here dwelt a pair,
Poor, humble, and content: one son alone,
Their William, happy lived at home to bless
Their downward years; he, simple youth,
With boyish fondness, fancied he would love
A seaman's life, and with the fishers sailed,
To try their ways, far 'mong the western isles,

Far as Saint Kilda's rock-walled shore abrupt,
O'er which he saw ten thousand pinions wheel
Confused, dimming the sky: These dreary shores
Gladly he left; he had a homeward heart:
No more his wishes wander to the waves.
But still he loves to cast a backward look,
And tell of all he saw, of all he learned;
Of pillared Staffa, lone Iona's isle,
Where Scotland's kings are laid; of Lewis, Sky,
And of the mainland mountain-circled lochs;
And he would sing the rowers timing chaunt,
And chorus wild. Once on a summer's eve,
When low the sun behind the highland hills
Was almost set, he sung that song, to cheer
The aged folks: upon the inverted quern
The father sat; the mother's spindle hung
Forgot, and backward twirled the half-spun thread;
Listening with partial well-pleased look, she gazed
Upon her son, and inly blessed the Lord,
That he was safe returned: Sudden a noise
Bursts rushing through the trees; a glance of steel
Dazzles the eye, and fierce the savage band
Glare all around, then single out their prey.
In vain the mother clasps her darling boy,
In vain the sire offers their little all:
William is bound; they follow to the shore,

Implore, and weep, and pray; knee-deep they stand,
And view, in mute despair, the boat recede.

But let me quit this scene, and bend my way
Back to the inland vales, and up the heights,
(Erst by the plough usurped,) where now the heath,
Thin scattered up and down, blooming begins
To re-appear: Stillness, heart-soothing, reigns,
Save, now and then, the partridge's late call;
Featly athwart the ridge she runs, now seen,
Now in the furrow hid; then, screaming, springs,
Joined by her mate, and to the grass-field flies:
There, 'neath the blade, rudely she forms
Her shallow nest, humble as is the lark's,
But thrice more numerous her freckled store.
Careful she turns them to her breast, and soft,
With lightest pressure sits, scarce to be moved;
Yes, she will sit, regardless of the scythe,
That nearer, and still nearer, sweep by sweep,
Levels the swarthe: Bold with a mother's fears,
She, faithful to the last, maintains her post,
And, with her blood, sprinkles a deeper red
Upon the falling blossoms of the field;—
While others, of her kind, content to haunt
The upland ferny braes, remote from man,
Behold a plenteous brood burst from the shell,
And run; but soon, poor helpless things, return,

And crowd beneath the fond inviting breast,
And wings outstretching, quivering with delight.
They grow apace; but still not far they range,
Till on their pinions plumes begin to shoot;
Then, by the wary parents led, they dare
To skirt the earing crofts; at last, full fledged,
They try their timorous wings, bending their flight
Home to their natal spot, and pant amid the ferns.
Oft by the side of sheep-fold, on the ground
Bared by the frequent hoof, they love to lie
And bask. O, I would never tire to look
On such a scene of peacefulness as this!
But nearer as I draw, with cautious step,
Curious to mark their ways, at once alarmed,
They spring; the startled lambs, with bickering haste,
Flee to their mother's side, and gaze around:
Far o'er yon whins the covey wing their way,
And, wheeling round the broomy know, elude
My following eye.—Fear not, ye harmless race;
In me no longer shall ye find a foe!
Even when each pulse beat high with bounding health,
Ere yet the stream of life, in sluggish flow,
Began to flag, and prematurely stop
With ever-boding pause, even then my heart
Was never in the sport; even then I felt,—
Pleasure from pain was pleasure much alloyed.

Alas, he comes! yes, yonder comes your foe,
With sure determined eye, and in his hand
The two-fold tube, formed for a double death.
Full soon his spaniel, ranging far and wide,
Will lead his footsteps to the very spot,
The covert thick, in which, falsely secure,
Ye lurking sit, close huddled, wing to wing:
Yes, near and nearer still the spaniel draws,
Retracing oft, and crossing oft his course,
Till, all at once, scent-struck, with pendant tongue,
And lifted paw, stiffened he panting stands.
Forward, encouraged by the sportsman's voice,
He hesitating creeps; when, flush, the game
Upsprings, and, from the levelled turning tubes,
The glance, once and again, bursts through the smoke.

Nor, 'mid the rigours of the wintry day,
Does savage man the enfeebled pinion spare;
Then not for sport, but bread, with hawk-like eye,
That needs no setter's aid, the fowler gaunt
Roams in the snowy fields, and downward looks,
Tracing the triple claw, that leads him on,
Oft looking forward, to some thawing spring,
Where, 'mid the withered iushes he discerns
His destined prey; sidelong he stooping steps,
Wary, and, with a never-erring aim,

Scatters the flock wide fluttering in the snow;—
The purpled snow records the cruel deed.

With earliest spring, while yet in mountain cleughs
Lingers the frozen wreath, when yeanling lambs,
Upon the little heath-encircled patch
Of smoothest sward, totter,—the gorcock's call
Is heard from out the mist, high on the hill;
But not till when the tiny heather bud
Appears, are struck the spring-time leagues of love.
Remote from shepherd's hut, or trampled fold,
The new-joined pair their lowly mansion pitch,
Perhaps beneath the juniper's rough shoots;
Or castled on some plat of tufted heath,
Surrounded by a narrow sable moat
Of swampy moss. Within the fabric rude,
Or e'er the new moon waxes to the full,
The assiduous dam eight spotted spheroids sees,
And feels beneath her heart, fluttering with joy.
Nor long she sits, till, with redoubled joy,
Around her she beholds an active brood
Run to and fro, or through her covering wings
Their downy heads look out; and much she loves
To pluck the heather crops, not for herself,
But for their little bills. Thus, by degrees,
She teaches them to find the food, which God
Has spread for them amid the desart wild,

And seeming barrenness. Now they essay
Their full-plumed wings, and, whirring, spurn the ground;
But soon alight fast by yon moss-grown cairn,
Round which the berries blae (a beauteous tint
Of purple, deeper dyed with darkest blue)
Lurk 'mid the small round leaves. Enjoy the hour,
While yet ye may, ye unoffending flock!
For not far distant now the bloody morn,
When man's protection, selfishly bestowed,
Shall be withdrawn, and murder roam at will.

Low in the east, the purple tinge of dawn
Steals upward o'er the clouds that overhang
The welkin's verge. Upon the mountain side,
The wakening covey quit their mother's wing,
And spread around: Lost in the mist,
They hear her call, and, quick returning, bless
A mother's eye. Meantime, the sportsman keen
Comes forth; and, heedless of the winning smile
Of infant day, pleading on mercy's side,
Anticipates, with eager joy, the sum
Of slaughter, that, ere evening hour, he'll boast
To have achieved;—and many a gory wing,
Ere evening hour, exultingly he sees,
Drop, fluttering, 'mid the heath,—even 'mid the bush,

Beneath whose blooms the brooding mother sat,
Till round her she beheld her downy young.

At last mild twilight veils the insatiate eye,
And stops the game of death. The frequent shot
Resounds no more: Silence again resumes
Her lonely reign; save that the mother's call
Is heard repeated oft, a plaintive note!
Mournful she gathers in her brood, dispersed
By savage sport, and o'er the remnant spreads
Fondly her wings; close nestling 'neath her breast,
They cherished cower amid the purple blooms.

While thus the heathfowl covey, day by day,
Is lessened, till, perhaps, one drooping bird
Survives,—the plover safe her airy scream
Circling repeats, then to a distance flies,
And, querulous, still returns, importunate;
Yet still escapes, unworthy of an aim.
Amid the marsh's rushy skirts, her nest
Is slightly strewn; four eggs, of olive hue,
Spotted with black, she broods upon: her young,
Soon as discumbered of the fragile shell,
Run lively round their dam. She, if or dog,
Or man, intrude upon her bleak domain,
Skims, clamouring loud, close at their feet, with wing
Stooping, as if impeded by a wound;

Meantime her young, among the rush-roots, lurk
Secure. Ill-omened bird! oft in the times
When monarchs owned no sceptre but the sword,—
Far in the heathy waste, that stretches wide
From Avendale to Loudon's high-coned hill,
Thou, hovering o'er the panting fugitive,
Through dreary moss and moor, hast screaming led
The keen pursuer's eye: oft hast thou hung,
Like a death flag, above the assembled throng,
Whose lips hymned praise, their right hands at their hilts;
Who, in defence of conscience, freedom, law,
Looked stern, with unaverted eyes, on death
In every form of horror. Bird of woe!
Even to the tomb thy victims, by thy wing,
Were haunted; o'er the bier thy direful cry
Was heard, while murderous men rushed furious on,
Profaned the sacred presence of the dead,
And filled the grave with blood. At last, nor friend.
Nor father, brother, comrade, dares to join
The train, that frequent winds adown the heights.
By feeble female hands the bier is borne,
While on some neighbouring cairn the aged sire
Stands bent, his gray locks waving in the blast.
But who is she that lingers by the sod,
When all are gone? 'Tis one who was beloved
By him who lies below: Ill-omened bird!

She never will forget, never forget,
Thy dismal soughing wing, and doleful cry.

Amid these woodless wilds, a small round lake
I've sometimes marked, girt by a spungy sward
Of lively green, with here and there a flower
Of deep-tinged purple, firmly stalked, of form
Pyramidal,—the shores bristling with reeds,
That midway over wade, and, as they bend,
Disclose the water lily, dancing light
On waves soft-rippled by the July gale;
Hither the long and soft-billed snipe resorts,
By suction nourished; here her house she forms;
Here warms her fourfold offspring into life.
Alas! not long her helpless offspring feel
Her fostering warmth; though suddenly she mounts,
Her rapid rise, and vacillating flight,
In vain defend her from the fowler's aim.

But let me to the vale once more descend,
And mingle with the woodland choir, and join
Their various song, and celebrate with them
The woods, the rocks, the streams, the bosky bourne,
The thorny dingle, and the open glade;
For 'tis not in their song, nor in their plumes,
Nor in their wonderous ways, that all their charm
Consists; No, 'tis the grove, their dwelling place,

That lends them half their charm, that still is linked,
By strong association's half-seen chain,
With their sweet song, wherever it is sung.
And while this lovely, this congenial theme,
I slightly touch, O, may I ne'er forget,
Nature, thy laws! be this my steady aim,
To vindicate simplicity; to drive
All affectation from the rural scene.

There are, who, having seen some lordly pile,
Surrounded by a sea of lawn, attempt,
Within their narrow bounds, to imitate
The noble folly. Down the double row
Of venerable elms is hewn. Down crash,
Upon the grass, the orchard trees, whose sprays,
Enwreathed with blooms, and waved by gentlest gales,
Would lightly at the shaded window beat,
Breaking the morning's slumber with delight,
Vernal delight. The ancient moss-coped wall,
Or hedge impenetrable, interspersed
With holly evergreen, the domicile
Of many a little wing, is swept away;
While, at respectful distance, rises up
The red brick-wall, with flues, and chimney tops,
And many a leafy crucifix adorned.
Extends the level lawn with dropping trees
New planted, dead at top, each to a post

Fast-collared, culprit like. The smooth expanse
Not one irregularity presents,
Not even one grassy tuft, in which a lark
Might find a home, and cheer the dull domain.
Around the whole, a line vermicular,
Of melancholy fir, and leaning larch,
And shivering poplar, skirting the way side,
Is thinly drawn. But should the tasteful Power,
Pragmatic, which presides, with pencilling hand,
And striding compasses, o'er all this change,
Get in his thrall some hapless stream, that lurks
Wimpling through hazelly shaw, and broomy glen,
Instant the axe resounds through all the dale,
And many a pair, unhoused, hovering lament
The barbarous devastation: All is smoothed,
Save here and there a tree; the hawthorn, brier.
The hazel bush, the bramble, and the broom,
The sloe-thorn, Scotia's myrtle, all are gone;
And on the well-sloped bank arise trim clumps,
Some round, and some oblong, of shrubs exotic,
A wilderness of poisons, precious deemed
In due proportion to their ugliness.

What though fair Scotland's vallies rarely vaunt
The oak majestical, whose aged boughs
Darken a roodhreadth! yet no where is seen,
More beauteously profuse, wild underwood;

No where 'tis seen more beauteously profuse,
Than on thy tangling banks, well-wooded Esk,
And, Borthwick, thine, above that fairy nook
Formed by your blending streams. The hawthorn there,
With moss and lichen grey, dies of old age;
Up to the topmost branches climbs the rose,
And mingles with the fading blooms of May;
While round the brier the honeysuckle wreaths
Entwine, and, with their sweet perfume, embalm
The dying rose: A never-failing blow,
From spring to fall, expands; the sloethorn white,
As if a flaky shower the leafless sprays
Had hung; the hawthorn, May's fair diadem;
The whin's rich dye; the bonny broom; the rasp
Erect; the rose, red, white, and faintest pink;
And long extending bramble's flowery shoots.

The bank ascend, an open height appears
Between the double streams that wind below:
Look round; behold a prospect wide and fair;—
The Lomond hills, with Fife's town-skirted shore,
The intervening sea, Inchkeith's grey rocks,
With beacon-turret crowned; Arthur's proud crest,
And Salisbury abrupt; the Pentland range,
Now peaked, and now, with undulating swell,
Heaved to the clouds: More near, upon each hand,

The sloping woods, bulging into the glade,
Receding then with easy artless curve.
Behind, a grove, of ancient trees, surrounds
The ruins of a blood-cemented house,
Half prostrate laid, as ever ought to lie
The tyrant's dwelling. There no martin builds
Her airy nest; not even the owl alights
On these unhallowed walls: The murderer's head
Was sheltered by these walls; hands blood-embrued
Founded these walls,—Mackenzie's purpled hands!—
Perfidious minion of a sceptred priest!
The huge enormity of crime on crime,
Accumulated high, but ill conceals
The reptile meanness of thy dastard soul;
Whose favourite art was lying with address,
Whose hollow promise helped the princely hand
To screw confessions from the tortured lips.
Base hypocrite! thy character, pourtrayed
By modern history's too lenient touch,
Truth loves to blazon, with her real tints,
To limn, of new, thy half-forgotten name,
Inscribe with infamy thy time-worn tomb,
And make the memory hated as the man.

But better far truth loves to paint yon house
Of humbler wall, half stone, half turf; with roof
Of mended thatch, the sparrow's warm abode;

The wisp-wound chimney, with its rising wreathe:
The sloping garden, filled with useful herbs,
Yet not without its rose; the patch of corn
Upon the brow; the blooming vetchy ridge.
But most the aged man, now wandering forth,
I love to view; for 'neath yon homely guise
Dwell worth, and simple dignity, and sense,
Politeness natural, that puts to shame
The world's grimace, and kindness crowning all.
Why should the falsely great, the glittering names,
Engross the muse's praise? My humble voice
They ne'er engrossed, and never shall: I claim
The title of the poor man's bard: I dare
To celebrate an unambitious name;
And thine, Kilgour, may yet some few years live,
When low thy reverend locks mix with the mould.

Even in a bird, the simplest notes have charms
For me: I even love the yellow-hammer's song.
When earliest buds begin to bulge, his note,
Simple, reiterated oft is heard
On leafless brier, or half-grown hedge-row tree;
Nor is he silent until autumn's leaves
Fall fluttering round his head of golden hue.
Fair plumaged bird! cursed by the causeless hate
Of every schoolboy, still by me thy lot
Was pitied! never did I tear thy nest:

I loved thee, pretty bird! for 'twas thy nest
Which first, unhelped by older eyes, I found.
The very spot I think I now behold!
Forth from my low-roofed home I wandered blythe,
Down to thy side, sweet Cart, where 'cross the stream
A range of stones, below a shallow ford,
Stood in the place of the now spanning arch;
Up from that ford a little bank there was,
With alder-copse and willow overgrown,
Now worn away by mining winter floods;
There, at a bramble root, sunk in the grass,
The hidden prize, of withered field-straws formed,
Well lined with many a coil of hair and moss,
And in it laid five red-veined spheres, I found.
The Syracusan's voice did not exclaim
The grand Heureka, with more rapturous joy,
Than at that moment fluttered round my heart.

How simply unassuming is that strain!
It is the redbreast's song, the friend of man.
High is his perch, but humble is his home,
And well concealed. Sometimes within the sound
Of heartsome mill-clack, where the spacious door,
White-dusted, tells him, plenty reigns around,—
Close at the root of brier-bush, that o'erhangs
The narrow stream, with shealings bedded white,—
He fixes his abode, and lives at will.

Oft near some single cottage, he prefers
To rear his little home; there, pert and spruce,
He shares the refuse of the goodwife's churn,
Which kindly on the wall for him she leaves:
Below her lintel oft he lights, then in
He boldly flits, and fluttering loads his bill,
And to his young the yellow treasure bears.

Not seldom does he neighbour the low roof
Where tiny elves are taught:—a pleasant spot
It is, well fenced from winter blast, and screened,
By high o'er-spreading boughs, from summer sun.
Before the door a sloping green extends
No farther than the neighbouring cottage-hedge,
Beneath whose boortree shade a little well
Is scooped, so limpid, that its guardian trout
(The wonder of the lesser stooping wights)
Is at the bottom seen.—At noontide hour,
The imprisoned throng, enlarged, blythesome rush forth
To sport the happy interval away;
While those from distance come, upon the sward,
At random seated, loose their little stores:
In midst of them poor Redbreast hops unharmed,
For they have read, or heard, and wept to hear,
The story of the Children in the Wood;
And many a crumb to Robin they will throw.

Some Redbreasts love amid the deepest groves
Retired, to pass the summer days: their song,
Among the birchen boughs, with sweetest fall,
Is warbled, pausing, then resumed more sweet,
More sad; that, to an ear grown fanciful,
The babes, the wood, the man, rise in review,
And Robin still repeats the tragic line.
But should the note of flute, or human voice,
Sound through the grove, the madrigal at once
Ceases; the warbler flits from branch to branch,
And, stooping, sidelong turns his listening head.

Ye lovers of his song, the greenwood path
Each morn duly bestrew with a few crumbs:
His friendship thus ye'll gain; till, by degrees,
Alert, even from your hand, the offered boon
He'll pick, half trustingly. Yes, I have seen
Him, and his mate, attend, from tree to tree,
My passing step; and, from my open hand,
The morsel pick, timorous, and starting back,
Returning still, with confidence increased.

What little birds, with frequent, shrillest chirp,
When honeysuckle flowers succeed the rose,
The inmost thicket haunt!—their tawny breasts,
Spotted with black, bespeak the youngling thrush,

Though less in size; it is the Redbreast's brood,
New flown, bewildered, still the downy tufts
Upon their heads. But soon their full fledged wings,
Long hesitating, quivering oft, they stretch:
At last, encouraged by the parent voice,
And leading flight, they reach the nearest bush,
Or, falling short, lie panting on the ground;
But, reassured, the destined aim attain.
Nor long this helpless state: Each day adds strength,
Adds wisdom, suited to their little sphere,
Adds independence, first of heavenly boons!

Released from all the duties, all the cares,
The keen, yet sweet solicitudes, that haunt
The parent's breast,—again the Redbreast's song
Trills from the wood, or from the garden bough.
Each season in its turn he hails; he hails,
Perched on the naked tree, spring's earliest buds:
At morn, at chilly eve, when the March sun
Sinks with a wintry tinge, and Hesper sheds
A frosty light, he ceases not his strain:
And when staid Autumn walks with rustling tread,
He mourns the falling leaf. Even when each branch
Is leafless, and the harvest morn has clothed
The fields in white, he, on the hoar-plumed spray,
Delights, dear trustful bird! his future host.

But farewell lessening days, in summer smile
Arrayed. Dark winter's frown comes like a cloud,
Whose shadow sweeps a mountain side, and scowls
O'er all the land. Now warm stack-yards, and barns,
Busy with bouncing flails, are Robin's haunts.
Upon the barn's half door he doubting lights,
And inward peeps.—But truce, sweet social bird!
So well I love the strain, when thou'rt my theme,
That now I almost tread the winter snows,
While many a vernal song remains unsung.

When snowdrops die, and the green primrose leaves
Announce the coming flower, the merle's note,
Mellifluous, rich, deep-toned, fills all the vale,
And charms the ravished ear. The hawthorn bush,
New-budded, is his perch; there the grey dawn
He hails; and there, with parting light, concludes
His melody. There, when the buds begin
To break, he lays the fibrous roots; and, see,
His jetty breast embrowned; the rounded clay
His jetty breast has soiled; but now complete,
His partner, and his helper in the work,
Happy assumes possession of her home;
While he, upon a neighbouring tree, his lay,
More richly full, melodiously renews.
When twice seven days have run, the moment snatch,
That she has flitted off her charge, to cool

Her thirsty bill, dipt in the babbling brook,
Then silently, on tiptoe raised, look in,
Admire: Five cupless acorns, darkly specked,
Delight the eye, warm to the cautious touch.
In seven days more expect the fledgeless young,
Five gaping bills. With busy wing and eye
Quick-darting, all alert, the parent pair
Gather the sustenance which heaven bestows.
But music ceases, save at dewy fall
Of eve, when, nestling o'er her brood, the dam
Has stilled them all to rest; or at the hour
Of doubtful dawning grey; then from his wing
Her partner turns his yellow bill, and chaunts
His solitary song of joyous praise.
From day to day, as blow the hawthorn flowers,
That canopy this little home of love,
The plumage of the younglings shoots and spreads,
Filling with joy the fond parental eye.
Alas! not long the parents' partial eye
Shall view the fledging wing; ne'er shall they see
The timorous pinion's first essay at flight.
The truant schoolboy's eager, bleeding hand,
Their house, their all, tears from the bending bush;
A shower of blossoms mourns the ruthless deed.
The piercing anguished note, the brushing wing,
The spoiler heeds not; triumphing, his way,

Smiling he wends: The ruined, hopeless pair,
O'er many a field follow his townward steps,
Then back return; and, perching on the bush,
Find nought of all they loved, but one small tuft
Of moss, and withered roots. Drooping they sit,
Silent: Afar at last they fly, o'er hill
And lurid moor, to mourn in other groves,
And soothe, in gentler grief, their hapless lot.

Meantime, the younger victims, one by one,
Drop off, by care destroyed, and food unfit.
Perhaps one, hardier than the rest, survives,
And 'tween the wicker bars, with fading weeds
Entwined, hung at some lofty window, hops
From stick to stick his small unvaried round;
While opposite, but higher still, the lark
Stands fluttering, or runs o'er his narrow field,
A span-breadth turf, tawny and parched, with wings
Quivering, as if to fly; his carol gay
Lightening the pale mechanic's tedious task.
Poor birds, most sad the change! of daisied fields,
Of hawthorn blooming sprays, of boundless air,
With melody replete, for clouds of smoke,
Through which the daw flies cawing steeple high;
Or creak of grinding wheels, or skillet tongue,
Shrilly reviling, more discordant still!

But what their wretchedness, parents or young,
Compared to that which wrings the human breast,
Doomed to lament a loss, than death more dire,—
The robbery of a child! Aye, there is wretchedness!
Snatched playful from the rosy bank, by hands
Inured to crimes, the innocent is borne
Far, far away. Of all the varying forms
Of human woe, this the most dire! To think
He might have been now sporting at your side,
But that, neglected, he was left a prey
To pirate hands! To think how he will shudder,
To see a hideous, haggard face attempt
To smile away his tears, caressing him
With horrible embrace, the while he calls
Aloud, in vain, to you! Nor does even time,—
Assuager of all other woes,—bring balm
To this: Each child, to boyish years grown up,
Reminds you of your boy! He might have been
Like this, fair, blooming, modest, looking down
With most engaging bashfulness: But now,
Instead of this, perhaps, with sable mask
Begrimed, he feebly totters 'neath a load,
More fitted to his cruel master's strength.
Perhaps, to manhood come, allured to sell
His life, his freedom, for some paltry pounds,
He now lies 'mong the numbered, nameless crowd,
That groan on gory fields, envying the dead!

Or, still more dreadful fate! dragged, trained, compelled,
To vice, to crimes, death-sentenced crimes, perhaps
Among those miserable names, which blot
The calendar of death, his is inscribed!

How much alike in habits, form, and size,
The merle and the mavis! how unlike
In plumage, and in song! The thrush's song
Is varied as his plumes; and as his plumes
Blend beauteous, each with each, so run his notes
Smoothly, with many a happy rise and fall.
How prettily, upon his parded breast,
The vividly contrasted tints unite
To please the admiring eye; so, loud and soft,
And high and low, all in his notes combine,
In alternation sweet, to charm the ear.

Full earlier than the blackbird he begins
His vernal strain. Regardless of the frown
Which winter casts upon the vernal day,
Though snowy flakes melt in the primrose cup,
He, warbling on, awaits the sunny beam,
That mild gleams down, and spreads o'er all the grove.
But now his song a partner for him gains;

And in the hazel bush, or sloe, is formed
The habitation of the wedded pair:
Sometimes below the never-fading leaves
Of ivy close, that overtwisting binds,
And richly crowns, with clustered fruit of spring,
Some riven rock, or nodding castle wall;
Sometimes beneath the jutting root of elm,
Or oak, among the sprigs, that overhang
A pebble-chiding stream, the loam-lined house
Is fixed, well hid from ken of hovering hawk,
Or lurking beast, or schoolboy's prowling eye;
Securely there the dam sits all day long,
While from the adverse bank, on topmost shoot
Of odour-breathing birch, her mate's blythe chaunt
Cheers her pent hours, and makes the wild woods ring.
Grudge not, ye owners of the fruited boughs,
That he should pay himself for that sweet music,
With which, in blossom time, he cheers your hearts!
Scare, if ye will, his timid wing away,
But, O, let not the leaden, viewless shower,
Vollied from flashing tube, arrest his flight,
And fill his tuneful, gasping bill with blood!

These two, all others of the singing quires,
In size, surpass. A contrast now behold:
The little woodland dwarf, the tiny wren,
That from the root-sprigs trills her ditty clear.

Of stature most diminutive herself,
Not so her wonderous house; for, strange to tell!
Her's is the largest structure that is formed
By tuneful bill and breast. 'Neath some old root,
From which the sloping soil, by wintry rains,
Has been all worn away, she fixes up
Her curious dwelling, close, and vaulted o'er,
And in the side a little gateway porch,
In which (for I have seen) she'll sit and pipe
A merry stave of her shrill roundelay.
Nor always does a single gate suffice
For exit, and for entrance to her dome;
For when (as sometimes haps) within a bush
She builds the artful fabric, then each side
Has its own portico. But, mark within!
How skilfully the finest plumes and downs
Are softly warped; how closely all around
The outer layers of moss! each circumstance
Most artfully contrived to favour warmth!
Here read the reason of the vaulted roof;
Here Providence compensates, ever kind,
The enormous disproportion that subsists
Between the mother and the numerous brood,
Which her small bulk must quicken into life.
Fifteen white spherules, small as moorland hare-bell,
And prettily bespecked like fox-glove flower,
Complete her number. Twice five days she sits,

Fed by her partner, never flitting off,
Save when the morning sun is high, to drink
A dewdrop from the nearest flowret cup.

But now behold the greatest of this train
Of miracles, stupendously minute;
The numerous progeny, demanding food,
Supplied by two small bills, and feeble wings
Of narrow range; supplied, aye, duly fed,
Fed in the dark, and yet not one forgot!

When whinny braes are garlanded with gold,
And, blythe, the lamb pursues, in merry chase,
His twin around the bush; the linnet, then,
Within the prickly fortress builds her bower,
And warmly lines it round, with hair and wool
Inwove. Sweet minstrel, may'st thou long delight
The whinny knowe, and broomy brae, and bank
Of fragrant birch! May never fowler's snare
Tangle thy struggling foot! Or, if thou'rt doomed
Within the narrow cage thy dreary days
To pine, may ne'er the glowing wire (Oh, crime accursed!)
Quench, with fell agony, thy shrivelling eye!
Deprived of air and freedom, shall the light
Of day, thy only pleasure, be denied?
But thy own song will still be left; with it,

Darkling, thou'lt soothe the lingering hours away;
And thou wilt learn to find thy triple perch,
Thy seed-box, and thy beverage saffron-tinged.
Nor is thy lot more hard than that which they
(Poor linnets!) prove in many a storied pile:
They see the light, 'tis true,—they see and know,
That light for them is but an implement
Of toil. In summer with the sun they rise
To toil, and with his setting beam they cease
To toil: nor does the shortened winter day
Their toil abridge; for, ere the cock's first crow,
Aroused to toil, they lift their heavy eyes,
And force their childish limbs to rise and toil;
And, while the winter night, by cottage fire,
Is spent in homebred industry, relieved
By harmless glee, or tale of witch, or ghost,
So dreadful, that the housewife's listening wheel
Suspends its hum, their toil protracted lasts:
Even when the royal birth, by wonderous grace,
Gives one half day to mirth, that shred of time
Must not be lost, but thriftily ekes out
To-morrow's and to-morrow's lengthened task.
No joys, no sports have they: what little time,
The fragment of an hour, can be retrenched
From labour, is devoted to a shew,

A boasted boon, of what the public gives,—
Instruction. Viewing all around the bliss
Of liberty, they feel its loss the more;
Freely through boundless air, they wistful see,
The wild bird's pinion past their prison flit;
Free in the air the merry lark they see
On high ascend; free on the swinging spray
The woodland bird is perched, and leaves at will
Its perch; the open quivering bill they see,
But no sweet note by them is heard, all lost,
Extinguished in the noise that ceaseless stuns the ear.

Here vice collected festers, and corrupts.
The female virtues fade; and in their stead,
Springs up a produce rank of noxious weeds.
And, if such be the effects of that sad system,
Which, in the face of nature's law, would wring
Gain from the labouring hands of playful children;
If such the effects, where worth and sense direct
The living, intellectual machines,
What must not follow, when the power is lodged
With senseless, sordid, heartless avarice?

Where, fancy, hast thou led me? No, stern truth,
'Tis thou hast led me from the pleasant sight
Of blossomed furze, and bank of fragrant birch.
And now once more I turn me to the woods,

With willing step, and list, closing my eyes,
The lulling, soothing sounds, that pour a balm
Into the rankled soul: the brooklet's murmur,
That louder to the ear, long listening, grows,
And louder still, like noise of many waters,
Yet not so loud but that the wild bee's buzz
Slung past the ear, and grasshopper's shrill chirp,
Are heard; for now the sultry hours unfurl
Each insect wing: the aimless butterflies,
In airy dance, cross and recross the mead;
The dragon-fly, in horizontal course,
Spins over-head, and fast eludes the sight.

At such a still and sultry hour as this,
When not a strain is heard through all the woods,
I've seen the shilfa light from off his perch,
And hop into a shallow of the stream,
Then, half afraid, flit to the shore, then in
Again alight, and dip his rosy breast
And fluttering wings, while dewlike globules coursed
The plumage of his brown-empurpled back.
The barefoot boy, who, on some slaty stone,
Almost too hot for touch, has watching stood,
Now thinks the well-drenched prize his own,
And rushes forward;—quick, though wet, the wing
Gains the first branches of some neighbouring tree,

And baulks the upward gazing hopeless eye.
The ruffling plumes are shook, the pens are trimmed,
And full and clear the sprightly ditty rings,
Cheering the brooding dam: she sits concealed
Within the nest deep-hollowed, well disguised
With lichens grey, and mosses gradual blent,
As if it were a knurle in the bough.

With equal art externally disguised,
But of internal structure passing far
The feathered concaves of the other tribes,
The goldfinch weaves, with willow down inlaid,
And cannach tufts, his wonderful abode.
Sometimes, suspended at the limber end
Of planetree spray, among the broad leaved shoots,
The tiny hammock swings to every gale;
Sometimes in closest thickets 'tis concealed;
Sometimes in hedge luxuriant, where the brier,
The bramble, and the plumtree branch,
Warp through the thorn, surmounted by the flowers
Of climbing vetch, and honeysuckle wild,
All undefaced by art's deforming hand.
But mark the pretty bird himself! how light,
And quick, his every motion, every note!
How beautiful his plumes! his red-ringed head;
His breast of brown; and see him stretch his wing,—
A fairy fan of golden spokes it seems.

Oft on the thistle's tuft he, nibbling, sits,
Light as the down; then, 'mid a flight of downs,
He wings his way, piping his shrillest call.
Proud Thistle! emblem dear to Scotland's sons!
Begirt with threatening points, strong in defence,
Unwilling to assault! By thee the arm
Of England was repelled; the rash attempt,
Oft did the wounded arm of England rue.
But fraud prevailed, where force had tried in vain:
Fraud undermined thy root, and laid thy head,
Thy crested head, low sullied in the dust.
Belhaven, Fletcher, venerated shades!
Long shall your glorious names, your words of fire,
Spite of beledgered Trade's corrupting creed,
That estimates a country by its gold,
And balances surrendered freedom's self,—
The life-blood of a people!—with a show
Of columns crowded full of pounds and pence;
Long shall your names illume the historic page,
Inspire the poet's lay, kindle the glow
Of noble daring in the patriot's breast!

Deep-toned (a contrast to the goldfinch note)
The cushat plains; nor is her changeless plaint
Unmusical, when with the general quire,
Of woodland harmony, it softly blends.

Her sprig-formed nest, upon some hawthorn branch,
Is laid so thinly, that the light of day
Is through it seen: So rudely it is formed,
That oft the simple boy, who counts the hours
By blowing off the dandelion downs,
Mistakes the witch-knots for the cushat's nest.
Sweet constant bird! the lover's favourite theme!
Protected by the love-inspiring lay,
Seldom thou mov'st thy home; year after year,
The self-same tree beholds thy youngling pair
Matured to flight.—There is a hawthorn tree,
With which the ivy arms have wrestled long;
'Tis old, yet vigorous: beneath its shade
A beauteous herb, so rare, that all the woods,
For far and near around, cannot produce
Its like, shoots upright; from the stalk
Four pointed leaves, luxuriant, smooth, diverge,
Crowned with a berry of deep purple hue.
Upon this aged thorn, a lovely pair
Of cushats wont to build: No schoolboy's hand
Would rob their simple nest; the constant coo,
That floated down the dell, softened his heart.
But ah! the pirate of the rock, the hawk,
Hovering, discerned the prize: Soft blew the gale
Of may, and full the greenwood chorus rose,
All but the sweet dove's note: In vain the ear
Turned listening; strewn upon the ground,

The varying plumes, with drooping violets mixed,
Disclosed the death the beauteous bird had died.

Where are your haunts, ye helpless birds of song,
When winter's cloudy wing begins to shade
The emptied fields; when ripening sloes assume
Their deepest jet, and wild plums purple hang
Tempting, yet harsh till mellowed by the frost?
Ah, now ye sit crowding upon the thorns,
Beside your former homes, all desolate,
And filled with withered leaves; while fieldfare flocks
From distant lands alight, and, chirping, fly
From hedge to hedge, avoiding man's approach.

Of all the tuneful tribes, the Redbreast sole
Confides himself to man; others sometimes
Are driven within our lintel-posts by storms,
And, fearfully, the sprinkled crumbs partake:
He feels himself at home. When lours the year,
He perches on the village turfy copes,
And, with his sweet but interrupted trills,
Bespeaks the pity of his future host.
But long he braves the season, ere he change
The heaven's grand canopy for man's low home;
Oft is he seen, when fleecy showers bespread
The house tops white, on the thawed smiddy roof,
Or in its open window he alights,

And, fearless of the clang, and furnace glare,
Looks round, arresting the uplifted arm,
While on the anvil cools the glowing bar.
But when the season roughens, and the drift
Flies upward, mingling with the falling flakes
In whirl confused,—then on the cottage floor
He lights, and hops, and flits, from place to place,
Restless at first, till, by degrees, he feels
He is in safety: Fearless then he sings
The winter day; and when the long dark night
Has drawn the rustic circle round the fire,
Waked by the dinsome wheel, he trims his plumes,
And, on the distaff perched, chaunts soothingly
His summer song; or, fearlessly, lights down
Upon the basking sheep-dog's glossy fur;
Till, chance, the herd-boy, at his supper mess,
Attract his eye, then on the milky rim
Brisk he alights, and picks his little share.

Besides the Redbreast's note, one other strain,
One summer strain, on wintry days is heard.
Amid the leafless thorn, the merry Wren,
When icicles hang dripping from the rock,
Pipes her perennial lay; even when the flakes,
Broad as her pinions, fall, she lightly flies
Athwart the shower, and sings upon the wing.

While thus the smallest of the plumy tribes
Defies the storm, others there are that fly,
Long ere the winter lours, to genial skies;
Nor this cold clime revisit, till the blooms
Of parting spring blow 'mid the summer buds.

Burns.

Thrush.

The allusion here is chiefly to Cotton-mills.

Chaffinch.

II. PART SECOND.

How sweet the first sound of the cuckoo's note!—
Whence is the magic pleasure of the sound?
How do we long recal the very tree,
Or bush, near which we stood, when on the ear
The unexpected note, cuckoo! again,
And yet again, came down the budding vale?
It is the voice of spring among the trees;
It tells of lengthening days, of coming blooms;
It is the symphony of many a song.
But, there, the stranger flies close to the ground,
With hawklike pinion, of a leaden blue.
Poor wanderer! from hedge to hedge she flies,
And trusts her offspring to another's care:

The sooty-plum'd hedge-sparrow frequent acts
The foster-mother, warming into life
The youngling, destined to supplant her own.
Meanwhile, the cuckoo sings her idle song,
Monotonous, yet sweet, now here, now there,
Herself but rarely seen; nor does she cease
Her changeless note, until the broom, full blown,
Give warning, that her time for flight is come.
Thus, ever journeying on, from land to land,
She, sole of all the innumerous feathered tribes,
Passes a stranger's life, without a home.

Home! word delightful to the heart of man,
And bird, and beast!—small word, yet not the less
Significant:—Comprising all!
Whatever to affection is most dear,
Is all included in that little word,—
Wife, children, father, mother, brother, friend.
At mention of that word, the seaman, clinging
Upon the dipping yard-arm, sees afar
The twinkling fire, round which his children cow'r,
And speak of him, counting the months, and weeks,
That must pass dreary o'er, ere he return.
He sighs to view the sea-bird's rapid wing.

O, had I but the envied power to chuse
My home, no sound of city bell should reach

My ear; not even the cannon's thundering roar.
Far in a vale, be there my low abode,
Embowered in woods where many a songster chaunts.
And let me now indulge the airy dream!
A bow-shot off in front a river flows,
That, during summer drought, shallow and clear,
Chides with its pebbly bed, and, murmuring,
Invites forgetfulness; half hid it flows,
Now between rocks, now through a bush-girt glade,
Now sleeping in a pool, that laves the roots
Of overhanging trees, whose drooping boughs
Dip midway over in the darkened stream;
While ever and anon, upon the breeze,
The dash of distant waterfall is borne.
A range of hills, with craggy summits crowned,
And furrowed deep, with many a bosky cleugh,
Wards off the northern blast: There skims the hawk
Forth from her cliff, eyeing the furzy slope
That joins the mountain to the smiling vale.
Through all the woods the holly evergreen,
And laurel's softer leaf, and ivied thorn,
Lend winter shelter to the shivering wing.
No gravelled paths, pared from the smooth-shaved turf,
Wind through these woods; the simple unmade road,
Marked with the frequent hoof of sheep or kine,
Or rustic's studded shoe, I love to tread.
No threatening board forewarns the homeward hind,

Of man-traps, or of law's more dreaded gripe.
Pleasant to see the labourer homeward hie
Light hearted, as he thinks his hastening steps
Will soon be welcomed by his children's smile!
Pleasant to see the milkmaid's blythesome look,
As to the trysting thorn she gaily trips,
With steps that scarcely feel the elastic ground!
Nor be the lowly dwellings of the poor
Thrust to a distance, as unseemly sights.
Curse on the heartless taste that, proud, exclaims,
“Erase the hamlet, sweep the cottage off;
“Remove each stone, and only leave behind
“The trees that once embowered the wretched huts.
“What though the inmates old, who hoped to end
“Their days below these trees, must seek a home,
“Far from their native fields, far from the graves
“In which their fathers lie,—to city lanes,
“Darksome and close, exiled? It must be so;
“The wide extending lawn would else be marred,
“By objects so incongruous.” Barbarous taste!
Stupidity intense! Yon straw-roofed cot,
Seen through the elms, it is a lovely sight!
That scattered hamlet, with its burn-side green,
On which the thrifty housewife spreads her yarn,
Or half-bleached web, while children busy play,
And paddle in the stream,—for every heart,
Untainted by pedantic rules, hath charms.

I love the neighbourhood of man and beast:
I would not place my stable out of sight.
No; close behind my dwelling, it should form
A fence, on one side, to my garden plat.
What beauty equals shelter, in a clime
Where wintry blasts with summer breezes blend,
Chilling the day! How pleasant 'tis to hear
December's winds, amid surrounding trees,
Raging aloud! how grateful 'tis to wake,
While raves the midnight storm, and hear the sound
Of busy grinders at the well filled rack;
Or flapping wing, and crow of chanticleer,
Long ere the lingering morn; or bouncing flails,
That tell the dawn is near! Pleasant the path
By sunny garden-wall, when all the fields
Are chill and comfortless; or barn-yard snug,
Where flocking birds, of various plume, and chirp
Discordant, cluster on the leaning stack,
From whence the thresher draws the rustling sheaves.

O, nature! all thy seasons please the eye
Of him who sees a Deity in all.
It is His presence that diffuses charms
Unspeakable, o'er mountain, wood, and stream.
To think that He, who hears the heavenly choirs,
Hearkens complacent to the woodland song;
To think that He, who rolls yon solar sphere,

Uplifts the warbling songster to the sky;
To mark His presence in the mighty bow,
That spans the clouds, as in the tints minute
Of humblest flower; to hear his awful voice
In thunder speak, and whisper in the gale;
To know, and feel His care for all that lives;—
'Tis this that makes the barren waste appear
A fruitful field, each grove a paradise.
Yes! place me 'mid far stretching woodless wilds,
Where no sweet song is heard; the heath-bell there
Would soothe my weary sight, and tell of Thee!
There would my gratefully uplifted eye
Survey the heavenly vault, by day,—by night,
When glows the firmament from pole to pole;
There would my overflowing heart exclaim,
The heavens declare the glory of the Lord,
The firmament shews forth his handy work!

Less loud, but not less clear, His humbler works
Proclaim his power; the swallow knows her time,
And, on the vernal breezes, wings her way,
O'er mountain, plain, and far-extending seas,
From Afric's torrid sands to Britain's shore.
Before the cuckoo's note, she, twittering, gay,
Skims o'er the brook, or skiffs the greenwood tops,
When dance the midgy clouds in warping maze
Confused: 'tis thus, by her, the air is swept

Of insect myriads, that would else infest
The greenwood walk, blighting each rural joy:
For this,—if pity plead in vain—O, spare
Her clay-built home! Her all, her young, she trusts,
Trusts to the power of man: fearful, herself
She never trusts; free, the long summer morn,
She, at his window, hails the rising sun.—
Twice seven days she broods; then on the wing,
From morn to dewy eve, unceasing plies,
Save when she feeds or cherishes her young;
And oft she's seen, beneath her little porch,
Clinging supine, to deal the air-gleaned food.

From her the husbandman the coming shower
Foretells: Along the mead closely she skiffs,
Or o'er the streamlet pool she skims, so near,
That, from her dipping wing, the wavy circlets
Spread to the shore: then fall the single drops,
Prelusive of the shower.

The martins, too,
The dwellers in the ruined castle wall,
When low'rs the sky a flight less lofty wheel.
Presageful of the thunder peal, when deep
A boding silence broods o'er all the vale,
From airy altitudes they stoop, and fly
Swiftly, with shrillest scream, round and around
The rugged battlements; or fleetly dart

Through loopholes, whence the shaft was wont to glance;
Or thrid the window of the lofty bower,
Where hapless royalty, with care-closed eyes,
Woo'd sleep in vain, foreboding what befel,—
The loss of friends, of country, freedom, life!

Long ere the wintry gusts, with chilly sweep,
Sigh through the leafless groves, the swallow tribes,
Heaven-warned, in airy bevies congregate,
Or clustering sit, as if in deep consult
What time to launch; but, lingering, they wait,
Until the feeble of the latest broods
Have gathered strength, the sea-ward path to brave.
At last the farewell twitter spreading sounds;
Aloft they fly, and melt in distant air.
Far o'er the British sea, in westering course,
O'er the Biscayan mountain-waves they glide:
Then o'er Iberian plains, through fields of air,
Perfumed by orchard groves, where lowly bends
The orange bough beneath its juicy load,
Thence over Calpe's thunder-shielded rock
They stretch their course to Mauritania's plains.

There are who doubt this migratory flight.
But wherefore, from the distance of the way,
Should wonder verge on disbelief,—the bulk
So small, the buoyant wing so large and strong?

Behold the corn-craik; she, too, wings her way
To other lands: ne'er is she found immersed
In lakes, or buried torpid in the sand,
Though weak her wing contrasted with her bulk.
Seldom she rises from the grassy field,
And never till compelled; and, when upraised,
With feet suspended, awkwardly she flies;
Her flight a ridge-breadth: suddenly she drops,
And, running, still eludes the following foot.

Poor bird, though harsh thy note, I love it well!
It tells of summer eves, mild and serene,
When through the grass, waist-deep, I wont to wade
In fruitless chace of thee; now here, now there,
Thy desultory call. Oft does thy call
The midnight silence break; oft, ere the dawn,
It wakes the slumbering lark; he upward wings
His misty way, and, viewless, sings and soars.

III. PART THIRD.

Farewell the greenwood, and the welkin song!
Farewell the harmless bill!—The o'erfolding beak,
Incurvated: the clutching pounce; the eye,
Ferocious, keen, full-orbed; the attitude
Erect; the skimming flight; the hovering poise;
The rapid sousing stroke;—these now I sing!

How fleet the Falcon's pinion in pursuit!
Less fleet the linnet's flight!—Alas, poor bird!
Weary and weak is now thy flagging wing,
While close and closer draws the eager foe.
Now up she rises, and, with arrowed pinions,
Impetuous souses; but in vain: With turn

Sudden, the linnet shuns the deadly stroke,
Throwing her far behind; but quick again
She presses on: Down drops the feeble victim
Into the hawthorn bush, and panting sits.
The falcon, skimming round and round, espies
Her prey, and darts among the prickly twigs.
Unequal now the chace! struggling she strives,
Entangled in the thorny labyrinth,
While easily its way the small bird winds,
Regaining soon the centre of the grove.

But not alone the dwellers of the wood
Tremble beneath the falcon's fateful wing.
Oft hovering o'er the barn-yard is she seen,
In early spring, when round their ruffling dam
The feeble younglings pick the pattering hail:
And oft she plunges low, and swiftly skims
The ground; as oft the bold and threatening mien
Of chanticleer deters her from the prey.

Amid the mountain fells, or river cliffs
Abrupt, the falcon's eyry, perched on high,
Defies access: broad to the sun 'tis spread,
With withered sprigs hung o'er the dizzy brink.
What dreadful cliffs o'erhang this little stream!
So loftily they tower, that he who looks
Upward, to view their almost meeting summits,

Feels sudden giddiness, and instant grasps
The nearest fragment of the channel rocks,
Resting his aching eye on some green branch
That midway down shoots from the creviced crag.
Athwart the narrow chasm fleet flies the rack,
Each cloud no sooner visible than gone;
While 'tween these natural bulwarks, that deride
The art of man, murmurs the hermit brook,
And joins, with opened banks, the full-streamed Clyde.

How various are thy aspects, noble stream!
Now gliding silently by sloping banks,
Now flowing softly with a silver sound,
Now rushing, tumbling, boiling, through the rocks.
Even on that bulging verge smooth flows thy stream,
Then spreads along a gentle ledge, then sweeps
Compressed by an abutting turn, till o'er
It pours tremendously; again it sweeps
Unpausing, till, again, with louder roar,
It mines into the boisterous wheeling gulph;
While high the boulted foam, at times, displays
An Iris arch, thrown light from rock to rock;
And oft the swallow through the misty cloud
Flits fearlessly, and drinks upon the wing.
O, what an amphitheatre surrounds
The abyss, in which the downward mass is plunged,
Stunning the ear! High as the falcon's flight,

The rocks precipitous ascend, and bound
The scene magnificent; deep, deep below,
The snowy surge spreads to a dark expanse.

These are the rocks on which the youthful eye
Of Wallace gazed, the music this he loved.
Oft has he stood upon the trembling brink,
Unstayed by tree or twig, absorbed in thought;
There would he trace, with eager eye, the oak,
Uprooted from its bank by ice-fraught floods,
And floating o'er the dreadful cataract:
There would he moralize upon its fate;—
It re-appears with scarce a broken bough,
It re-appears,—Scotland may yet be free!

High rides the moon amid the fleecy clouds,
That glisten, as they float athwart her disk;
Sweet is the glimpse that, for a moment, plays
Among these mouldering pinnacles:—but, hark!
That dismal cry! It is the wailing owl.
Night long she mourns, perched on some vacant niche,
Or time-rent crevice: Sometimes to the woods
She bends her silent, slowly moving wing,
And on some leafless tree, dead of old age,
Sits watching for her prey; but should the foot
Of man intrude into her solemn shades,
Startled, he hears the fragile, breaking branch

Crash as she rises:—farther in the gloom,
To deeper solitudes she wings her way.

Oft in the hurly of the wintry storm,
Housed in some rocking steeple, she augments
The horror of the night; or when the winds
Exhausted pause, she listens to the sound
Of the slow-swinging pendulum, till loud
Again the blast is up, while lightning-gleams
Shoot 'thwart, and ring a fearful, deadly toll.

On ancient oak, or elm, whose topmast boughs
Begin to fail, the raven's twig-formed house
Is built; and, many a year, the self same tree
The aged solitary pair frequent.
But distant is their range; for oft at morn
They take their flight, and not till twilight grey
Their slow returning cry hoarse meets the ear.

Well does the raven love the sound of war.—
Amid those plains, where Danube darkly rolls,
The theatres, on which the kingly play
Of war is oftenest acted, there the peal
Of cannon-mouths summons the sable flocks
To wait their death-doomed prey; and they do wait:
Yes, when the glittering columns, front to front
Drawn out, approach in deep and awful silence,

The raven's voice is heard hovering between.
Sometimes upon the far-deserted tents
She boding sits, and sings her fateful song.
But in the abandoned field she most delights,
When o'er the dead and dying slants the beam
Of peaceful morn, and wreaths of reeking mist
Rise from the gore-dewed sward: from corpse to corpse
She revels, far and wide; then, sated, flies
To some shot-shivered branch, whereon she cleans
Her purpled beak; and down she lights again,
To end her horrid meal: another, keen,
Plunges her beak deep in yon horse's side,
Till, by the hungry hound displaced, she flits
Once more to human prey.

Ah, who is he
At whose heart-welling wound she drinks,
Glutting her thirst! He was a lovely youth;
Fair Scotia was his home, until his sire
To swollen Monopoly resigned, heart-wrung,
The small demesne which his forefathers plowed:
Wide then dispersed the family of love.
One son betook him to the all-friendly main;
Another, with his aged parents, plied
The sickly trade, in city garret pent;
Their youngest born, the drum and martial show,—
Deluded half, and half despairing,—joined;
And soon he lay the food of bird and beast.

Long is his fate unknown; the horrid sum
Of dead is named, but boding fear is left,
Enlabyrinthed in doubt, to please itself
With dark, misgiving hope. Ah, one there is,
Who fosters long the languid hope, that still
He may return: The live-long summer day
She at the house-end sits; and oft her wheel
Is stopt, while on the road, far-stretched, she bends
A melancholy, eye-o'erflowing look;
Or strives to mould the distant traveller
Into the form of him who's far away.
Hopeless, and broken-hearted, still she loves
To sing, When wild war's deadly blast was blawn.

Alas! War riots with increasing rage.
Behold that field bestrewn with bleaching bones;
And, mark! the raven in the horse's ribs,
Gathering, engaged, the gleanings of a harvest
Almost forgotten now: Rejoice, ye birds of prey!
No longer shall ye glean your scanty meals;
Upon that field again long prostrate wreaths,
Death-mown, shall lie: I see the gory mound
Of dead, and wounded, piled, with here and there
A living hand, clutching in vain for help.

But what the horrors of the field of war,
To those, the sequel of the foiled attempt
Of fettered vengeance struggling to be free!—
Inhuman sons of Europe! not content
With dooms of death, your victim high ye hung
Encaged, to scorch beneath the torrid ray,
And feed, alive, the hungry fowls of heaven.
Around the bars already, see, they cling!
The vulture's head looks through; she strives in vain
To force her way: The lesser birds await
Till worn-out nature sinks; then on they pounce,
And tear the quivering flesh: in agony
The victim wakes, and rolls his wretched eyes,
And feebly drives the ravening flocks away.
Most dreadfully he groans: 'tis thirst, thirst, thirst,
Direst of human torments!—down again
He sinks;—again he feels the torturing beak.

England, such things have been, and still would be,
But that the generous band, the stedfast friends
Of Afric's sons, stand ready to avenge
Their wrongs, and chain the tyrant arm.

One of that band of brothers is no more:
The voice of freedom's firmest friend is mute.
O what a spirit heavenward has forsook
This darkened orb! In him was meekly blent

Intelligence all but intuitive,
With infantine simplicity of soul;—
But vain is language to pourtray that mind,
That system, comprehensive, yet exact,—
As vain as man's poor efforts to describe,
By mimic spheres with gilded satellites,
The march stupendous of the starry host.
His eloquence!
There too all language, but his own, would fail;
For who from glimmering sparks that crackling gleam
From art's electric ordnance, could conceive
The thunder's voice, that awes the world to silence;
The vivid flash that passes like a thought
From heaven to earth, or thwart the welkin's cope,
The hemisphere illuming with its blaze!
But these are not remembrances that glad
Thy gentle soul: No; 'mid celestial joys
Not one to thee bliss more congenial brings,
Than memory of thy stedfastness long tried,
Immoveable, unwearied in the cause
Of Afric's sons by freemens' hands enslaved,
Than does the hope, now almost realized,
That on the blood-stained coast where murder's flag
Streamed more terrific than the lion's mane,
The father shall lay down his head in peace
Among his infants on their leafy couch,
Nor wake from dreams of horror that he hears

The white man's voice dooming him to be torn
From children, wife, from father, brother, friend,
Or, more disastrous still! that all most dear
To his wrung heart his destiny must share.

Yet not to thee, spirit benign! is due
The highest praise, for Africa restored
To human rights: There is a man, endowed
With eloquence, sublime as was the cause,
With fortitude undaunted by defeat,
With confidence derived from trust in heaven,
Who moved, inspired the combination grand
Of virtues, talents, ranged on mercy's side,
Who shuns applause, whose actions are his name.

On distant waves, the raven of the sea,
The cormorant, devours her carrion food.
Along the blood-stained coast of Senegal,
Prowling, she scents the cassia-perfumed breeze
Tainted with death, and, keener, forward flies:
The towering sails, that waft the house of woe,
Afar she views: upon the heavy hulk,
Deep-logged with wretchedness, full fast she gains:
(Revolting sight! the flag of freedom waves
Above the stern-emblazoned words, that tell
The amount of crimes which Britain's boasted laws,
Within the narrow wooden walls, permit!)

And now she nighs the carnage-freighted keel,
Unscared by rattling fetters, or the shriek
Of mothers, o'er their ocean-buried babes.
Lured by the scent, unweariedly she flies,
And at the foamy dimples of the track
Darts sportively, or perches on a corpse.

From scenes like these, O, Scotland, once again
To thee my weary fancy fondly hies,
And, with the eagle, mountain-perched, alights.
Amid Lochaber's wilds, or dark Glencoe,
High up the pillared mountain's steepest side,
The eagle, from her eyry on the crag
Of over-jutting rock, beholds afar.
Viewing the distant flocks, with ranging eye
She meditates the prey; but waits the time
When seas of mist extend along the vale,
And, rising gradual, reach her lofty shore:
Up then to sunny regions of the air
She soars, and looks upon the white-wreathed summits
Of mountains, seeming ocean isles; then down
She plunges, stretching through the hazy deep;
Unseen she flies, and, on her playful quarry,
Pounces unseen: The shepherd knows his loss,
When high o'erhead he hears a passing bleat
Faint, and more faintly, dying far away.

And now aloft she bends her homeward course,
Loaded, yet light; and soon her youngling pair,
Joyful descry her buoyant wing emerge
And float along the cloud; fluttering they stoop
Upon the dizzy brink, as if they aimed
To try the abyss, and meet her coming breast;
But soon her coming breast, and outstretched wings,
Glide shadowing down, and close upon their heads.

It was upon the eagle's plundered store
That Wallace fared, when hunted from his home,
A glorious outlaw! by the lawless power
Of freedom's foiled assassin, England's king.
Along the mountain cliffs, that ne'er were clomb
By other footstep than his own, 'twas there
His eagle-visioned genius, towering, planned
The grand emprise of setting Scotland free.
He longed to mingle in the storm of war;
And as the eagle dauntlessly ascends,
Revelling amid the elemental strife,
His mind sublimed prefigured to itself
Each circumstance of future hard-fought fields,—
The battle's hubbub loud; the forceful press,
That from his victim hurries him afar;
The impetuous close concentrated assault,
That, like a billow broken on the rocks,
Recedes, but forward heaves with doubled fury.

When low'rs the moveless, massive rack, high piled,
And silence deep foretells the thunder near,
The eagle upward penetrates the gloom,
And, far above the fire-impregnate wreaths,
The ethereal-towered volcanos soaring views;
Till, muttering low at first, begins the peal;
Then she descends,—she loves the thunder's voice,
She wheels, and sports amid the rattling clouds,
Undazzled gazes on the sheeted blaze,
Darts at the flash, or, hung in hovering poise,
Delighted hears the music of the roar.
Nor does the wintry blast, the drifting fall,
Shrouded in night, and, with a death-hand grasp,
Benumbing life, drive her to seek the roof
Of cave, or hollow cliff; firm on her perch,
Her ancient and accustomed rock, she sits,
With wing-couched head, and, to the morning light,
Appears a frost-rent fragment, coped with snow.

Yet her, invulnerable as she seems
By every change of elemental power,
The art of man, the general foe of man,
And bird, and beast, subdues; the leaden bolt,
Slung from the mimic lightning's nitrous wing,
Brings low her head; her close and mailed plumage
Avails her nought,—for higher than her perch
The clambering marksman lies, and takes his aim

Instant upon her flight, when every plume
Ruffling expands to catch the lifting gale.
She has the death; upward a little space
She springs, then plumb down drops: The victor stands,
Long listening, ere he hear the fall; at last,
The crashing branches of the unseen wood,
Far down below, send echoing up the sound,
That faintly rises to his leaning ear.
But, woe to him! if, with the mortal wound,
She still retain strength to revenge the wrong:
Her bleeding wing she veers; her maddened eye
Discerns the lurking wretch; on him she springs;
One talon clutched, with life's last struggling throes
Convulsed, is buried at his heart; the other
Deep in his tortured eyeballs is transfixed:
Pleased, she expires upon his writhing breast.

Of bulk more huge, and borne on broader vans,
The eagle of the sea from Atlas soars,
Or Teneriffe's hoar peak, and stretches far
Above the Atlantic wave, contemning distance.
The watchful helmsman from the stern descries,
And hails her course, and many an eye is raised.
Loftier she flies than hundred times mast-height:
Onward she floats, then plunges from her soar
Down to the ship, as if she aimed to perch

Upon the mainmast pinnacle; but up again
She mounts Alp high, and, with her lowered head
Suspended, eyes the bulging sails, disdains
Their tardy course, outflies the hurrying rack,
And, disappearing, mingles with the clouds.

The first line of “The Soldier's Return,” a song by Burns.

MARY STEWART, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

A DRAMATIC POEM.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
[_]

Speakers' names have been abbreviated in this text. The abbreviations used for major characters are as follows:

For Eliz read Elizabeth

For Mel. read Melvil

For Mont. read Montgomery

For Doug. read Douglas

For Adel. read Adelaide

For Ham. read Hamilton

For Glen. read Glencairn

For Mur. read Murray

For Stew. read Stewart

For Crawf. read Crawford

For Len. read Lennox

For Arg. read Argyle

For Bern. read Bernard

For Wing. read Wingfield

For Fran. read Francisco

Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots.
Elizabeth, Queen of England.
Adelaide, Heiress of the Count de Verneúil in France.
Lady Lochleven.
Melvil, Ambassador from Mary to Elizabeth.
George Douglas, Brother to the Keeper of Lochleven Castle.
Montgomery, Douglas's friend.
Hamilton, Brother to the Earl of Arran.
Argyle, of the Queen's party.
Cecil, Secretary of State to Elizabeth.
Earl of Murray, Regent of Scotland.
Stewart, his Son.
Glencairn,One of Murray's partizans
Crawford,One of Murray's partizans
Duke of Lennox, One of Murray's partizans
Bernard, a Friar.
A Shepherd.
Wingfield, an Emissary of Elizabeth.
Francisco, a Spanish Friar.
Warders of Lancaster Castle.
Burgesses, Soldiers, Guards, Gypsies, &c.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

—The Presence Chamber in Windsor Castle.
Elizabeth enters, with her Train. Walks to a Chair of State. Melvil kneels, and rises.
Eliz.
You are welcome, Melvil.

Mel.
God save your Highness!

Eliz.
How fares the Queen of Scots, our much-loved sister?

Mel.
As captive queens are wont.

Eliz.
Still in the castle of Lochleven isle?

Mel.
Still there she languishes. Alas! to her
Day after day forms but one tedious night
Of gloomy suffering, with scarce a hope

Of dawn, unless your Highness interpose
In her behalf. O! did you but behold
That beauteous, fading form—

Eliz.
And is that form as fair as rumour says?

Mel.
She is so fair—words cannot tell how fair!

Eliz.
Describe this paragon.

Mel.
Describe!—

Eliz.
Try, try; I'll question you.

Mel.
It is in vain.

Eliz.
Her brow?

Mel.
'Tis seldom seen, save when the zephyr parts
The raven lock, that as in envy shades it.

Eliz.
What foolery!—
[Aside.
Her eye?

Mel.
A middle 'tween the falcon's and the dove's.

Eliz.
Her cheek?

Mel.
An opening wild rose, of the faintest blush.
In each the slightest smile a dimple shows,—
The Scylla and Charybdis of the Loves,
In which unwary hearts sad shipwreck meet.

Eliz.
How sounds her voice?

Mel.
In speech, gentle as when the west wind's breath
Sighs through the new-downed willow leaves; in song
Mellifluous, full, then floating,—floating soft
As Echo answering Philomela's plaint.

Eliz.
And does she touch the harp with equal skill?

Mel.
The chords, though struck with careless sweep, speak love,
Like Cupid's wing along Apollo's lyre;
And with the notes so sweet is blent her voice
In magic harmony, that none may know
Which is the voice, and which the silver string.

Eliz.
Good, good: That she excels
(Although your words sound more like love than truth)
In each external grace, we know:—But tell me,
Is she much versed in languages?

Mel.
She speaks the tongues of Scotland and of France
With equal grace: Italia's is her sport:
Each dialect her people use she knows;
And to the humblest she so suits her phrase,
That rustic maids, at first abashed, look up,
Thinking they hear a sister-cottager.

Eliz.
And is she liberal, as becomes a queen?

Mel.
Her hand is Heaven; her charity
On the receiver falls darkling, like dew
On flowers, unseen from whence, yet weighing down,
With overloaded cup, their bending stalks.

Eliz.
But is she just, as generous? What she gives
Belongs not to herself, but to the state.

Mel.
She has—she had—her own, the royal lands.

Eliz.
But tell me, Melvil,

Does your fair mistress poise the scales of justice
With even hand—like me, with steady hand?

Mel.
Yes, she is just; but yet—mercy too oft
Inclines the balance wrong. I have beheld
This beauteous Queen half kneel, with eyes suffused,
Praying her surly chancellor to stop
The warrant winged with death; and she would lay
Her hand on his, with softly-pleading pressure,
Until she saw his fixed regard relax
Into a smile contending with a frown.
But if a judge (and she was eagle-eyed)
Were found perverting justice 'gainst the poor,
Her look how changed! Not the famed censor's brow,
When dashing from the tablet venal names,
Was e'er more sternly knit.

Eliz.
Which is more fair, the Queen of Scots or I?

Mel.
She within Scotland's realm, in England you.

Eliz.
To-morrow here we shall concert
What should be done for your much-injured mistress,
Our dearest sister. Farewell.—
[Exit Melvil.
Aye, let her pine until her radiant eyes
Sink lustreless, till fades the rose's glow.
No more shall silent crowds hang on her smile;
Bent o'er the watery mirror that surrounds her,
Herself shall be her sole idolater:
There to her answering image she may pour
The unavailing incense of her tears.—

Enter Cecil.

What from the Commons House? It is my will
That the five leaders of the mutiny
Enjoy their privilege of speech, their freedom
Within the liberties of London Tower.
I called them for their money, not advice.
Go, let my order instant be obeyed.
But, Cecil, stay—The Queen of Scots, our sister,
Has suffered now enough: What shall be done
To succour so much beauty in distress?

Cecil.
Her husband's murderess!
The foiled usurper of your diadem!
Remember how she quartered England's arms
On Scotland's shield. One crown was not enough,
And ne'er will be, for her o'ergrown ambition.
Remember, too, she has—
A son, who will inherit her ambition
And her claims.

Eliz.
But would you let her languish in a prison,
Till youth and beauty fade? Think, could you bear
To see my fate the same? Ah! could you see
My cheek grow pale! the lustre of—

Cecil.
No, that can never be; no change of fortune
Could e'er impair such peerless charms as yours;
Beauty that—
But I must haste to expedite the warrants.

Eliz.
Stay, stay, good Cecil, stay a little while.
What was you just about to say?

Cecil.
I must be gone.

Eliz.
Nay, Cecil, gentle Cecil, stay one instant.

Cecil.
No, no, the prating rebels may escape.

[Exit.
Eliz.
I've acted well: He does not see how much
I hate this queen, this paragon: His words
Were all superfluous to such hate as mine.
She has a son—I need none to remind me:
She is a mother—May her infant perish!
And her next bantling be—yes, may it be
Some biform monster, for her double crown,
And born with power of speech, to curse its birth!

[Exit.

SCENE II.

—Lochleven Island.
(Time—Sunset.)
Enter Douglas and Montgomery, meeting.
Mont.
What, just from Stirling?—Is the infant crowned?

Doug.
How is the Queen?—a queen no more:—and Adelaide?

Mont.
I think they're yonder on the terrace—No,

That cannot be the Queen.

Doug.
It is—for that I'm sure is Adelaide.
The Queen ne'er leans on any other arm
Save Adelaide's. O, what a friend is there!
So young, so stedfast, born to wealth and power,
Preferring still a prison with her friend
To all the mirth and revelry of France.

Mont.
I ne'er could think she was of foreign lineage;
She speaks as ours had been her native tongue.

Doug.
From earliest years she was the Queen's companion.
I've heard her say, her first embroidery
Was the joint labour of the Queen and her;
And, with prophetic fondness, in the work
They entertwined the letters of their names.
But sure you jest in saying that her speech
Is free from foreign accent?

Mont.
At times I think it is discernible.

Doug.
No, it is not; or, if at all discerned,
'Tis but a hesitation in some words,
Which hang most prettily between her lips,
Like new-fledged birds, when from their native rosebush
They fluttering stoop to try their timorous wings.

Mont.
I fear her words have nestled in thy heart.

Doug.
'Tis even so; my thoughts are all of her.

Montgomery, I will trust thee:—
Oft for her sake I've formed the perilous plan
To aid the Queen's escape—'Tis in my power.
Say, will you share the generous enterprise?

Mont.
Think, Douglas, ere you act; your brother's life
Might be the forfeit of the Queen's escape.
And what your recompence for all the risk?
Trust me, you but contrive your own dispeace.
Beware, while yet 'tis time; for, though she's humble,
The heiress of the noble Count Verneúil,
So near allied to the royal house of France,
She would disdain a nameless gentleman.

Doug.
And I disdain the motive you surmise.
However much I love, she ne'er shall know;
No word, no whisper, sigh, or look, shall hint it.
But is it possible she should believe
That my design could ever have its rise
In some base, grovelling, interested purpose,
Some distant vista of her rich demesnes?
'Tis possible—
Rather than undergo such degradation
In her fair judgment, Honour's holiest temple,—

Mont.
Perhaps I err; perhaps she'd ne'er admit
One thought detractive of your worth.

Doug.
And shall my honour hang on a perhaps?
But granting that, to liberty restored,

She should absolve me of all selfish ends,
What then? Perhaps I might receive her thanks,
United with the thanks of some great lord,
To whom she had resigned her new-gained freedom:
While I, poor I, perhaps should be a guest,
A humble guest, may be, allowed to strut
A puppet in the hymeneal pageant.
No, no, she still must wear this watery chain.

Mont.
Douglas, I pity thee.

Doug.
Pity! for what? By day I here behold
Beauty which makes these beauteous scenes seem tame;
And when the night enshrouds that prison tower,
I bask me in the taper's ray that shoots
From Adelaide's iron casement thwart the gloom.
Here, here she shall remain.

Mont.
They come this way.

Doug.
O, what a grace adorns her every motion!
Here—no, this is no place for thee—I will
Thou shouldst be free—I will it.

Mont.
Be calm, I pray; they're near.

Doug.
Her eye!—

Enter Mary and Adelaide.
Mary.
'Tis of the coronation that you speak?
What news from Stirling castle? How did the crown
Befit the baby's brow? Speak freely all.

Doug.
An please your Grace, I must speak sadly then;
Yet 'tis soon told. Your son was crowned king
Of Scotland, Mona, and the Hebrid isles.
It was, in truth, a childish ceremony.

Mary.
Who held
The mother's crown above her infant's head?

Doug.
Knox;—and, as he held it up,
He smiled contempt upon the kingly bauble.

Mary.
Who gave the sceptre?

Doug.
It was not given.

Mary.
How?

Doug.
What cannot be received cannot be given:
'Twas but presented by the Earl of Ross.
The infant stretched its little hand and smiled,
Then cried to see the glittering toy withdrawn.

Mary.
O that I had been there to soothe my child!
May be I might have been allowed to kiss
The tear from off his cheek:—No, no, the touch
Would taint him with my faith, my wretched faith.
O that the haughty Murray would permit
A mother once again to see her child!
But just once more to lift his cradle veil!
Perhaps he'd smile: Remembrance of that smile
Might serve to cheer my gloomy prison hours.
O were I but his nurse! what happiness!—
'Tis not allowed: A mother not allowed

To be her infant's nurse!

Doug.
Barbarity!
Monstrous barbarity!

Mary.
No voice, no angel's voice,
Can like a mother's sing her child to sleep.

Doug.
Shall Murray's fiat cancel nature's law?

Mary.
Look down and see in circling flight that lark,
Reflected in the bosom of the lake;
It has a home; it is allowed to stretch
Its pinions o'er its young.

Doug.
You shall be free.

Mont.
I vow you shall be free.

Mary.
I ask not liberty; I could submit,
Like any captive slave, to tend my son:
But this cannot be hoped from Murray's pity;
From him who tore me from my child; who wrenched
My finger from his clinging hand,
Which with its feeble grasp seemed to beseech
That I would not forsake him: Then I thought,
Perhaps this orphan hand may one day hold
The avenging sword o'er tyrant Murray's head.

Doug.
I'll serve your Highness with my life.

Mont.
And I.

Mary.
Think not of serving me; I've now no power
To give rewards; I am no more a queen.
Look at yon lily through my window bars,
,Tis withering apace; it has no root:—

I am that rootless flower;—
Think not of serving me;
I have no recompence to offer you.

Doug.
We wish for none—You know us not. I could—
But have you courage? Wish you to be free?

Mary.
What do you mean?—free! O, free!

Doug.
I could inform your Highness of some things
That nearly do concern your freedom.

Mary.
What?—say!

Adel.
Say—O speak!

Doug.
Each night some trusty friends on yonder shore
In secret lurk, ready to aid your flight.
'Tis scarce an hour since, when about to cross,
I communed with the Earl of Arran's brother.
We had been friends even from our boyish days;—
He trusted me:—This night it is his turn
To watch within St Servan's wood:—He brings
A wing-hoofed courser for your majesty.

Adel.
God bless the youth, the gallant Hamilton!

Doug.
And yet there is great hazard in the attempt.
What if it should misgive?—I lose my life.
That to be sure is nothing; but your Grace
Would be a sufferer too; and you, fair lady,
Should know that, if we fail, her Grace's durance
Would then be doubly rigid.—Could you attend

Your royal friend into a dungeon-vault?

Adel.
Aye, to the bottom of the vilest cavern;
Where toads would loath to dwell, where tapers die,
My friendship's fire would then but blaze more brightly.

Doug.
Fear not, the risk is small; you shall, you shall
Be free; yes! you shall meet your gallant Hamilton,
But if it should misgive,—the risk—You lose
The little liberty which here you have.
Perhaps they'd banish you to some far shore:—
Shut in a tower in some lone sea-girt isle,
Beholding through the spray-worn prison grate
No sight but waves, or sky, or distant sail;
Hearing no sound but of the weary surge,
With now and then the sea-mew's passing scream,
Borne down the wind,—
Ah! then you would lament that e'er you left
This pretty islet, where you seem to dwell
In durance sweet, like some benighted bee
Pent in a flower-bell at the close of eve.—
But yet, an' please your Grace, if 'tis your will
[To the Queen.
To brave the danger which I have described,
Our service (for Montgomery too I vouch)
Is yours. The castle keys are in my keeping:—

Ere midnight, if you will, your way is free:
I'll lead you through the postern to this spot;—
And to yon elm-roots I have moored a skiff.

Mary.
(After a pause.) And I will trust you.—
What say you, Adelaide?

Adel.
I too will trust you.

Doug.
I see the Lady of Lochleven come
With chiding face. Be ye prepared.

[Exeunt Douglas and Montgomery.
Enter Lady Leven.
Leven.
Madam, your hour is out—you'll please return;
And, if you'll lay aside that crucifix,
That monstrous emblem of idolatry,
You'll be permitted to attend
The exhortations of a holy man.
The hour of prayer draws nigh;—your soul,
Your shipwrecked soul, may yet be saved,
If pride will let you hear the words of life:
Your prayer might reach the throne of grace, if borne
Upon the breathings of a soul elect.

Mary.
The supplications of the wretched reach
The God of mercies, though not winged with words
Of holy men.

Leven.
You must, you shall attend.

Mary.
Will you not give the freedom which you ask?
Say which religion acts the tyrant now?

Leven.
Your tyranny had nigh o'erthrown the law
Of God and man; ours is the hallowed cause
Of liberty and pure religion; yours
Of superstition and despotic sway.

Mary.
O, liberty!
What crimes are acted in thy sacred name!
In thy insignia scarfed, how monsters riot!
With clouds of incense stolen from thy shrine,
They veil their horrible Atean orgies,
And with thy pæans drown the victim's voice.

Leven.
Haste to thy chamber, else I'll dash
Thy idol cross upon the ground, and tear
That rosary for playthings to my boys.

Mary.
I go—I'm in your power.

Adel.
A day of retribution yet will come.

[Aside.
Leven.
Haste, muttering minion, to thy chamber.

[Exeunt Mary and Adelaide, followed by Lady Leven.

SCENE III.

—Shore of the main Land between St Servan's Wood and the Lake.
(Time—Night.)
Enter Montgomery, looking round. Hamilton seen in the back Ground.
Ham.
Who comes?

Mont.
Is it Lord Hamilton who speaks?

Ham.
Aye, and Montgomery's friend.
Are all things ready?

Mont.
All right. You'll see the Queen—'tis near the time:
Where are the horses?

Ham.
Behind these trees; listen, the night's so still,
You'll hear them browsing on the dewy blade.

Mont.
They are not loose?

Ham.
No, no, they're led. I would the Queen were mounted.

Mont.
It is full time.

Ham.
I dread cross accidents—Look, see yon lights!

Mont.
That!

Ham.
But hist!—a dash and motion in the lake!
The stars that in it shone so steadily,

See how they dance—The boat is surely off.

Mont.
'Tis but the springing of the sportive fry.
I wish indeed we heard the dash of oars.

Ham.
But list again.

Mont.
Yes, now I think I hear the joyful sound—
It is—they're safe—I hear the quick-plied oars:
You'll see anon the little bark approach.
Alas! how changed the royal equipage
From what it was upon that jubilee day,
When Mary Stewart, in a barge of state,
Approached the Lothian beach! Graceful she stood,
With one hand clasped around the rose-wreathed post,
Which o'er her head upheld a silken sky,
Tinged faintly with a broken-vaulted rainbow.
At intervals was heard a quire of flutes,
Breathing such lays!—
The listening waves seemed music lulled, heaving
With noiseless swell, that gently raised
And yet half yielded 'neath the gilded prow.
Then what a shout! as kneeled the beauteous Queen,
Weeping with joy, to kiss her native soil!
The flowers, tear-sprinkled, sprung to meet her lips,
And wreathed themselves into her floating tresses.
Rising, she clasped her hands, and looked to heaven.
O! 'twas a day of which, from sun to sun,
I ne'er should tire to speak. But see, they near—
Woes me, how changed!—stealing away by night.

Ham.
They come, they come; there, look—how near the shore.
I think I see a moving darkness—a cloud
Swift gliding o'er the inverted galaxy,
In quick succession hiding the deep stars.

Mont.
They near—how fast they near—their voices—list!—
That soothing voice is Adelaide's; she's cheering
The doubting spirits of the Queen.

Ham.
What means that gleamy waving in the gloom?

Mont.
'Twill be her Highness' hand signing the cross.
Haste, let us welcome them—I see they mean
To land upon the rock.

[Exeunt.
(Noise, Voices heard.)—Re-enter Hamilton and Montgomery, with Mary and Adelaide, Douglas and Fishermen.
Mary.
Mother of God, I thank thee!

Adel.
Holy Virgin!

Doug.
Rest for a moment on this mossy plat.

Adel.
Is it your Grace's pleasure here to stop?

Mary.
No, not one instant.
The alarm was given ere we had midway come;
I heard the clanking of the draw-bridge chains;
And see yon crossing lights along the island!

Doug.
Fear not.

Mary.
The shadow of a tree,

Or even the rustling of a single leaf,
Or trickling of a dewdrop,
Would make me quake: My mind, alas! 'tis crushed;
Captivity has quite unnerved my soul.
Where are we going?

Ham.
To Hamilton; your Highness' friends are there.

Mary.
O take me to my child; he's with his foes:
Remove me on a bier to where he is:
I dare not sit a fiery courser now.

Adel.
Think, Mary, Queen of Scots; act like yourself;
You'll not undo what now is half achieved.
To horse! you now are, if you will, a queen.
Your people's welfare summons you to act.

Mary.
Yes, Now I feel I'm free—again a queen;
Prince of a people, generous, brave, and free.
Quick, let us hence.

[Exeunt.

END OF ACT FIRST.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

—Glasgow—Archbishop's Castle.
(Time—Evening.)
Murray and Glencairn.
Glen.
The Queen's force doubles ours;
And, for the town,
I've seen a sheep-fold with as stout a wall.
In Stirling we might wait the expected succours.
I vote retreat.

Mur.
You think not what a palsying power there is
In that poor word retreat. Let us present
A show of confidence; let us at least
Await my son's return: Perhaps the terms
We've offered may procure at least delay.
He must be here ere long.

Glen.
He might have gone and come twice ere this time.
I think 'twas hardly noon when he departed.

Mur.
Unless unlooked mischance has happened him,
He will be here anon.

Glen.
It were no wonder if Mary's counsellors
Should violate their own safe conduct.

Mur.
Aye, think you so?—No, no, it cannot be.
Though wicked, they are wise, and must forecast
The possibility of a reverse.
And yet I wish I saw my son again.

Enter Stewart.

What staid thee, boy? I would not bear
One hour of such disquietude
(Think not, forsooth, it was on thy account)
For Scotland's crown itself.

Stew.
I have had much to see, and hear, and say.

Mur.
Now thou hast but to say; without more preface,
Give us a full relation of thy mission.

Stew.
When I arrived at Hamilton, the Queen—

Mur.
What mean you by the Queen?

Stew.
Well, Mary Stewart, if so be your will,
Was at the palace gate.

Mur.
I ask not where she was; I want to know
What friends were with her.

Stew.
She had some noble ladies in her suite,
Besides some gallant gentlemen: She seemed—

Mur.
I ask not what she seemed; tell me at once
Who seemed to be most in her confidence.

Stew.
Lord Hamilton he held her horse's rein;

And Douglas led her down the palace stair.

Mur.
Where was the Earl of Arran?

Stew.
The barons, with their vassals, were arrayed
Upon the plain where Aven joins the Clyde:
The Queen was going thither.

Mur.
The Queen!

Stew.
Lord Hamilton, to whom I told my errand,
Permitted me to follow in the train,
And promised me an answer should be given
Soon as the muster of the host was o'er. I went—

Glen.
'Twas fortunate you went—you'll know their numbers.

Mur.
Glencairn, thou'rt always thinking of their numbers:
I'd rather ask how armed, how disciplined;
Whether their hearts and souls are in the cause?

Stew.
As for their discipline, it seemed but rude;
But for their hearts, I am concerned to say,
In number many, they are yet but one,
Glowing with zeal in Mary Stewart's cause:
And well they may;
For well she knows, and practises each art
To win mens' love. She wore a crown of bays
Begemmed with primroses; and in the front
A thistle-sprig appeared, as if to say,
This emblem, dear to Scotland, still I prize
The brightest jewel of my diadem:

In her right hand, ungloved, a sword she bore,
While with her left she reined her pawing steed,
As passed the several clans. She knew the name
Of every chief; to each one's homage bowed,
Then kissed her hilt: But when the Douglasses
Advanced, she stooped so low, her lovely locks,
Disordered with the wind, were seen to join
Her charger's flowing mane. When all had passed,
They formed a ring around this fair Bellona;
Then she harangued them with a modest boldness:
She spoke of English arts, and English gold;
And vowed she would not see her realm reduced
To be a province of a foreign queen.

Mur.
How were these lies received?

Stew.
By all with mute attention; you might have heard
The gentle kissing of the joining streams.
Even those beyond the hearing of her words
Did bend their heads, delighted with the music:
The sound was pleasant, though unknown the strain.

Mur.
I think the sorceress hath bewitched thee too.

Stew.
None, while they look on her, may say they hate.

Mur.
She is a hypocrite.

Stew.
She said, For Scotland I would shed my blood,
As Wallace did, upon an English scaffold,
As did my grandsire upon Flodden field,

As did your ancestors at Bannockburn.
At this, as if one impulse ruled the whole,
Ten thousand swords flashed in the setting sun:
She, starting at the friendly gleam, betrayed
That still she was no heroine at heart.

Mur.
I see thou'rt tainted; I will not believe
Thy overcharged account; thou but describest
The feelings of thy own perverted mind.
But say, what homage next was paid
This patriot Queen? It could be nothing less
Than bearing home her Highness on their shields.

Stew.
No, she returned on horseback, as she went,
I saw her now and then amid the throng:
'Mong the dark-visaged Douglasses, she seemed
A lonely star amid the hurrying clouds,
Seen but by glimpses.

Mur.
Spare thy similitudes, and give us facts.
What were their numbers?

Stew.
Some twelve or thirteen thousand.

Mur.
'Tis false, they are not five.—
[Pausing.
The Lennox-men will sure be here ere morning.
What do you think, my Lords! They'll sure be here—.

Glen.
Not quite so soon.

Mur.
But what said Mary Stewart to our terms?

Stew.
She called me gentle cousin; and, when I kneeled,
She took me by the hand, and bid me rise:

She looked at me with such a piteous look,
As if mistrustful of her new-gained power:
'Twas such a look
As might have melted treason's ice-cased heart.

Mur.
Fool! thou'rt no son of mine:—Come to the point.
What answer did she give to our conditions?

Stew.
A positive refusal.
She stipulated, that we should confess
Her abdication was the effect of force.
The settlement of past disputes, she said,
She willingly would leave to the estates:
Her people might dethrone her if they willed;
A foreign faction never.
She owned her people had a right to choose
Their own religious faith; and though she wished
To turn them from the error of their way,
She'd ne'er adopt compulsion for persuasion.

Mur.
What said she to our offers of a passport?

Stew.
I asked her if she wished to pass to France;
At which she smiled, and said, Go, tell your father,
That Mary Stewart is—the Queen of Scotland.

Glen.
What now is left for us but to retreat?

Mur.
I will agree, that, if the Lennox-men
Do not arrive ere morn, we shall retreat.

Glen.
It is agreed then that we shall retreat?

Mur.
Yes, if we're disappointed of the succours.

But it is time we visited the posts;
We'll find, I fear, some of the warding burgesses
Are fast asleep ere now, dreaming perhaps,
In horror, that they hear the trumpet's charge,
While nothing's heard save their own lullaby.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

—A Room of State in Hamilton Palace.
Mary, Adelaide, and Douglas.
Mary.
They're gone.—
[Looking towards the Entrance of the Stage.
O regal state, a cumb'rous garb thou art!
Arran I love; I love his lady too;
And yet I'm glad they're gone. I feel now light
With you, my friends, my chosen, well-tried friends.

Adel.
Poor gratitude—It is a term too faint—
Your Highness ought to love Lord Hamilton.

Doug.
Without Lord Hamilton your Grace might still
Have been a prisoner—You ought to love him;
And you, my Lady Adelaide, you too.

Adel.
And so I do; I love him as a brother.

Doug.
And something more.

Adel.
He was but second in the enterprize.

[To Douglas.

Mary.
By break of day, you said,
The council have resolved we march.—
The Regent dare not meet us, or, if he dare,—
He'll meet his ruin.—To-morrow night we reach
The two-peaked rock.—Good evening, Douglas:
You'll arm betimes.

Doug.
God save your Grace!—God bless you, lady!

[Exit Douglas.
Mary.
See if my chamber's lighted.
[Exit Adel.
No, Adelaide, thou must not learn—
There are some things which, even in the ear
Of sacred friendship, never may be breathed:
O that it were to do!—consent!—O, no!
Denial then should not be simple nay;
My prayers, my threats, my power should interpose:
I'd rush in at the death-impending moment;
Even while the murderer, with averted face,
Breathless, stretched out his trembling hand,
I'd from it dash the hell-lighted match.
Darnley, still wilt thou look upon me so!
Yes, look, aye, frown reproach, while conscience smiles,
I'm innocent. I feel I am not guilty.
Abused, dishonoured, outraged, yea, despised!
A queen despised! dishonoured! by the man
Whom she had lifted to her throne!—
Wretch! he deserved
His fate. In slaughtering Rizzio in my presence,

His deep-laid purpose was a double murder:—
And then to step into the vacant throne;
His dripping dagger glittered in my eye—
Wretch! he deserved to die! The law was palsied—
The hand of justice struck—and was I bound
To thrust my arm between him and the stroke?
To act, to speak, to warrant by a hint,—
That had been wrong: But I—what was't I did?
I only did not take into my bosom
The viper that had stung me to the heart.
Yes, look, aye, haunt me with that look,
Thou vision, dream, thou phantasm of my brain!
Sure it can be nought else; 'tis nothing real;
[Looking round.
And if it were, proud spirit, I would dare thee:
At deepest midnight, in the charnel aisle,
I would not dread to meet thee: Thy crimes, my wrongs,
Would nerve this feeble frame, would to my tongue
Lend utterance, till such a tale I told,
Would make thee glad again to pall
Thy face confused, and shrink into the tomb.
Do I dream?—O, I'm weak—I'm miserable!

Re-enter Adelaide.
Adel.
Why do you look so joyless 'mid the hope
Which with still brightening ray spreads all around?

Mary.
With brightening ray! With me hope shines but faintly.

Adel.
What were you brooding on when I returned?

Mary.
Nothing—something—no, nothing.

Adel.
Am I your friend? am I your Adelaide?
Now tell me, Mary, (for by that dear name
I ne'er addressed you that I asked in vain,)
Come tell me, Mary, what you thought upon?

Mary.
Nothing—nothing indeed.

Adel.
You know not how I love to share your sorrow.

Mary.
'Twas nothing—'twas a prayer.

Adel.
Were not we fellow-captives in Lochleven?

Mary.
Dear Adelaide, I thought of thee:
I feared lest Douglas loved thee.

Adel.
Fear not for that; I'm sure he loves not me.
What makes your Grace imagine he loves me?
'Tis certain you're deceived. Me loved of Douglas!
No, no, he loves not me. I fain would know
What ground you have for such a strange suspicion.

Mary.
He is your constant shadow;
He's seen but in the sunshine of your smile;
And when a frowning cloud lowers o'er your eyes,
He's gone. You are too harsh.

Adel.
It is your Grace he loves. How few there be
That see your Highness, and escape unwounded!

Mary.
Nay, Adelaide,—love lives not without hope.

100

Adel.
Therefore 'tis sure that Douglas loves not me.

Mary.
Despair sometimes puts on the smile of hope.

Enter Hamilton.
Ham.
Your Highness' council is again assembled
Upon another message that arrived,
Some half hour since, from Murray's quarters;
They want your approbation to their answer.
Shall they attend your Highness here?

Mary.
I'll go to them. O, if it be of peace,
My joy-marred tongue will faulter in reply,
But my glad heart will echo back the word,
Peace!—word to mothers dear.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

—The Bank of the River below Glasgow.
Enter three Burgesses, a Barber, a Gardener, and a Tailor.
Barb.

You two watch here till the morning bugle tells the sun to get up; and hear me, you are not to step a hairbreadth below the old willow, nor farther up than that grey thorn there; and as soon as ever you hear the Lennox men coming, look sharp, run up to the water port, and tell the news.

[Exit.

Tail.

It will soon be morning now.

101

Gard.

Morning! and so many stars in the water.

Tail.

I think I see a long shred of red far in the east.

Gard.

I wish I saw it. I'm weary of this work. I wonder how it is to end. I hope the Queen will get her own again.

Tail.

How dare ye venture to think or speak such a wish?

Gard.

It is not to every body I would venture; but are not you my friend?

Tail.

Yes, yes, you are safe enough with me.

Gard.

What think you of the Queen now?

Tail.

I fear she knew something of Darnley's murder; but what's ten times worse, they say she prays to a picture.

Gard.

Would you believe her to be a murderer? Such a face never belonged to a murderer. I saw her on her way to Cruickston with Darnley. Did you not see her?

Tail.

No; I never saw her.

Gard.

Both old and young ran out to gaze at her.

Tail.

The fairest skin may hide a cruel heart.

Gard.

A cruel heart! She would not hurt a midge's wing. I remember, that time she went to Cruickston, your King Darnley flew a hawk at a bird, but the Queen made the falconer try to lure her back; but on she flew, (I thought the Queen's eye would

102

have darted after her with very earnestness,) and still they flew and flew till the bird was out o' sight, and the hawk as small as the bird, and next the hawk by little and little melted away; but at last she came back, and then if ye had seen how blythe the Queen's eye glistened, when she saw neither blood nor feathers on the hooked beak. She could not bear to think the poor bird was killed, and can ye trow she would kill her husband?

Tail.

Yes, I can trow it; he was too good to live.

Gard.

I'll tell you what that husband did;—he smiled a bitter smile of spite, and set the panting tarsel upon the Queen's bare arm till the blood sprang at each talon, and stained her lily skin;—I saw a tear run down her cheek, like a dew-drop on a wild rose, but I thought it was rather a tear of joy for the bird's escape, than of grief for herself; and then she hooded the hawk with her own hand.

Tail.

Some say she paints her cheek.

Gard.

Who would e'er paint a flower? You never saw her. Her cheek! the fading of the red into the white is a colour like nothing I have seen, unless it be hoar frost on a rose.

Tail.

She will cost many a brave man his life.

Gard.

That is too true; but see, the morning now is dawning; yon ruddy glow foreruns the sun; and hark! the mavis chaunt.

103

Tail.

It is time we should be gone.

Gard.

Before we go, I'll venture past our ward down to yon broomy brae, to pull a sprig for our little Jonny's new bonnet; the boys are all a-soldiering now o' days, and he is captain of his company; he'll be right proud of such a pretty plume.

Tail.

Stop, stop; I hear a sound far down the water.

Gard.

Can it be— (Listening)
—the stroke of oars?

Tail.

The Lennox men, I hope;—it is;—Do not you hear the rowers' timing chaunt?

Gard.

I hear something like music.

Tail.

Hear how it swells.

[Music heard, indistinctly at first; then “Lochaber no more.”

Gard.
(After a listening pause.)

Aye; some of you will never return to your heathery braes. There will be many a fatherless child before that sun sets again.

Tail.

They come but slowly; I wish a breeze would spring to help them on; but there's not a breath of wind.

[Music ceases.

Gard.

See yonder, their drooping streamers upon the mast-tops peering through the mist.

Tail.

There, there, the foremost bow comes bulging into view; look, look, the naked knees and tartan hose. It is the Lennox men. Haste, let us tell the welcome news.

[Exeunt.

104

SCENE IV.

—Glasgow. The Castle.
Murray sitting thoughtful. Enter Crawford.
Crawf.
Good morrow to your Highness.
What answer to our second offer?

Mur.
None yet. I fear they have detained
Our messenger.

Crawf.
The Lennox men are not arrived.

Mur.
I'm confident they will be here ere long.

Crawf.
Who would depend upon the wind and tide?

Mur.
Aye, there the folly of old Lennox shines.
His torpid soul all action seems to hate:
The motion of the gentlest ambling palfrey
Is all too rough for him. To save his life
He'd lift, but lift reluctantly, his arm.
I do believe that if he were embarked,
And set adrift above some cataract,
He'd sit with folded arms, gliding along,
And listen to the swelling roar, and then perhaps,
With lazy listless hand, take up the oars,
And slowly ply, until he gained the bank.

Crawf.
Why do you trust to him?

Mur.
I do not trust to him. There's one I trust,—
Pharlan's brave chief, who, if it rest with him,

105

Will not come late to any warlike tryst.

Crawf.
I wish your confidence may prove wellplaced.

Enter Stewart.
Stew.
The Lennox men are come—five hundred strong.

Mur.
God bless the day! Stewart, dispatch the letter,
The letter to Throgmorton; haste.
All goes just as I wish. Enter Glencairn.

Where have you been, Glencairn? what is the matter?

Glen.
I thought it best
To go myself to gain intelligence
Touching the force the Queen brings to the field;
But ere I had arrived at Bothwell ford,
I thought I heard, as from the other side,
A strange and mingled sound, with now and then
Some voices louder than the rest: The mist
Was floating thick, and nothing could be seen,
Save here and there the gleam of a spear point,
Or gilded banner, like lightning from a cloud.
Instant I turned, and on the spur am come.
It must have been the Queen and all her power;
It could be nothing less; 'twas like the rush

106

Of rivers—

Mur.
I know the route they'll take: we must prevent them:
They'll pass between the Roman camp and Cart,
Unless we stop their course: Langside's the ground
That we must seize: no time is to be lost.
The burgesses must muster in the green.
Meantime, Glencairn, hasten with all your men:
You'll occupy the post that I have mentioned:
You'll find some of your friends already there.
The Queen will find I've been before-hand with her. [Exeunt Mur. Crawf. and Glen.

Enter the Duke of Lennox, with Highlanders.
Len.
Where is the Regent?

Stew.
My lord, it is the Regent's pleasure,
That with two hundred of your friends, to whom
There will be joined two hundred burgesses,
You guard the town.

Len.
God's blessing on you, sir; we will obey you.
Follow, my friends.

[Exeunt.

107

SCENE V.

—The Castle-hill of Cathcart.
The Queen seated. Adelaide, Douglas, and Attendants, standing around.
Doug.
Do not despond: look what a gallant host
Awaits your Highness's command to sweep
The wavering rebel mob from yonder hill.

Mary.
Douglas, I never thought to see the day,
When all a woman and a queen holds dear
Upon the chance of battle should be staked.
But surely they will not refuse our terms.

Doug.
No, no; our terms are backed by arguments
Of weight and force not easily withstood.

Mary.
I fear, I fear.

Adel.
Do not despond when fortune seems to smile.
Think what and where we were a few days since:
Now we are free, and freedom of itself,
How dear to them who e'er have known its loss!
Besides our freedom is secured by power:
Meet fortune then, so newly reconciled,
With smiles, and not with sighs, and doubts, and fears.

Mary.
None of the Stewarts e'er was fortunate;
Or on the field, or by the assassin's stroke,
Or on the feverous, the pall-curtained bed
Of disappointment, all my forefathers died.

108

Enter Argyle.
Arg.
Now we might force their lines; my life upon't
We now might do it; but, while we pause,
They're strengthening every point: Let us attack.

Mary.
No, I'm resolved, whatever be the event,
To wait the issue of our last proposal;
Who knows but it may be the means of peace.

Arg.
Since that's your will, I must be gone; your men
Are eager for the fight; perhaps they'll slip
The leash, unless I aid my son's weak hold:
'Twas all I could to make them say they'd wait
Until I should receive your Highness' orders.

[Exit.
Mary.
How much is lost, how little gained by war!
I'd rather lose my crown than see one child
Made fatherless, one woman made a widow,
One mother mourn a son, one maid a lover,
Or even than a friendless man be missed
By his poor dog. My crown! I care not for thee!
Poor bauble, go and grace my baby's brow.

Doug.
I must away: See how the Regent's force
Is spreading wider down along the slope.
This is no time for Douglas to be idle.

Adel.
O wait until the answer—

Doug.
They're answering with their trumpets:
Hear the charge!

109

Adel.
Perhaps it is a herald sounding peace.

Doug.
See yonder, rising from behind the brow,
The other and the other floating banner:
The English company now comes in view.
Perhaps a Percy leads them on. I must,
I must away.

Adel.
And will you leave us unprotected?

Doug.
You see those guards all stationed round the hill.

Adel.
They are not near enough: O, Douglas, stay!
Do you not fear to die?

Doug.
Against my countrymen my arm is weak,
As is my heart; but when a foreign foe
Invades that soil, whence freedom's living bulwarks
Long, long repelled the ocean waves of power,
My heart, my strength, my soul, is in my sword;
All dread of death then dies; and his dark frowns,—
Which in the puny times of peace appalled,—
Seem now like recollections of the shapes
That wont to haunt our childish fantasies;—
We hold them in derision, perfect scorn.
All balancing, all doubts are fled;—to plunge
Into the tide of war is now the wish
Of every heart, burning to drink revenge.
Who, who would bear to see these blood-bought vales,
These woods,—the very hills where Wallace trode,
And looked around, and saw his country freed,

110

Freed by his heaven-raised arm,—to see these fields
In foreign thrall!—I must be gone.

Adel.
Stay just but till you clasp your hauberk close.

Enter Argyle, Hamilton, and Attendants.
Arg.
Douglas, remain.

[To Doug.
Mary.
Argyle, O speak! say, is it peace or war?

Arg.
The enemy refuse all terms of peace,
[To the Queen.
But such as cannot be consented to,—
Your Grace's banishment.

Mary.
And is there not a place for Mary Stewart
In her son's kingdom? I'll be content to hold
A private station for the sake of peace.

Arg.
Their sentence is your banishment.

Mary.
Then be it war! I ne'er could bear to see
Injustice done the lowest of my people;
I have a right to justice in my turn.
Nor is the quarrel personal to me:
Behold yon English standard,—'tis the aim
Of England's Queen to subjugate our country.
Force oft has failed; now she resorts to art,
Foments division, joins this side, then that,
And when the realm, with self-inflicted wounds,
Enfeebled lies, she'll bind it with a chain:
But I, for one, will never wear that chain;
I'll gladly give this little-valued life

111

A chance to 'scape from bondage. I this day
Join in the ranks: Though feeble be my arm,
Though inexpert in the death-dealing art,
My presence, I foresee, will save some friends,
By turning many an English shaft from men
Who have some ties that make them love to live.
Mine are all sundered. O, I would kiss the fledge
Of the blest shaft that quivered in my breast.

Arg.
You cannot go; your Highness cannot go;
Were it no more, you have not strength to rein
Your charger through the battle's furious rush.

Mary.
Give me a lance, and girth old Barbary:
Bothwell he often bore through deadly fields:
I'll trust myself to him; and mounted thus,
I do not fear to ford a river of blood.

Arg.
Think, think, I pray your Grace.

Mary.
My Lord, I'll ride by you; you on my right,
And Douglas on my left.

Arg.
Your Highness knows not what you do; you risk,
In hazarding yourself, the safety of your country:
Besides, though you should 'scape unhurt,
Think what a loss of life the very sight
Of such a prize would cost. Each leaguer's heart
That now beats languid in the Regent's cause,
Would leap with eagerness to take the Queen.

Mary.
Might not my presence and my words disarm

112

Some wavering hearts?

Arg.
No, no;—but reasoning here is out of place;
It is my will—I here hold the command—
Your Highness shall remain upon this spot.
Though absent, you shall see that in our hearts
Your presence lives. Give us your prayers. Farewell.

Mary.
I do beseech—

Arg.
No—

Mary.
Since that it must be so, may God preserve
My people. Ah me! both armies are my people.

Arg.
You'll have the Regent in your tent ere night.

Adel.
Will not my Lord leave some one of our friends
To wait upon the Queen? Douglas, perhaps,
Or some one else?

Doug.
I would not stay behind, although the Queen,
Although thyself entreated me. Farewell.

Arg.
Lord Hamilton, you shall attend her Highness.

Ham.
I, my Lord!

Arg.
You must; you know the consequence
Of disobedience.

[Exeunt Argyle, Attendants, and Douglas.
Adel.
O that I had my sun-burnt vassals here!
They loved me well; a single look from me,
A wave of this weak hand, would make them join
Right merrily the Morrice Dance of Death.
They'd be the pioneers of your brave Scots,
And clear yon speary hedges from the hill.

113

Mary.
Ah me! that trumpet clang!—my heart is sick.
And now they move—how many to their death!
O haste, Lord Hamilton,—say, 'tis my will
A message on the instant should be sent,
Acceding to the Regent's rigorous terms.
I'm willing to be banished this dear land.

Ham.
'Tis now too late to stop your Highness' men
In their career: you might as lief attempt
To rein the lion by his bristling mane,
Or catch him in a net of gossamer,
When springing on his prey.

Adel.
Mother of God!—the Douglasses in front!—
See, see the Bruce's heart, as in the breeze
Their standards wave!

Ham.
Would I were there!—There happy Douglas cries,
“Move on as thou wast wont to do, and Douglas
“Will follow thee, or die.”

Adel.
Die!

Mary.
What a small space between the fronting lines!
Oh me! most wretched! I, I am the cause.

Ham.
Your Grace's enemies,—they are the cause.

Mary.
I dare no longer look; O take me hence.

114

Ham.
You must not leave this spot; there's many an eye
Looks backward now and then upon this hill,
And, seeing you, turns fiercely to the foe,
With forward-darting look of eagerness,
To dash among your Highness' enemies.

Mary.
Adelaide, give me thy hand to grasp in mine;
Or do but lean it kindly on my shoulder,
That I may feel the touch of one I love.
Speak, O speak to me.

Adel.
All will go well.

Mary.
No victory, though gained without the loss
(O were it possible!) of friend or foe—
What a dread trumpet clang!
[Stooping and covering her Eyes with her hand, Adelaide kneeling at her side, holding her other hand, and looking up to her.
Tell, Hamilton, all that thou see'st.
The hearing of it I can bear; but, O! the sight
Would crush me.

Ham.
They join.

Mary.
O God! O God!

Adel.
O Mere de Dieu!

[A pause of silence, Hamilton looking eagerly to the Field of Battle.
Ham.
O what a glorious sight!

115

Look at these columns of the horse—through—through—
Like warping meteors 'thwart the northern sky.
The victory is on your Highness' side:
The Douglas' banner pierces through the line.

Adel.
But in whose hands?
Perhaps 'tis taken, and its bearer slain.

Ham.
This day will prove that Fortune can befriend
The cause of Justice:—Look, they break, they fly!

Mary.
Can it indeed be true that Fortune smiles
On Mary Stewart? Again shall I behold
My child after this dreary gloom of absence?
Ah me! he will not know me; my son will start
As if he saw a stranger in his mother:
But I will smile so fondly on my babe,
I'll press him to my breast, with an embrace
That only mothers give, and infants know,
Then through his tears he'll answer smile for smile.

Ham.
How well the rebels run, though 'gainst the hill:
But yet they stop—again they stand: I fear
It was a feint:—Gods!—now your Highness' men
Give way; they waver—break.

Mary.
Stay, stay; for God's sake leave us not.

Adel.
O Douglas! Douglas!

116

Mary.
Perhaps—perhaps our leaders, in their turn,
Are feigning a retreat.

Ham.
Alas, it is too rapid and confused!
Horses, without their riders, flying here
And there, and standards thrown away:—
There is no hope.

Mary.
Is there no hope? Perhaps they wish to gain
Their former ground.

Ham.
No, no,—your Grace must mount—the day is lost:
Driven down the hill, some of your men
Are forced into the river.

Mary.
O God, thy will be done! but save, O save
My people!

Adel.
I must—will to the field.

Ham.
You both must flee.

Mary.
Ah! whither flee? Scotland is England now.

Ham.
For Nithisdale—speed to horse! to horse!
I will compel you to your safety.

[Exit, leading the Queen and Adelaide.

END OF ACT SECOND.

117

ACT III.

SCENE I.

—Lincluden Abbey in ruins.
Enter Bernard, a Friar, carrying a Light before the Queen and Adelaide.
Bern.
This way, good people;—you've had a dismal night;—
The rivers too are out.
[Mary falls down almost lifeless, then recovers.
Lady, you've nought to fear.

Mary.
I've nought to fear, that is too true:
I'm sunk—I'm sunk—I'm at the very bottom
Of ruin's gulf; so deep, that all around
Reigns stillness horrible; while, far o'er head,
The thunder of the storm is here scarce heard.

Bern.
O I have heard a tongue that spoke like yours,
And seen an eye that wore that very look!

Adel.
May be;—but who is it that welcomes us?

Bern.
A man who has outlived all he held dear.

Mary.
Thou'lt not betray us?

Adel.
But tell,—it does import us much to know,
In these dark times,—what party thou art of.

118

Mary.
Oh, I am very wretched! I am stunned
With misery! But tell us, good old man,
What place is this, and who thou art?

Bern.
I will remove your fears. Here have I dwelt
Near threescore years. This place you must have heard of:
Lincluden is its name. Within these walls
Twelve beadsmen, of which number I was one,
Said prayers by day, and nightly vigils kept.
I am the only one that now remains
In this sad corner of our ruined towers.

Adel.
How art thou suffered to remain?

Bern.
The bigot fury that destroyed our house
Spared me. I had acquired, while in my youth
I followed arms, some skill in healing wounds.
Full many sorely hurt at Solway moss—

Mary.
O God!

Bern.
Were hither brought, and healed. Among the rest,
One man, who afterwards, when the fierce rabble
Circled these walls, with threats of instant death
To all within, his left hand lifted up,
And swore, that not a hair of Bernard's head
He'd suffer to be touched: They gave assent.
Thus was I saved; and here am I allowed
To linger out my days.

Mary.
O, Solway, many an orphan didst thou make!

119

But for that day I might have still a father.
He was not healed—his wound was in his heart.

Adel.
I see that banner yet among the spears;
He would not part with it, but with his life.
O Douglas!

Mary.
He took me in his arms before he breathed
His last, and kissed my then scarce conscious lip,
And weeping, o'er me smiling, called me Mary,
Ere at the font I had received that name:
Hence 'twas a saying, that I was baptised
With tears; and they who saw the scene presaged
Ill fortune to me, and presaged too true.

Bern.
My Queen! my royal mistress!
I said that I had seen that eye, and yet
It is not so—but O how like the King's!
My God, preserve her! bless her! O save her!
[Kneeling.
How can this be? (rising)
your Highness in this guise?

Mary.
Ask not, good father, now; I scarce can speak;
Were't possible, I'd go to rest.

Bern.
Besides this chamber, once our refectory,
And my poor cell, there is a room of state,
Which, in the days of our prosperity,
Was set apart for guests of high degree:
It too was left untouched.

120

Mary.
O lead me to it!—yet I cannot rest
Until I know that Hamilton is safe.

Enter an old Shepherd.
Bern.
Are the horses cared for?

Shep.
They are, father.

Bern.
An' please your Grace to follow me.

[Exeunt Queen, Adelaide, and Bernard.
Shep.
What can this mean?

Enter Hamilton.
Ham.
Say who art thou, and what this place?

Shep.
Say who art thou?

Ham.
Are there two strangers here?

Shep.
Old father Bernard—he will answer you.

Ham.
Who art thou, again I say?

Shep.
I'm an old shepherd man; all night I've watched
Upon the hill with some few sheep, and now
That day-light's near, and the storm fallen,
I'm come to warm myself at Bernard's faggots.
His door is never barred; his nightly taper
Through the thick wintry flakes oft shoots a ray
To guide us shepherds through the heaping drift.
This night has been a kind of winter one.
Now tell me who thou art?

121

Enter Bernard.
Bern.
God save you, sir!

Ham.
Father, I thank you. Are there two strangers here?

Bern.
This is a roof which at all times,
By day and night, welcomes the stranger's steps.

Ham.
I am the friend of those I now enquire for.
Say, came they here?—They are—but why describe them—
They are most fair,—unfortunate as fair.

Bern.
Your name?

Ham.
Hamilton.

Bern.
The Queen is here; and with her came
One of a downcast, and tear-hidden eye;
But such a soft and soothing voice she had,
That when she spake, I thought some seraph hymned
A requiem for an infant's parted soul.

Ham.
'Tis she—'tis Adelaide.

Bern.
They're gone to rest.
How came you not along with them?

Ham.
We scarce had seen your tapers welcome ray,
When something from among the trees came forth,
And followed us. I bade the Queen proceed:
I turned—it fled: I followed it too far:
O'erta'en at last, it turned—it seemed a man,
But gave a groan unlike aught earthly; and then

122

I heard the gnash of teeth. My charger wheeled,
And brought me, ere I wist, close to the river,
Where, frightened at the rapid eddying foam,
He stopped, nor, till the rowels reached his ribs,
Would take the flood. What could it be?

Bern.
None in these parts know who he is:
We think his hands have been embrued in blood.
In winter's bitterest storms he sometimes sits
Beneath the gateway's broken arch; and there
I've overheard half-muttered sentences,
Such as—'twas me—no, 'twas this hand—not me:
Had it been day—had I but seen her face,
The deed had ne'er been done:—
And then he'll fix his eyes upon the ground,
As if he looked on something lying there,
Then, seeming horror-struck, rush to the woods.

Re-enter Queen and Adelaide.
Mary.
Lord Hamilton,
I joy to see you safe, but yet must blame you.

Ham.
I left you, as the best means to defend you.

Mary.
'Twas for the best, I know.

Bern.
How short has been your Highness' rest!

Mary.
I've had no rest: I fell into a sleep,
And in that sleep have had such horrid visions!—
A fiend pursued me o'er a sandy waste;
I heard his steps gain on me; then his shadow

123

Lengthened before me; then his furnace breath
I felt shrivelling my hair: Lifeless I sunk.
And next I found myself among the woods
We passed yestreen; boisterous and dark the night,
Save for the lightning's glare, which flamed so bright,
That oft the traces of its zigzag course
Were visible among the half-burnt leaves,
Still curling from the flash. A raven next,
Beneath a blasted yew, was busy gorging
A murdered infant's corse. A friendly peal
At this dire moment waked me.

Adel.
And I, I too, saw horrid sights: I saw—
Half raised upon his arm, he fainting held
That banner to his breast, to staunch the blood.

Bern.
Banish the memory of these phantasies!
Put trust in God! Be of good cheer!

Mary.
You never dreaded sleep.

Bern.
God yet may turn
The hearts of your worst enemies to love you.
Meanwhile, you here may sojourn quite unknown;
Nor shall you want for aught: I've friends all round.

Mary.
If e'er the hearts of my worst foes should turn
To love and to obey their Queen, be sure
That you shall have another resting-place
Than this so drear abode. Ingratitude
My enemies could ne'er reproach me with.

124

Bern.
I'll thank your Highness' with my heart's last throb;
But know, I would not leave this lonely place:
Those I hold dear;—one I held dear is laid
Within that roofless chapel wall: Each weed
That grows about her grave I know; They spring
With gaudless flowers, year after year the same:
The wind that sighs among you aged trees
Sounds like an old friend's voice: Even Cluden's stream,
Whether 'neath summer suns it gently flows,
With such a whispering murmur, that the bee
Upon the farther bank is heard to hum;
Or whether, in its ice-fraught course, it roar
So loud amid the wintry thunder storm,
That though the flash is seen, the peal's unheard,—
All, all its sounds are grateful to mine ear:
I would not part from it, or from these woods,
The very birds of which are tame, and know me:
I should even miss the echo's wonted voice,
That gives responses to my lonely hymn,
And bears it, with a music not its own,
To heaven. But hark, the woodland matins rise.

Adel.
O happy birds, each minstrel's mate is near!

Bern.
And shall our hearts be cold, and tongues be mute?
An please your Highness, it is still my wont,
Within the roofless chancel, to perform

125

The service which in former days I joined.
No person and no season hinders me:
The snowy shower that drives upon my head,
It shuts my eyes, but cannot seal my lips,
When singing praise to God: The drifted wreath
Feels like a downy cushion 'neath my knees.
Come to the chancel, friends; come, follow me.

Mary and Adel.
Most joyfully.

Ham.
I may not go where Romish rites are done.

Shep.
I dare not go.

[Exeunt Queen, Adelaide, and Bernard.
Ham.
That good old man, his words, his aspect mild,
Almost persuade me to renounce my faith.

Shep.
Aye, he is good; his thoughts are ne'er on earth,
Save when he's doing good among the poor:
At other times his thoughts are all in heaven.
Even in the night, we often hear his voice
Borne faintly on the wind. His taper burning,
Aye, and before an image on the cross,
(That's wrong?) he never suffers to go out.

Ham.
List! list!—
[Music of Voices heard—“By the Rivers of Babylon,” &c.—Voice stops.
How faint the echo floats along the aisles,
As 'twere the soul of the departed strain!
That hymn will to the mercy-seat ascend,

126

And there, in unison with heavenly harps,
Will from their chords (while listening angels pause)
Draw forth a sound more sweet than seraph's touch.
O what are forms, but different languages
Addressed to Him, who knows all tongues, who hears
The heart! We'll go to them.

Shep.
I will attend you to the gate, but not
Go in.

[Exeunt?

SCENE II.

—The Chapel.
Bernard, Mary, and Adelaide.
Mary.
That hymn hath soothed my spirit: I think I now
Could rest in quiet. Sleep, now I dread thee not!
My dreams no longer will be horror-haunted;
Angelic strains will lull my ear; my couch
Shall be all curtained round with cherubs wings,
Through which the morning sun will faintly send
A purple slumber-shedding ray, sealing
My weary eyelids for a time with peace,
Until some gentle well-known voice
Breathe in my ear, awake: And yet I think
I see—no, no—begone—false fear—
I gave no warrant—I forbade the deed.

127

Adel.
I hear a tread.—
[Looking round.
Ah me! it is not his.

[Exeunt Mary and Adelaide.
Bern.
The shaft is plucked, but O I fear the barb
Is rankling in her heart: If it be so,
O God, forgive!

Enter Hamilton.
Ham.
Where is the Queen?

Bern.
They are just gone. The Queen thought she could rest.
Her spirit seemed—but for a moment—soothed.
What think you 'tis that weighs upon her mind?

Ham.
What think you—to have been a Queen, and now
To be cast down below a subject's state.

Bern.
I long to learn from you, my lord, the events
Which must have come to pass since that the Queen
Was held a captive in Lochleven isle.

Ham.
Father, you shall be satisfied.

Bern.
Let us, meantime, return: I must set down
Refreshments 'gainst the awaking of the Queen.

[Exeunt.

128

SCENE III.

—A Wood on the Banks of Cluden.
Enter Adelaide.
Adel.
Aye, she may sleep, whose loss is but a kingdom.
She may be yet restored—The dead to life
Return not.—Aye, sleep on, poor Queen, be happy
A little while. She smiled, but soon a tear
Her close-shut eyelash filled; and then again
She smiled, but 'twas more faintly than before.
I ne'er shall smile again, even in a dream.
O Douglas! Douglas! hadst thou not been slain,
Thou wouldst ere now have been with us.
Thou'rt dead—I thought I could discern
In Hamilton's close visage signs of joy;
He knows, perhaps, thou'rt numbered with the dead;
And yet, how should he?
But Douglas, know, thy spirit ne'er shall see
My love for thee to Hamilton transferred;
No, if thou'rt dead, I'll even break the bonds
Of sacred friendship; I'll forsake the Queen,
Fly to thy grave, and make thy turf my couch.
Why did I seem to favour him I loved not,
Lord Hamilton, from whom my heart was far?
Why did not Douglas see 'twas him I loved?

129

The thought of it had been a comfort to him,
When on the corse-strewed field he took
His last look of the hill on which he left me.
Oh me! had he but known how well I loved him,
He would have been more careful of his life.
O I have murdered him! He rushed on Death,
Driven by Despair.
Hadst thou but known how open was my ear
To listen to the faintest prayer of love
Urged by thy lips; how open were these arms
To clasp thee to this breast; how my heart leaped
With ardent hope one day to feel thine beat
With mutual throb!—May be he yet does live.
O, if he lives, feigning henceforth begone.
Perhaps he feigns, and I am but the step—
What if he loves the Queen—
And sometimes I have thought her Highness' voice
Was softer toned to him than other men.

Enter Douglas, and kneels.
Doug.
Feign! no!

Adel.
God!—.
[Falling, Douglas supports her.
Douglas! no! Douglas thou art not:
None of that name was ever treacherous found;
No Douglas ever would have lain in wait
To hear the ravings of a simple maid.

Doug.
Hear me, fair Adelaide! dear lady, hear me!

130

I did not lie in wait with the design
To hear your words. When I had hither come,
I knew not who inhabited this place,
Or friend or foe; wherefore I thought it best
To take the advantage of the woodland shelter,
Until I learned whether it would be safe
To come more near. Just then I heard a voice,
Of which, although I oft had heard the tones,
Its music was so new to me,
I thought it could not be but that I dreamed,
Till by degrees I waked indeed to bliss.

Adel.
But Douglas, Douglas, say you heard me not;
The Cluden's rushing roar was all so loud,
You could not hear.

Doug.
Some words indeed I lost:
But did you not my name reiterate
In such a voice as told you loved the sound?
Did you not say—Do not I see that blush?

Adel.
I'll hide it, Douglas, in thy arms.
But you are wounded?

Doug.
No, I escaped unhurt,
To be (how little did I think) most blest.

Adel.
And how did you escape—O Douglas, how?

Doug.
While thus you speak—I cannot think of what—
Of what is past; the present
Engrosses my whole soul.

131

Adel.
I love to hear.

Doug.
And do you truly wish to hear?

Adel.
I love to hear you speak about yourself.

Doug.
You saw the fight, and our discomfiture:
A ponderous mace soon brought me to the ground.

Adel.
Douglas, is this thy hand? Do I not dream?
Art thou indeed beside me?

Doug.
And when I from my stupor first awoke,
I saw around me dead and dying men.
The rout was o'er: The crowds, that on the hills
Had stood, were now upon the field, to search
For kinsmen or for friends. 'Twas a sad sight.
The grey-haired father helped to bear the son
Uncoffined to the grave, then laid the turf,
With purple-bosomed gowans blood-bedewed,
Above the mangled corpse. Amid this scene,
Some of the horsemen, tired from the pursuit,
Alighted, and were plied with flaggons, brought
By Glasgow's zealous burghers to the field.
My guards, (for I was 'mong the prisoners,)
One after other, fell asleep. One wretch
I never shall forget, whose ruffian head
Was bolstered on a dead man's gory breast.
I watched my time, rose, seized a straying horse:
None of my guards could mount to follow me.
Thus soon I was beyond the jangling sound
Of old St Kentigern's rejoicing peal.

132

Adel.
How did you trace us?

Doug.
The country was all out; the mountain cairns
Were clustered o'er; and at the cottage doors
The old men stood, and asked, with trembling voice,
How went the day.—Your course was not unmarked.
From place to place I questioned of your way:
At last I reached a cottage by a stream,
Where you had left the little glib-tongued page.
He pointed out a hill o'er which you passed:
I passed it too; descended to the vale;—
A dreadful night ensued; it stopped me not.
Although I judged that I had lost you quite,
I wandered on, half frantic with despair,
And cursed the flash that showed my horse the flood
Or wished-for precipice. But wherefore speak
Of dangers past? I am now here with you.
O happiness unhoped! No thought but joy
Can now pervade my breast. Come, speak to me.

Adel.
I am so happy, I can only hear.

Doug.
And I can only think of what I heard.
You said, I think, my turf should be your couch.

Adel.
Peace now, sweet Douglas, peace!

Doug.
And that—

Adel.
So soon to taunt at my too quick won love!

Doug.
And that your beating heart—

Adel.
You'll kill me.

Doug.
I love to raise your blush, to feel its glow

133

Spread o'er my raptured cheek.

Adel.
But two days gone you were a humble lover;
You trembled when you did but touch my glove.
But, Douglas, did you never guess 'twas you
I loved?

Doug.
But once, and only once, I dared to hope:
'Twas when you asked Argyle, before the fight,
That he would leave me with the Queen and you:
Your look, your voice, expressed solicitude
Less for yourself than me: Then first I hoped.
O it was sweet, though faint as the first breath
Of some lone spring-flower, first of all its tribe,
Which one would stoop to smell, yet think 'twere sin
To pull.

Adel.
How are you sure that I do love you?

Doug.
Think you I have forgot—
My turf should be your couch? No, Adelaide,
Your head shall rest, your eyes shall gently close
Upon this arm.

Adel.
Be sober-minded, as becomes our fortunes.

Doug.
Sobriety, demureness, melancholy,
I do henceforth renounce, abjure you all.
But tell me now, how wouldst thou have found out
Thy truelove's grave among the other heaps?

Adel.
Why, by this mark—No flower, save only one,
Called love lies bleeding, would have dared to grow—
But, O! 'tis barbarous in me to harbour

134

One cheerful thought, when Mary, Queen of Scots,
My friend, my dearest, earliest, bosom friend,
Lurks here a fugitive.

Doug.
My Adelaide, or mourning or rejoicing,
If 'tis with thee, 'tis sweet: I sympathise
With all thy sympathies: Besides, I love
The Queen, and I will serve her for thy sake,
And for her own. Is she within yon walls?

Adel.
She's there—she's gone to rest.

Doug.
What does she mean to do? where mean to go?

Adel.
To England straight.

Doug.
To England! Does she not know Elizabeth?

Adel.
I have in vain to endeavoured to dissuade her.

Doug.
And will you follow her, and pine your days,
Sunk in the dungeon of an English prison?

Adel.
Perhaps they'll feel compassion for a Queen,
A banished, helpless woman.

Doug.
No, no; fear, hatred, envy, all have steeled
The heart of England's Queen.

Adel.
Mary feels no mistrust.

Doug.
And will you follow her?

Adel.
I am resolved—she's bent to go.

Doug.
Because she vaults a precipice, are you
By any tie obliged to follow her?
You follow ruin; her you cannot save.

Adel.
I cannot save—but I can die with her.

135

But we must hence; she is, I fear, awake ere now.

Doug.
Lean on my arm—How very light you lean;
I fear you love me not.

Adel.
Love you not!

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

—The Refectory.
Mary seated. Hamilton and Bernard waiting on each side.
Mary.

She cannot sure be far; she would not leave me

Bern.

No; for I have seen her look upon your Grace with such a look as spoke—whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried. She comes, but not alone.

Enter Adelaide, followed by Douglas.
Mary.
Douglas!

Doug.
I joy to see your Grace in safety.

Mary.
Rise, Douglas, 'tis not fit you kneel to me;
I am no more a Queen.

Doug.
If to yourself, and to your country's cause,
You are not treacherous, you are still a Queen.

Mary.
What tidings do you bring?

136

Doug.
We lost the day, that's sure; but if your Highness
Had staid, our flight might but have been retreat.
You yet have many friends.

Mary.
I fear to ask
How many fewer than before the battle.

Doug.
Cassilis I saw amongst the prisoners.
No one of any note, that I could hear of,
Was of the slain.

Mary.
Woes me!—of any note! How many men,
Whose names were never heard beyond the sound
Of their own native village bells, are mourned
With tears more bitter than are shed for men
Of high degree!—the poor man's orphan child
Weeps as he sees the smooth-worn ploughshafts lie;
He thinks upon the hard but kindly hand
That helped his infant steps.

Doug.
Your Grace is not to blame; do not repine
For what could not be helped. If to yourself
You'r true, all yet may be retrieved; your friends
Are numerous, powerful, faithful, though dispersed.

Mary.
How of them all art thou alone with me?
How didst thou 'scape—how trace us out—
How was the battle lost? Tell me each circumstance.

Doug.
'Twas lost—but how, it boots not to inquire.

Mary.
Tell me, for I can bear to hear.

Doug.
I'll tell your Highness all I saw.

137

Montgomery, with a band of noted names,
A chosen few, moved wedgewise onward,
No more regardful of the English archery,
Than it had been a flight of thistle-downs;
But, at two spear-lengths from the meeting phalanx,
Forward—
They cleft it thorough, like a thunder-bolt
Ploughing a chasm 'thwart the foam-capt waves.—
Here, with an edgeless stroke, I was laid low.
How long I lay, I'm ignorant; but when
I lift my eyes—no banner to be seen—
'Twas gone—'twas lost by me—the Bruce's heart.
Soon as I stirred, a soldier, who had thought me dead,
Wrenched from my clotted hand, the gore-glued hilt,
By this time Glasgow's citizens
Were plying hard their friends with merry pints,
Staggering o'er corpses both of friend and foe:
My maudlin guards, o'ercome with wine and sleep,
I left; one of their horses straight I mounted,
And soon I was beyond the dismal sound
Of old St Mungo's dong, which, whether meant
For funeral knells for their departed friends,
Or merry peals for dear-bought victory,
I do not know; but this I know, that all
I met, questioned me how the day had gone,
In words that told me that they wished you well.
I even met some bands hasting to join;

138

And, when I told them that they came too late,
They looked as if they thought, “had we been there,
“It might not have gone thus.”—Your Highness' friends
Are many thousands strong. Go not to England.

Mary.
How did you trace us out?

Doug.
I knew your thoughts had often turned to England
As a last refuge. I southward bent my course
To Loudon Hill, and stopped by happy chance
At the small cot-house, by the little stream,
Where you had left your tiny magpie page.

Mary.
Poor child!—O tell me, were they kind to him?
He too's an orphan, left in strangers' hands.

Doug.
The dame had sent him out to keep some sheep;
But, when I went in search of him, I found
The pretty elf asleep upon the bank:
I stood, and wished my slumbers were as sweet:
So gentle was his sleep, his breath scarce moved
A primrose flower that almost kissed his lip;
A rushy crown, half finished, lay beside him;
The flock was scattered here and there around.

Mary.
O Scotland! O my people!

Doug.
When I had waked him, he was at first all joy:

139

But, when I asked him to point out the way
That you had ta'en, he could not answer me;
With tear-filled eye he looked, and pointed southward;
O'er yon far hill (at last he said) they passed;
I saw them 'tween me and the light as small
As little birds.—He would not let me go;
It wrung my heart to force his little hand
From mine. I promised to return—Then, forward.
By the last streak of light, from Cossencot
I saw the vale of Nith, and did resolve
To keep its course.
What is your Highness now determined on?

Mary.
England—England is now my only refuge:
And yet I doubt. She tried to intercept
My voyage to my native shore. I fear.

Adel.
The Queen of England will protect her sister.

Doug.
[To Adel.]
Poor simple bird! Perhaps she will allow thee
To flutter in a gilded cage; but still
Thou'lt find thyself a prisoner.

Mary.
I ask not Adelaide to follow me.

Adel.
But I will follow you, though you forbid;
I think I am in safety while with you.

Mary.
Thou seek'st the perilous shelter of a tree,
To shun a thunder-storm.

Doug.
If e'er you trust yourself on English ground,

140

I'm sure I ever shall have cause to rue
That I released you from a Scottish prison.
'Twill be a sorry change. Woe is the fate
Of him that bears the double wretchedness
Of exile and captivity.

Mary.
Captivity!

Doug.
Yes, imprisonment.

Mary.
What do you mean?

Doug.
'Twill be a prologue.

Mary.
To what?

Doug.
To a tragedy.

Mary.
Speak in plain words.

Doug.
She'll treat you as her prisoner at first;
And oft you've read, the distance is but small
Between a prince's prison and his grave.

Mary.
You give advice in aught but courtly style.
Your words have shocked me, Douglas; you should have
Some pity on me 'mid this storm of fate:
Your words are lightning gleams, which, while they shew
The foam-capt rock where ruin's breakers dash,
Scathe and dismantle the poor labouring bark,
And make her quite a helpless piece of wreck.

Doug.
Alas, no words I speak can serve to shew
The Queen of England; she is a sunken rock
Beneath a smooth and halcyon seeming bay.

141

Mary.
She would not crown herself with infamy.

Doug.
A woman and a queen can never want
Pretexts. She'll at her manifesto mint,
Stamp the base bullion with the regal die
Of state necessity.

Mary.
Do not belie the Queen.

Ham.
I would not trust to her;
She envies, hates, and fears your Majesty.
I marked how once,—as Cecil spoke your praise,
She blanched; her eye, retreating 'neath her brow,
Seemed like an arrow peering through a loop-hole,
Drawn back before it flies: Then such a rush
Of blood o'erspread her face, as quite outflamed
Her Berenician locks.

Bern.
O, put no trust in such a woman!

Adel.
Trust your own countrymen; they love you.

Mary.
Wilt thou not go with me?

Adel.
Can you believe I would not go with you?
To think you were a prisoner, and I free,
'Twould kill me.—I ne'er will leave you—no;
Were this Elizabeth some monster serpent,
Hurrying to wreathe its undulating length
Around my friend, I'd rush to her embrace,
And joy to die in the same venomed folds.

Enter Shepherd.
Shep.
I see three horsemen up the river side.

142

Mary.
How near? Come they this way?
Look they like friends or foes?

Shep.
They were so distant, and they glittered so,
I could not guess who they might be.

Mary.
How far?

Shep.
'Yond Halbert's bughts.

Bern.
That's half a mile or more, an' please your Grace.
I doubt not that they are your friends;
But, please your Highness, go into my cell
Until we know the certainty.

Mary.
I am resolved; I will not thus remain
A slave to ever new alarms: I'll brave
The storm, rather than, crouching, tremble thus
Beneath the shelter of a threatening rock.
For England at sunset we depart; 'tis fixed:
My resolution's taken; do not harass me
With vain entreaty. Meantime, good Bernard,
We'll to thy cell; the Queen of Scots must learn
To stoop her uncrowned head.

[Exeunt.

END OF ACT THIRD.

143

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

—Windsor.
Enter Elizabeth and Cecil.
Cecil.
The snare has answered to our wish.
I guessed that any sudden change of fortune
Would make her turn her thoughts to England.
I had prepared accordingly for her reception.

Eliz.
Is't Lancaster, said you? Is it a place of strength?

Cecil.
Of strength to laugh at rescue.

Eliz.
I fear we shall be blamed for these harsh measures.

Cecil.
Be blamed for execution of the laws!

Eliz.
She's not in chains?—that sure would be too cruel.

Cecil.
Perhaps it would.

Eliz.
Yet, to prevent escape—

Cecil.
She's in sure ward.

Eliz.
What if we should comply with her request,

144

And let her visit us? 'Twould be a triumph
To see a captive Queen in England's court.

Cecil.
That must not be; she'd turn your nobles' hearts.
O, I have seen her, ere I sowed dispeace
Between her and her people: Every eye
Was bent on her, with looks of love. She seemed
A beauteous star shot from its sphere, that drew
The constellations in its train: That is
To say,—she seemed—she looked—

Eliz.
And shall I lose by the comparison?

[Angrily.
Cecil.
An' please your Majesty to pardon me.
Lose! No; though Venus' self were to descend,
She'd first feel envy when she looked at you.

Eliz.
You do not think so.—Is Wingfield come?

Cecil.
He is at hand.

Eliz.
Send him to me. [Exit Cecil.
[Reading a Letter.]

“To be banished from my “country, and from my son—to be received in a prison, “and welcomed with fetters—Permit me either to “see your Majesty, or to return to my country and “my son—Languish unpitied and unseen.”—

Unseen! She thinks, that if she were but seen,
She would be pitied, aye, and loved besides;
She'd draw the constellations in her train.—
Her son! She boasts, too, of her son!—Detested—

145

The threatened chains shall be realities.
Aye, she shall feel their weight; and change
Her posture, and still feel the iron's weight
Bruising her beauteous arms, till the livid blotches
Turn into festering sores, which flies shall loath
To light upon. I'll goad her on to crimes;
Then she shall have no reason to complain
Of languishing unpitied and unseen.
Her night of woe I will at last illume
With lurid gleams of gorgeous misery,
Displaying in the collied verge a scaffold.—
Some have, for love, dipped napkins in the blood
Of sufferers at the block: I, I, for hate,
Could steep my pillow in the reeking stream,
And lay my head in dreams of sweetest vengeance.—
But, no—a public death!—'twould draw forth pity.
I'd have her die unpitied and unseen.—
He comes.—How to begin—I feel I dare not,
Even to him. A villain though he be,
He is a human being, and his eye
Will look me dumb—But, no; I'm Henry's daughter.

Enter Wingfield.
Wing.
An please your Majesty—

Eliz.
Wingfield!

Wing.
I'm here, an please your Majesty.

Eliz.
What sort of day is it?

146

It seems, I think, to overcast.

Wing.
'Tis a fine sunshine day, an please your Grace;
And yet 'tis somewhat cloudy, I believe.

Eliz.
What are the people saying?

Wing.
Of what, an please your—

Eliz.
Of any thing—of every thing—the North.

Wing.
They think that things go well in Scotland.

Eliz.
I had a thing to say, but talking of these matters
Has drove it from me: What, what could it be?

Wing.
Was it about the restiff commoners?

Eliz.
No, not that.

Wing.
The Queen of Scots?

Eliz.
No, no.—
Wingfield, go shake the arras there;
There, just behind where Brutus lifts his arm.
I am not safe; I have no peace; I dread
Some lurking king-killer; and still must live
In dread, as long—till—

Wing.
Till when, an please your Majesty?

Eliz.
Until—

Wing.
I'll die, to save your royal life.

Eliz.
Would'st thou, now, put a poniard in thy breast,
To save my life?

Wing.
I would.

147

Eliz.
Would'st thou become a suicide? commit Self-murder?

Wing.
I would.

Eliz.
'Tis the most heinous of all sorts of murder.

Wing.
'Twere here a pious deed.

Eliz.
If, then, to save my life, thou'dst sacrifice
Thy own, and do self-murder; say, would'st thou not
Think it less sinful to bereave of life
Another, to attain the end?
One guilty too; and one who, if not struck,
Will strike?

Wing.
That were most sure a meritorious deed.

Eliz.
But who's the judge? who has the right to judge?

Wing.
The truth: The truth's the truth, though not declared
By gospel-kissing knaves, who often yield
Their perjured judgments to a scarlet robe.

Eliz.
O now I recollect what 'twas I thought of;
The banished Queen of Scots—her maintenance—
'Tis hard the people should be burdened.

Wing.
'Tis very hard.

Eliz.
And that the prince's state should be endangered.

Wing.
It is not right.

Eliz.
And yet, nor prince nor people have a friend
To rid them of those burdens, and those hazards.

148

Wing.
Your Grace has many friends.

Eliz.
Aye, faithful friends, who'd rather serve themselves,
Than do disservice to mine enemies.

Wing.
Who are your Grace's enemies?

Eliz.
Have I not named the Queen of Scots?

Wing.
She is your prisoner; she's in your hands.

Eliz.
She lives, and she has friends.

Wing.
Your Grace cannot complain of want of friends.

Eliz.
My friends have tongues.

Wing.
And some of them have hands.

Eliz.
And yet my enemies live.

Wing.
What would your Highness that your friends should do?
Is death your life?

Eliz.
Begone! dost think I am a murderess?

Wing.
No, justice is no murder.

Eliz.
I fear the bird, though limed, may yet escape.
Where then would be my safety?—
Say, would'st thou, Wingfield, choose to be its keeper?
The rangership of Wiersdale should be thy fee.—
But, hark—

Wing.
An' please your Grace.

Eliz.
I would not have her blood upon my head;
There is no need, no, none for shedding blood.

149

Blood, though it sometimes glides with silent flow,
At other times speaks with a cataract's roar.

Wing.
What does your Highness mean?

Eliz.
Mean!
You ought to take with you a skilful cook;
She's fond of dainty fare.

Wing.
I've been informed, she has a female friend
Who tastes each thing she eats or drinks.

Eliz.
The holy wafer.

Wing.
How?

Eliz.
None tastes of it before she eats.

Wing.
I am no priest.

Eliz.
Wise, prudent priests there are, and of her faith.
In Lancashire they swarm.

Wing.
The rangership?

Eliz.
I've said it:—But, hear,
I would not have this done, unless you find
That those suspicions which I have surmised
Have truth for their foundation. Examine well;
I put thee in the place of those same knaves,
Those gospel-kissing knaves, of whom thou spok'st.
Enquire, and judge; and let thy verdict be
Written in deeds, not words; but, recollect,
It must be on full proof. I would not touch
The life o'the innocent to save my own.

150

Wing.
I would not do it, though your Highness ordered.

Eliz.
Wingfield!

Wing.
What more, an' please your Grace?

Eliz.
Nothing—O aye, I think on't; do not be
Another Hubert; but yet, remember well,
It must be on full proof of guilt:
Remember!

[Exit.
Wing.
Conscience, shall I be schooled by thee!
Thou shadow of the soul, at which fools start.
Crime! what is crime? If there be such a thing,
It lies in the intention, and in that
My guilt is now complete;—the plan is here:
[Pointing to his brow.
It is a furled scene, that's soon unrolled,
A tragic scene, by Treachery drawn in blood.
But where is all this guilt? What can I add
To misery like hers?—
Imprisonment perpetual is her doom:
Death is the sole deliverance she can hope.
Death—death—aye, death must come one day to me;
What then? what is it but a loss of being?
And what annihilation, but a sleep,
Unhaunted by those qualmish phantasies,
Which, while awake, I laugh at?

[Exit.

151

SCENE II.

—Lancaster Castle.
(Time—Evening.)
Mary and Adelaide on the Battlements of one of the Towers.
Mary.
The fourteenth day is past, and yet no answer.
O that I ne'er had crossed the Solway sea!

Adel.
Mary, be comforted.
If there be laws of hospitality,
Pity in woman, kindness in a sister,
Or loyalty in princes, you are safe.

Mary.
And yet we're prisoners.

Adel.
Aye, we again are prisoners, 'tis too true;
And who will rescue us a second time?

Mary.
O England, England! grave of murdered princes!
Why did I leave thee, Scotland, dearest land?
In thee I had some friends—they died for me.
O were I on the side of yon dim mountain!
Though wild and bleak it be, it is in Scotland.

Adel.
Alas! 'tis but a cloud.

Mary.
No, 'tis a mountain of sweet Annerdale.

152

Adel.
Ah, no! 'tis but a cloud; you know our distance.

Mary.
Well, then, it is a cloud that hovers o'er
My dear, my native land: I love that cloud,
That misty robe of spirits. O, Adelaide,
Come soothe me with that mournful song—
'Tis an old thing; we heard it in the days
Of happiness, and yet it filled our eyes
With tears; we heard it in the vale of Morven:
'Twas something—'twas about the voice of Cona.

Adel.
The maiden with the distaff by the stream,
'Twas she that sung it:
I do remember; and, after she had sung it,
She tried to tell it o'er in broken Scottish.

Mary.
Let me hear it.

Adel.
I feel my heart so full, that but one note,
A single note, sung even by myself,
Would quite untune my voice.—Shall we descend?

Mary.
Whither?

Adel.
To our chamber.

Mary.
The weary rook hies home—my home's a prison.
All things are free but me. Why did I leave
Lochleven's beauteous isle? There I could range
Along the shore, or, seated on the bank,
Hope still for better days; there could transform
The clouds reflected in the clear blue lake

153

To sceptres and to diadems restored;
And, when the visions melted into air,
I drew a kind of quaint and foolish comfort,
To see how far the watery circles spread
In sympathetic motion with my tears.—
O it presages ill the more I think!
Their forcing Douglas back—he rescued us;
And if it were not meant that we should still
Continue prisoners, why should the last,
The last friend but thyself,
The sole attendant of a Queen,
Be banished from her, and so rudely too?

Adel.
Perhaps, for ever! No, I will not suffer
My foolish fears to think 'twill be for ever:
No, no, we yet shall meet—we shall be free.—
Mary, be comforted; you see I still,
I think I still could—smile.

Mary.
Thou'rt not a banished Queen, a captive Queen;
Thou'rt not a mother severed from her infant.
I do remember when I used to think,
How it was misery, most anxious misery,
To be beyond the hearing of his voice:
Even when I watched beside him as he slept
In softest sleep, I've thought he ceased to breathe;
Then, trembling, would I lift the silken cover,
And at the light he'd smile without awaking.

154

What extacy! But now he's watched by strangers,
Perhaps by wretches hired to take his life.—
O, God forgive me! Adelaide,
That is a dreadful, dizzy height—'tis terrible!
And yet to think, that in the little time
In which I breathe a single heart-sick sigh,
I end all sighs.

Enter Warder.
Ward.
Your Grace will please come down;
We're just about to lock.

Mary.
O let us breathe a little longer here.

Adel.
An' please you do; I know you're very good.

Ward.
The sun is set this hour; the dew falls thick;
You'll mar that soft sweet voice if you bide out.

Mary.
Ah! misery is a shield against all seasons.

Ward.
'Tis very late; the moon, you see, is up;
I swear it's ten o'the clock, an't be an hour.

Adel.
Look at this dial here upon the corner,
By it 'tis only six; I count by the moon.

Ward.
And why, fair lady?

Adel.
Because I'm one of Dian's virgin band.
What think you of me?—
But do, sweet keeper, let us stay a while.

Ward.
I wish Lord Scroop were here to give you leave;
I scarcely dare to take so much upon me.—

155

Well, well, you may: I'm sorry for you;
I cannot tell you what I have to tell.

Mary.
What is it?

Ward.
Go not so near the wall, it is but low;
Look how your shadow stretches cross the court.

Mary.
'Would that I lay where now my shadow stretches!

Adel.
What have you got to tell? aught of our friends?
Are any of them dead?—Speak, speak at once.

Ward.
No, that were nothing; but I am commanded—

Mary.
Well, I'm prepared to die.

Ward.
'Tis not so bad, thank God, as that.

Mary.
What is it?

Ward.
Chains.

Mary.
Chains!

Ward.
I've orders that this night your Grace should wear
A chain.—O, woe is me! All I can do,
It shall be light, the lightest one we have,
One which, they say, a little prince,
Ta'en in the wars between the Roses, wore
For many a weary night and day in this same castle.

Mary.
Oh!

Adel.
The order sure extends to me:
I'll not be single, I will have one too,

156

Although it were of links like anchor rings.
These hands will ne'er submit to dastard freedom
While Mary Stewart's wrists are bound with chains.
Give me one too; I say, give me a chain.—
But, keeper, must the Queen of Scots—
Do not,—you need not do it.

Mary.
I'm ready; on, I'll follow thee.
My fate is all before me; I see it all.
Can malice, fraud, and cruelty like this
Exist, and can the stupid world look up,
Shouting, God save this model of all virtue!

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

—Wiersdale Forest.
(Time—Night.)
Gypsies sitting under a Tree.
1 Gypsy.
I'll act the abbot.

2 Gypsy.
You're not fat enough; I'll be the abbot myself.

3 Gypsy.
And I'll be little John.

1 Gypsy.
Thou little John! thou two-ell barber's pole.

157

3 Gypsy.
And thou the abbot! thou whey-cheeked, small-beer nosed ninny.

Enter Maude, a female Gypsy, singing.
Maude.
His nose is purple as a plum.

2 Gypsy.

Aye, that's me; I am the abbot.

[Sings.

Her cheek is like the shilfa's breast,
Her neck is like the swan's,
Her—

Enter Rosa, another female Gypsy, singing.
Rosa.
When the moon-beam shines so bright,
That flower-bells open to her light,
We fairies—

Enter Douglas and Hamilton, with slung bows, coming forward from the back ground.
Ham.

Good folks, what is all this?

Rosa.
[Singing.]
Dance right merrily.

Doug.

Sweet lass, what is't you sing?

Rosa.

I enact the Queen of the Fairies; I was singing the prologue.

1 Gypsy.

And who are you, Sir?

Doug.

We live by our bows.

1 Gypsy.

Then you'll probably die on a tree. Will you be one of us? You're from Scotland, I think?

Ham.

Right: But who are you?

158

1 Gypsy.

Of a most honourable pedigree; none of our gang can boast an equal one: My brother was hanged for sheep-stealing, my mother was thrice i'the stocks, my father suffered with Johnie Armstrong; I was intended for the church, but I liked stealing better.

Doug.

But what was your contention about? I heard high words.

1 Gypsy.

It was about the casting of the parts.

Ham.

What parts?

1 Gypsy.

The Abbot of Unreason, Maid Marian, and the other parts of the play.

Doug.

Who acts the Queen of the Fairies?

1 Gypsy.

Rosa here, my daughter; she does it passing well, though I say it. Sing us, child, the old prologue. 'Tis in the character, Sir, you must know, of the Queen of the Fairies. Quickly, child; quickly and trippingly.

Rosa.
[Sings.]

When the moon shines all so bright,
That flower-bells open to her light,
Round about the hawthorn tree
We fairies dance right merrily,
Merrily, merrily.

And when the fickle beam retires,
What care we—our frolic quires

159

Round the glow-worm's moving lustre
Still in sportive revels muster,
Merrily, merrily,
Beneath the hawthorn tree.

So light we tread, no flower we crush,
Nor break the deep ear-soothing hush;
You might, so noiseless is our tread,
Hear gossamers o'er flowerets spread,
All 'neath the hawthorn tree.

Ere summer flies, in watery dell,
Between two waves of gentle swell,
We're tripping borne across the deep;
But still our nightly sports we keep,
So merrily, so merrily,
On the smooth-rolling sea.

Doug.

'Tis featly done.

Ham.

It goes right airily.

1 Gypsy.

We're going, an' please you, to enact this play at Lancaster fair, before the castle; the Queen of Scots will see us.

Doug.

And are you sure she's there? we heard she was at Bolton.

1 Gypsy.

I saw her but two days gone; she was

160

looking through the grate of John o' Gaunt's tower; and when some of the—

Enter an Old Gypsy.
Old Gypsy.

And when—

1 Gypsy.

And when—

Old Gypsy.

I'm telling it.—And when the rabble reviled her, she kissed her hand, and held it through the bars; at which the giddy fools raised such a shout—

1 Gypsy.

You'll know blind Robin the old Scotch minstrel; he has but one leg, and one tune; he lost his leg at Flodden Field: I led him that day the Queen was brought in, and her beauty was so bright, I sometimes thought old Robin saw her; for his face turned as she rode along, as if he had seen her; and in sooth, he said, he never saw her look sae bonny since the time she flang him a siller croun, and bade him no weary himsel' wi' playing.

Doug.

Was there any one with her?

1 Gypsy.

There is a lady with her, but she ne'er shows herself.

Ham.

I'd give my land (if I had any) to see this Queen.

1 Gypsy.

Your land, forsooth! But what hinders you to see her? You may go there to-morrow; we'll make you complete gypsies.—But, in the mean time,

161

gentles, we must go on with our rehearsal; the rest of our company are waiting for us. Yon little plat is our stage; the white-branched hawthorn our scenes; the moon and stars our lustres; and you will be our audience. Haste, trip with me: Come, follow—

Rosa.
[Singing.]

Follow, follow me.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

—The Terrace of the Castle Garden, Lancaster.
(Time—Night.)
Enter Wingfield and Francisco, conversing.
Fran.
I do not like the work.

Wing.
You shall have what you ask;
I hold a broad commission.
Think of the angels: Those I offer you,
They're not your feathered tribe of cherubims,
But solid sterling gold: Twelve score of them
Are worth whole legions of the other kind.

Fran.
I care not for your gold;
I'd rather have preferment in the church.

Wing.
That cannot be, unless you will abjure
The errors of the Romish superstition.

Fran.
O God forefend I ever should do that!
My conscience will not let me think of that.

162

Wing.
If you'll abjure, you shall be Dean of Peterborough;
The place is vacant at this very time.

Fran.
My conscience is not pliable.

Wing.
There is small difference 'twixt the two religions.

Fran.
I'll think of it.

Wing.
Think of the deanery.

Fran.
I'll think of it.

Wing.
Will you not flinch?

Fran.
A Spaniard break his word!

Wing.
I'll go before:
Meantime prepare the chapel.

Fran.
'Tis requisite it be reconsecrated;
I'd not profane the holy ordinance
In an unhallowed place. Against to-morrow
It may be ready.

Wing.
Do then prepare.—
This is a strong, yet slowly sapping drug,
[Delivering to him a little Box.
A subtle, vital-gnawing thing, that's sure,
Though imperceptible: The deed might else be traced.
Death must not rudely pluck the pretty flower;
No, let the canker-worm work at its root,
So, by degrees, she'll fade, then droop, then fall:
Nor will the real cause be once surmised.

[Exit.
Fran.
The deanery of Peterborough!—

163

For abjuration there is absolution.
The deanery is a step: Why may not I,
As well as others, reach the primacy?
Then, having access to Elizabeth,
Convert her from her present heresy,
Rebuild the catholic church, and expiate
My feigned defection from the holy see,
And this projected pious-motived murder.—
'Twill do, 'twill do.

[Exit.

SCENE V.

—Hall of the Castle.
Enter Wingfield, followed by a Warder.
Ward.
'Tis scarcely day.

Wing.
I must now see her; there is my warrant.

Ward.
You'd better wait an hour or two.

Wing.
No, not a second more; I do command—
[Exit Warder.
Now let me think how I may best ensnare
This peerless piece of royalty. I must,
If I obey my mistress's command, I must,
By every hardship, goad her on to treasons,
That, if the priest should fail, the judge may strike.
But then she is so Christianly meek,
She'll clothe herself in Resignation's stole:—
I'll meet her there, I'll laugh her faith to scorn;

164

That will, if any thing, incense her.

Enter Mary and Adelaide.
Mary.
Who asks for me at this untimely hour?

Wing.
I bear the Queen's commission, which commands me
To see your Grace the instant I arrived.

Mary.
Your business might have waited.

Wing.
Nay, 'tis your business most.
I've orders to redress your wrongs: What are they?

Mary.
Am I at liberty?

[Holding up her arms.
Wing.
No.

Mary.
Why am I not?

Wing.
The safety of the Queen requires this seeming harshness.

Mary.
Why are my friends forbid to visit me?

Wing.
It is the order of her Majesty.

Mary.
The word of God has said, Visit the prisoner;
And who says no? a woman!—
A curse will blast the power, that would arrest
The prisoner's sigh floating to friendship's ear;
That intercepts the beam of friendship's eye
From lighting up the prison's dreary gloom:
A curse will shrivel up the impious hand,
That, with its sacrilegious signature,
Arrests the joy-winged light, and tells
The eye, which, with a grateful glance,

165

Takes in the cope of heaven, to be content
With the faint ray that, glimmering, struggles through
The iron lattice of the hopeless man.—
O God forgive me! May thy will be done.

Wing.
That is a pious wish. But who, or where
Is God? If there be one, then thou art guilty;
For why should innocence be doomed to suffer?

Mary.
And art thou sent to steal me from my faith?
I rest on this:
[Pressing a Psalter to her Breast.
These are the words of life.

Wing.
Some foolish fables.

Mary.
This is the pillow of disease and age;
On this the captive rests his weary head,
And dreams of heaven. O blessed, blessed words!
The bitterest tear that drops on you is sweet.
These are the only words that comfort speak
To broken hearts like mine. This little book
The widowed mother presses to her breast,
And gives it to her orphan child to kiss.
The man bowed down by sorrow, who has laid
The last of all his children in the grave,
Returning to his lonely house, first finds
Some solace here. Even to the death-doomed wretch,
Who cannot read the blessed words of life,
This volume makes his loaded arms feel light;
Yea, even at the suffering hour, disarms
The dreadful apparatus of its horrors.

166

Perhaps to me that hour is in reserve,—
When on a stage, with sable scenes hung round,
Poor Mary Stewart shall lay down her life.
Let that hour come! On this I lay my hand;
Unclasping this, heaven opens to my view.

Wing.
Delusion all!

Mary.
I see, I see thee, proselyting fiend!
The wretch who, tainted with the pestilence,
Would breathe infection on the sleeping infant,
Is not more devilish than is he who, 'reft
Of hope himself, makes converts to despair.

Wing.
A God! [Smiling.]
—What proof? That which you call his word,
Is but the word of man.

Mary.
Canst thou blot out the stars? There do I read
The Deity, there face to face behold him.

Wing.
Well, well, I did but jest; and, as a proof,
I will o'erstep the bounds of my commission,
And send a priest of your own faith
To comfort you:
Besides, I'll order that the castle-chapel
Be given up to him, with liberty
There to perform all rites of holy church.

Mary.
Heaven reward you!

Adel.
Amen.

167

Wing.
I'll on the instant go; 'tis now broad day;
I'll rouse again the lazy Spaniard.

[Exit.
Adel.
I do not like that man;
His smile is still more hideous than his frown.

Enter Warder.
Ward.
An please your Highness, there is come a fortune-teller;
A cunning player on the harp besides.
Say, would your Highness wish to see the man?

Mary.
I'm sure he cannot tell us any good;
I wish not now to see him.

Ward.
Hark, he plays.

[The “Flowers of the Forest” heard without. Mary and Adelaide appear astonished. Mary recovers herself.
Mary.
Yes, let him come; I think his touch is soft.
[Exit Warden.
It is the very hand of Douglas, and the tune
He knows I took delight to hear him play.

Adel.
Ah, no!
That tune, though Scottish, comes so near the heart,
That 'tis a favourite with our enemies,
And oftentimes draws tears from English eyes:
There's many an English minstrel knows it well.

Mary.
But, hark!—the voice—'tis he.

Adel.
'Tis Douglas!

168

Mary.
Be calm; there is some hidden purpose here:
Study his looks, and if he seem to wish
Not to be recognised, beware! Assume,
Though fluttering be your heart to fly to him,
Assume a cold indifference in your look.

Adel.
Can I look cold on Douglas?—and yet I will attempt.

Enter Douglas, disguised in a Gypsy habit, followed by the Warder.
Doug.
God save your Grace! God bless thee, lady!

Mary.
Come forward, friend; why have you left your harp?

Doug.
I only play some few old things; the art
Which I profess is one of higher dignity.

Mary.
And canst thou now, by looking at the lines
Upon the hands, say when these shackled arms
Shall once again be free?

Doug.
I think I can; but first I must inclose
Your Highness, and your fair companion too,
Within a certain circle of great virtue.

Mary.
I fear not such imprisonment as that.

Doug.
Well then, good warder, stand a little back
While thus I draw my line;—a little farther—
Aye, that will do.
“Thrice times three athwart the line
“I've warped through each heavenly sign,

169

“Thrice times three,
“Thrice times three, three, three, three.”—
An' please your Highness now to reach your hand.—
[Douglas, kneeling, surveys her hand.
Aye, there's a lucky line.—
This night, according as occasion offers,
[Speaking low.
Perhaps the next, or next again,
Expect a trusty band, sworn to your rescue.
Three days ago they'd leave Caerlavrock shore,
In a stout bark, well trimmed and fitted out,
Like those that sail to fish St George's sea.
At dead of night they'll land, set fire at once
To different places of the town, and—

Mary.
That must not be; how many sleeping infants—

Doug.
Be ruled by those who risk their lives to serve you.—
Amid the noise, and hurry, and alarm,
We win our way, by force or guile, to you,
Bear off the prize, and straight embark for France.
I pray you be prepared.—
And you, sweet maid, come reach to me your palm:
'Tis a fair hand, that many gallants sue for.
Come, let me see—I see, formed by these lines,
A labyrinth from which thou'lt soon be free:
The Queen of England is merciful as just.—

170

Let me look nearer still. It is too soft;
I fear it will too easily be won.
But let me see again:
These lines are branches of a full blown thorn,
And that black mole, what is it but an ousel,
Which 'mid the boughs so fair hath built its nest;
A mystery right easy to be read:
In brief, fair damsel, you do love a man,
Who is so far from handsome, that his face
Would scarcely be a foil to one like mine,
[She seems for a moment displeased.
Of Ethiopian tint: But, what is more,
You'll win this sable gentleman; for if
I know aught of my art or of myself,
He loves you full as well as you love him.

Adel.
Now fair befal thee; tell me what's thy fee?

Doug.
Nor gold nor silver will I take of thine;
One kiss of that sweet mouth is all I ask.

Mary.
Why hesitate to grant the spaeman's boon?

Doug.
A trick, a trick; that was thy cheek.

Adel.
Well, well, an that it must be so.—

Ward.
In sooth, a very gallant fortune-teller.
Now, by Saint Peter's keys, I never saw,
Since first I learned the trade of turning locks,
One of thy tribe so bold, and yet withal
So little given to greed.

Adel.
When wilt thou play again?

171

Doug.
Perhaps this night at sunset.

Ward.
Haste, friend, I must away; walk, trudge.

Adel.
At sunset.

[Exeunt Douglas and Warder.
Mary.
I fear this too will fail.—Lead to my chamber,
It is my home: Come, I would rest in it.
I'm sick of disappointed hopes;—come, come.

Adel.
No, let us stay; none will disturb us here.
That massive door is close; and here we see
The furrowed field, from which spring all our hopes.—
Look, yonder is a sail; and far beyond,
As if suspended in the haze that joins
The sea and sky, I think I can discern
What seems another sail.

Mary.
I cannot see; my eyes ay fill with tears
Whene'er I look upon the watery way,
That brought me from the tranquil shores of France.
But let me try; I'll look, though dim my sight.—
Alas, thy hopes are bent to be deceived!
That, nearest, is a gallant ship, deep-fraught,
Whose well-stowed hull the shouldering waves
Scarce heave; sail bulging above sail, she seems
An airy castle turreted with clouds.
Our friends! they voyage in some sooty buss,
Hung round with lines, and nets, and pitchy ropes,
And such like implements of fishers' gear.

172

Adel.
Well, well, they'll come; no matter in what plight.
Look, see yon beauteous rainbow; you will grant,
It is a happy omen.

Mary.
No, 'tis a broken vault; and, see, it fades,
The fragments melting on the distant hills;
And now 'tis gone, quite gone—so fade my hopes.

Adel.
I see you are determined to despond.

Mary.
Ah, no! I only dread to cherish hope,
Because heaven breathes an anathema deep
On all my hopes, and turns them to despair:
I hoped to have a son—the infant's smile
Was for a season mine; but now he smiles
Upon his hopeless mother's bitterest foes.
I never more shall see his face again!—
O, I shall ne'er forget that hated day,
(Hated! and yet I love to brood on it,—
To speak of it,) when forced to leave my child.
I asked but for the respite of one day;
No, not a breath! the ruthless lips replied.
Just till my infant wake,—I kneeling prayed;
Well, well, you may;—such was the harsh response
Made to a Queen. Then o'er my babe I knelt,
And dreaded to behold, what oft my heart
With inexpressible delight had thrilled,—
The opening of his eyes, my parting doom.
Thus rivetted I gazed, and longer still

173

Had been allowed to gaze upon my child,
But that a shower of tears fell from my eyes,
And broke his placid slumber.—Woe, woe is me!

Adel.
O look not round upon the storm that's past.
Look forward to the little azure plat
Expanding in the clouds; 'twill soon extend
Till full upon us shines the heavenly beam.

Mary.
I fear that this attempt,—lead me to my cell,—
Like all the rest, will end in deeper woe.

Adel.
Keep up your hopes; success will never come
Without attempts to win it.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI.

—Changes to the Castle Garden. The end of the Chapel seen in the back ground.
Enter Wingfield.
Wing.
This fool is at his exorcisms no doubt,
A-sprinkling holy lymph to purify
An altar for a human sacrifice.

Enter Warder.
Ward.
An please your worship, would you hear some music?
There is a pleasant harper here.

Wing.
No, no; begone!—Music! I hate it.

174

Hast e'er a cross-bow? I would that thou couldst shoot
Yon noisy throstle on the yew-tree hedge. [Exit Warder.
[The folding-doors of the Chapel open. Francisco, from within, comes forward. The altar, with lights, crucifix, &c. seen at the farther end.

A pretty show, indeed: The bait's well gilt;
The hook is sharp, and barbed withal;
It must not slip Francisco.

Douglas seen in the back ground among the trees.
Doug.
What can this mean?

[Aside.
Fran.
But there's one thing I fear may come to pass;
I would not wish, when angling for the trout,
To kill the little minnow: I've been informed,
There is a lady with the Queen of Scots.

Wing.
O mind not that; since, if it come to pass,
What then? There is no good can be attained
Without some ill.

Fran.
We must somehow avoid a double crime.

Wing.
If it be possible.—But, good Francisco,
There is another point:
I know my mistress wishes to obtain
Some proof of Mary's guilt, both as to Rizzio,
And to the King her husband. Do you think
You could persuade her friend to counterfeit
The Queen's subscription? I have prepared a writing;

175

It bears a full confession of her guilt.
I've heard that this same friend, or secretary,
Both pens and signs her mistress' letters.

Fran.
I'll not take more in hand; I do not know
The Queen's companion.

Wing.
I'll bring you to them now.

Fran.
I long to see them.

[Exeunt.
Douglas comes forward.
Doug.
There's here some villainy devised.
A double crime! some proof of Mary's guilt!
The little minnow kill—whom?
Although the character I cannot read,
I can discern the Queen of England's hand;
She writes in cypher, with a blood-dipped pen.
She's working.—Now, were I some wretch, hope 'reft,
Self-doomed to death, but dreading to incur
The guilt of suicide,
I'd by anticipation expiate
That guilt, by stabbing first
This empress of all princely hypocrites:
I'd be the avenging angel.
O, I would stand all hazards for the chance
Of striking such a blow; and when 'twas struck,
I'd deem the punishment a high reward.—
'Would I could see the Queen once more ere night,

176

But just to say, Beware! I'll try again
To wind myself into her presence.

[Exit.

SCENE VII.

—Changes to the Hall of the Castle.
(Time—Night.)
Enter, to Mary and Adelaide, Wingfield and Francisco.
Wing.
Father Francisco is come.

Fran.
God bless your Highness!

Mary.
Father, I give you thanks. O, I am glad,
I'm comforted once more to see
That humble habit, and that sacred emblem.

Fran.
'Tis the peculiar duty of our order,
To minister to prisoners.

Mary.
You seem to feel, as if you once had felt
The misery of them who learn to note
The dreary hours by the slow-moving shadow
Of staunchel-bars upon the chequered floor;
To whom the cheerful sun shines but to tell
That life and joy exist, but not for them;
Whose serenade is noise of closing bolts;
To whom the sweetest sound that meets the ear
Is the slow warden's morning-steps ascending,
And then the ringing of the loosened hasps;

177

Even the stern face, that seems to grudge a look,
And tongue returning monosyllables
To anxious questioning, even these
Impart a kind of pleasure to the wretch
Whose home's the prison-house.

Fran.
Be comforted.

Adel.
Be comforted!

Fran.
How many pine in prisons for the crime
Of poverty, who never were accused
Of any greater guilt?

Mary.
The debtor! Oh, his lot is happiness
Compared to mine; his friends, those whom he loves,
They visit him. Have we not, Adele, marked,
The little barefoot boy come to the gate,
Bearing his prisoned father's morning mess?
At sight of whom the keeper's frown would change
Into a smile; and, as he let him in,
He'd pitying stroak the elfin's sun-bleached head.
I've wished to be the parent of that child.

Wing.
You would not wish to have your child with you?
These gloomy walls would frighten him.

Mary.
(Reproachfully.)
I'd shake this chain before my baby's face,
And please him thus, and then he'd smile to me.

Fran.
Ah! why these bonds?

[To Wingfield.

178

Wing.
I thought you came to comfort, not to move
Her discontent.

Fran.
Your Highness' thoughts, I trust, are turned to heaven?

Mary.
Yes; and the more that sorrow fills the heart,
Heaven shines more glorious to the sight of hope;
As to the tear-filled eye the tiniest star
Shoots forth a thousand beams athwart the gloom.

Fran.
I say it is not seemly, 'tis not right,
[To Wingfield.
This strict restraint—chains!

Wing.
Art thou the bearer of the Queen's commission?

Mary.
See what a furrow in my wrist it makes.

[To Francisco.
Fran.
'Tis barbarous.

Wing.
Withdraw, I do command.—
[Exit Francisco.
To show how much it is my earnest wish
To grant your Highness all indulgences,
I have allowed this priest to consecrate
The chapel; he comes to tell you this,
And to announce, that on the morrow morn
He will perform the service of the mass,
And that you and this lady here may join.
He'll be again with you ere night.

[Exit.
Adel.
O what a wretch is that!

179

Mary.
The friar had some ruth;—
I thought I saw a tear start in his eye.
Voice from without. Beware, beware!

Adel.
O God! that is the voice of Douglas.

Mary.
'Tis his:—There's something dreadful meant against us.
Farther access, no doubt, they have denied him:
'Twas from the garden that the warning came.—
I dread some horrid purpose 'gainst my life:
This low'ring Wingfield came not here for nought.—
Lead me to my chamber; I'm sick with apprehension:
Beware!—that word—it had a heavy knell.
I see dark visions float before mine eyes.
I used to love to muse on death; but now,
Behind his form, I see a hooked wheel,
Half-covered with a black, but blood-stained pall,
And in his knurled hand, 'stead of a dart,
He shakes fell torture-irons.—
Bear, bear me from the sight!

[Mary leans on Adelaide, looking wildly.
Adel.
O, Mary, I would die for thee.

[Exeunt.

180

SCENE VIII.

—The Shore of Lancashire.
Enter Argyle, Montgomery, Soldiers, and Sailors.
Arg.
Is she fast moored? for, mark, the heavy clouds
Are mustering all around.

Sailor.
Fast as the lesser bear to the pole.

Arg.
Speak not so loud.

Mont.
Douglas, I trust, will soon be here;
This should be near the place.

Arg.
'Would he were come. 'Twill be a dreadful night.—
Look, look—yon flash.

Mont.
Speak low; perhaps some straggling fishermen
May be returning from their day's adventure.

Arg.
And, hark! that distant, but tremendous peal,
Careering round the pitchy vault of night.—
Another flash—how nigh!
And, hear; that is no distant bolt.

1 Sold.
It bodes no good: I wish I were once more
Upon the shore of fair Carlavrock bay.

2 Sold.
'Would I were now beneath my smoky roof.

Mont.
Soldiers, are all your bows securely cased?
We'll have a flood ere long,—'tis pattering now.

1 Sold.
I hear a foot.

181

Mont.
Soldiers, go back a little way.—Keep close
And still.—Next flash will shew who comes.

Arg.
It is not Douglas.

Mont.
'Tis Hamilton, I think.—
Yes, both our friends.

Enter Douglas.
Doug.
I'm here among my friends, yet scarcely know them.—
I trust, you're all arrayed in Kendal green.

Arg.
All.

Doug.
My Lord, you're welcome to the English shore.

Arg.
How does the Queen?

Mont.
And her fair friend?

Doug.
They're well as captives are in use to be.
The Queen desponds; her friend is full of hope.—
But never did I see a night more cross;
Darkness would best supply our want of numbers.

Mont.
The night, indeed, is luckless and perverse;
For, as we past the postern-gate, each flash
Displayed the castle plain as at high noon;
We could have counted every vane, and spike,
And pinnacle: One lengthened gleam there was,
So bright, I thought I saw the watchman's eyes
Peer through a loop-hole of the western tower.

Arg.
And yet our enterprize brooks not delay.

182

This night must save the Queen,
Or plunge her deeper still in ruin.

Doug.
I know it must, my Lord; retreat is ruin.
You've past a broad and boisterous Rubicon.

Arg.
What is your plan? 'tis you must lead us on.

Doug.
I will explain it; but 'tis fit our men
Should hear.—
Comrades, draw near, and listen to the way
By which we'll work the rescue of the Queen:—
Close to the town of Lancaster, to which
I mean to lead you now,
There is a grange, whose barn-yard still is stored
With the saved increase of the former year;
We set it in a blaze, and then retire
Into a little grove of trees hard by.
Soon we shall hear the alarm of fire resound;
The port is opened, out the townsmen run
Confused, with pails and buckets, in their haste
Half filled: The castle-guard ere long comes down;
We watch our time, and straggling, two and three,
Pass in, and meet before the castle gate.
The porter takes us for their men returned;
Besides, I've learned the watch-word for the night,
The thistle 'neath the rose; and thus we gain,
I think we cannot fail to gain, admission.
By guile or force we'll make our entrance good.

Arg.
So far well planned.

183

Doug.
Admitted, instantly we shut the gate,
Seize on the keys, secure their keeper,
Force him to bring us to the royal chamber:—
To lead the Queen, my Lord, will be your part.
(What trembling joy in Adelaide's bright eye!)
Then through the postern of the western tower
Down to the beach;
Quick we embark, unmoor, and hoist the sails;—
I hear the rapid rushing of the prow.

Arg.
'Tis well devised; it scarcely can misgive.

Mont.
I'll answer on my life.

Doug.
What say you, friends?

[To the Soldiers.
1 Sold.
We'll follow trustfully where'er you lead:
We long to see our noble Queen once more.
She'll look on us with such a look of thanks!
To serve her we would rush on death.

Doug.
Then follow; now's the time; remember Scotland:
May Bruce's spirit burn in every breast!

[Exeunt.

END OF ACT FOURTH.

184

ACT V.

SCENE I.

—Wiersdale Forest. A Cave seen in the back ground.
(Time—Morning.)
Enter, from the Cave, Rosa and Maude.
Rosa.

They said, they would be back or morning, and the sun is almost up—

[Singing.]

Just crimsoning the mountain crest,
And tinselling the lavrock's breast,
As he meets the slanting ray,
With his merry roundelay.

Maude.

I fear some mischance has o'ertaken them.

Rosa.

Why dost fear?

Maude.

They knew the vicar had been drawing his small tithes; and your pigs, they be the most difficultest things to steal that an honest man can put his hand to: They'll raise ye a rout would split the devil's ears.—I fear there's something wrong.

185

Rosa.

Thou'rt always fearing and fearing.

Maude.

And his wife, too, has the ear of a mouldewart, and she's as watchful as an old gander.

Rosa.

—But, then, think of the parson's snore; 'tis louder twice than the bellows of a smiddy forge.

Maude.

But didst not see the lightning?

Rosa.

No, I was so wearied with the rehearsing. I dreamed the live-long night I was the Queen o' the Fairies, and that the King was so handsome and so kind; and I was so vexed when I opened my eyes and saw your withered face.

[Yawning.

Maude.

Haste to the well; but, hear, take care not to gaze in it at thy pretty self; the very shadow of such a dirty smutched-face ouphe as thee would make it muddy. Swith!—take both pails.

Rosa.

And your sweet face would look it clear again.—But what can keep them?

Maude.

Run up first to the Claughton brow, and look for them: Go, and I'll be putting on the bailiff's new pot.

[Exeunt different ways.

186

SCENE II.

—The Castle Garden.
(Time—Morning.)
Enter Francisco.
Fran.
I thought the thunder roared, Woe to Francisco,
If he should do the deed!—
Can I relume those eyes, restore that form?
To look on her, creation's fairest work!
Were I an angel, I would quit my sphere,
And let the planets reel into confusion,
Till chaos again unfurled his flag of night,
And, with a thunder-rimmed volcano for his trump,
Proclaimed his reign restored.—
Destroy thee! No, I never formed
The horrible intent:
It must have been a dream, which, with mere terror,
At last has waked me. Never could I be,
It is impossible, so thoroughly a villain,
As for a moment harbour in my mind
A purpose of such peerless wickedness.
[Looks round towards the Chapel, and starts.
'Tis true, too true, here is a living witness.
[Pointing to his breast.

187

I must not pray; curses must be my prayers,
Curses upon myself, and him who planned
So devilish a conspiracy.—I'll find
The wretch, and curse him to his face.

[Exit.

SCENE III.

—Changes to Mary's Chamber.
Mary leaning on a Couch, Adelaide standing beside her.
Mary.
I fear they've made the attempt, and been betrayed;
The night was now and then as light as noon:
The elements denounce hostility
'Gainst Mary Stewart. What an awful night!
How couldst thou sleep?

Adel.
I tried to keep awake, and long kept up
My leaden eyelids; the night was then quite still;
I dropped asleep, thinking of Douglas.

Mary.
Didst thou not hear the peals?

Adel.
No.

Mary.
But that I'm miserable, I should have swooned
With terror: The flashes followed each so fast,
That had they followed faster, the night had shone
One unremitting blaze: These window bars
At times appeared as if of glowing iron;
And up this chain there sometimes ran a gleam!—

188

Then fear was gone; I hoped, I did half hope,
That it might reach my heart, to which I held
The links. But soon I clung to life again;
I thought upon my boy;
And while the other and the other flash
Dazzled my sight,
I wished to have my hand across his eyes:
Then such a peal would burst, I scarce durst draw
My breath, or move.—'Twas terrible; it bodes no good to us.

Adel.
You are of late so given to omening—

Mary.
And when it ceased, and sleep o'er powered my senses—
O Adelaide!
I fear, I fear to tell thee what I saw.

Adel.
Tell me, and I will read it.

Mary.
One made me swear an oath I'd not reveal.

Adel.
A dream! an oath sworn in a dream! 'tis nothing.

Mary.
I thought me walking in the Abbey garden;
The moon shone bright: I wished her not so bright.

Adel.
What abbey?

Mary.
Holyrood.

Adel.
Say on.

Mary.
I thought I heard a burst of noise, as loud
As were the thunder-peals of yesternight.

Adel.
And—

189

Mary.
I thought it came as if from Kirk O'Field;
And, ere the echoes of St Antoin's rocks
Had ceased, amid a shower of ashes, fell
Close at my feet a blackened corse, with eyes unclosed;
And, Adelaide,—but let me grasp thine arm,—
They glared on Bothwell, who stood rooted by,
All horror-struck:—My crucifix I tried
To kiss; but ponderous it felt,
Down-weighing my weak arm. I fancied next,
What I had heard and seen was but a dream,
And that I lay, new waked, beside a river,
And felt the sunbeams, heard the thrush's note,
And saw the wildflowers blooming o'er my face,—
When straight the flowers, the trees, the sward,
Seemed black and smouldering, and the sky blood-tinged;
I turned me round, and feared I should again
Behold the horrid form, but saw instead
A sanded scaffold, and a sable block;
My eyes were dazzled with the gleaming axe;—
At sight of which, sudden methought I rushed
To throw myself into the gliding stream;
But as I stooping paused upon the brink,
I saw, not my own image in the wave,—
I saw, O Adelaide, I saw the corse,

190

With eyes unclosed, and arms outstretched, to clasp me.
At this I woke, and viewed the prison bars
And bolts, the dire realities of fate,
As objects grateful to my harrowed soul;
Then counted o'er these links, to be assured
That all was but a dream.

Adel.
You've uttered horrors—'Tis your hand I feel—
Yes, it was but a dream—no more.

Mary.
But, Adelaide, it is no dream, that still
Our friends are absent, and ourselves are captives.

Adel.
What though they be not come!
Douglas is wise as brave, and would not mar,
By heedless haste, what might be surer done
By short delay.

Mary.
One circumstance I did forget to tell thee—

Adel.
Stop—tell it not—banish these dreadful phantasies.

Mary.
Banish!—what said'st thou about banishment?
I'm banished from my country and my child.

[Shouting heard without.
Adel.
They come, they come; we're free!
O now for France!—Dear sunny fields!—

Mary.
Can it be so?
[Shouting heard again.
O joy!
But is't impossible to land in Scotland?

191

Is there not one,
One friendly spot, in that ungrateful land
I love so well?—which I would die to bless!

Enter Warder, looking round the Chamber.
Adel.
Are they not coming up? Why dost not speak?
This fellow is assuming consequence.

Mary.
Good keeper, speak to us; speak, I beseech you;
What means that noise without?

[Exit Warder.
Mary.
I dread—

Adel.
There is no cause.

Mary.
Something he had to say.

Adel.
What then?

Mary.
It must have been unwelcome tidings.

Re-enter the Warder.
Ward.
The queen's commissioner desires to see you;
He's waiting for you on the yew-tree terrace,
Close by the chapel; he there expects Francisco.

Mary.
We're ready; we will come.

[Exit Warder, followed by Mary and Adelaide.

192

SCENE IV.

—Changes to the Castle Garden.
Wingfield solus.
Wing.
What can detain this lazy lubbard priest?
Whatever happen, this shall be signed by her,
And then they both, the principal and witness,
Shall swallow death. She is so full of pity,
She cannot choose but sign it. The rangership!
No, that is not enough for such a service.
She comes—O I could almost wish
To do her good. How grand, (pausing) how fair she seems,
Though veiled! I almost rue. Almighty God,
How perfect is thy work! Fool that I am!
A God!—Come reason, almighty reason, to my aid.—
Enter Mary and Adelaide.
Good-morrow to your Highness.

Mary.
Good-morrow.

Wing.
The day is better than the night foretold.

Mary.
Where is the friar? 'Twas for him I came.

Wing.
He will be here.
You see my words do not outgo performance.

[Pointing to the Chapel.
Mary.
I thank you.

193

Wing.
You have not heard the tidings—

Mary.
What tidings?

Wing.
The rescue of the Queen of Scots.

[Tauntingly.
Adel.
O God!

Mary.
We are betrayed.

Wing.
Know'st not that prison walls have ears and tongues?

Mary.
Save us!

Wing.
And so you knew of it—

Mary.
Of what?

Wing.
Hear but this simple story:
Lord Hamilton is slain;
We tried to take him quick, but on a spear
He chose to spit himself, and soon he'll be
Quite ready for the worms:
Douglas, your valiant errant knight, is safe.

Adel.
Virgin, I thank thee.

Wing.
In the viced hand of justice, there he's safe.
He slew one of the sheriff's men
Before he could be mastered; he was ta'en
Redhand: Upon the spot a jury was impanneled,
Who found him principal in levying war
Against our sovereign lady; a traitor's death his doom:
There's one, and but one way to save him,

194

A signed confession of your guilt. 'Tis right
You should confess ere you approach the altar.

Mary.
What guilt?—

Wing.
Rizzio and Darnley, the paramour and husband.

Adel.
Bid me confess! I'm ready to confess
All crimes, the deepest, if you'll save his life.

Wing.
The lazy Spaniard comes at last.—
Enter Francisco.
Welcome, Francisco, we've been looking for you.
You've got all ready in the chapel?

Fran.
No.

Wing.
What—

Fran.
I say no.

Wing.
What dost thou mean?

Fran.
Thou'rt an assassin;
I the intending and accursed accomplice.

Wing.
Thou'rt mad; thou know'st thou'rt in my hand.

Fran.
I scorn thy power; I will not damn myself.

Wing.
Thou wretched fool! this day shall be thy last;
Beyond these walls thou ne'er shalt pass again.

Fran.
I do despise, detest thee, monster,
Almost as much as I abhor myself.

195

O that I from myself could turn, as now I do
From that loathed sight—a villain clothed with power!

Wing.
I'll hurl thee to the death upon the point
Of but a single word; my voice will blast thee.

Fran.
Beware of him.

[ To the Queen.
Wing.
Be dumb, or this is in thy heart.

Mary.
I see it all.

Wing.
Have you resolved?

Mary.
On what?

Wing.
You do not know whose fate hangs on my word.

Mary.
No.

Adel.
No—whose?

Wing.
Hear you that slowly passing noise
Of footsteps numberless? I wish these windows
But looked that way; you'd see a noble show.

Adel.
It is, it is—I see it all:—Douglas, O Douglas!

Mary.
A hubbub dull; with now and then a voice
Of hurry and command, I hear.—What can it mean?

Adel.
O! are you blind? Douglas is in that crowd:
He's now encircled by the sheriff's spears.
Your word, O Mary, it can rescue him;
Speak, speak the word.

Wing.
Hark, hark, the trumpet sounds! Know you its tune?
It is the march of death. I know it well,

196

Although 'tis rudely blown.
That is your Douglas's departing knell.

Adel.
O!

Mary.
Fear not, dear Adelaide, it cannot be.
He but deceives; yet 'tis a savage jest.

Wing.
Ye'll know ere long, I sometimes speak the truth.
Mark ye the flag above the red-rose tower?

Mary.
What then?

Wing.
I pray you, mark it.

Mary.
I do.

Wing.
'Tis white.

Mary.
I mark it; it can mean no harm to us,
Or to our friends?

Wing.
Are you prepared to sign?

[Presenting the Paper.
Mary.
Let me look at it—Never.

[Throws it from her.
Wing.
Promise to sign ere night.

Mary.
Never.

Wing.
Douglas, ere this, is on the gallow moor;
His life hangs on that flag. Will you relent?

Adel.
Mary!

Mary.
Subscribe to my own infamy!

Wing.
The red flag will be raised, the signal for the stroke.

Adel.
Mary!

Mary.
Shall I confess myself a murderess?

197

Wing.
He'll die a traitor's death.

Mary.
What—

Wing.
His heart, before he's dead, will be torn out,
And burnt before—

Adel.
O can you, Mary, bear to hear of this?
Am I your Adelaide—Does Douglas love me—
Do I love him—and did he rescue you?—

Mary.
Would he had never rescued us!
But if you look so, I will say or do
Just what you wish; I will own any thing.

Adel.
'Tis coming down—the white—it drops—O stop!
Good, gentle Wingfield, stop!

Wing.
'Tis now but falling with the falling breeze.

Mary.
What shall I say? I will say any thing.

Wing.
Thus you'll propitiate my sovereign's pardon.

Mary.
Your sovereign's pardon!—pardon didst thou say?

[Contemptuously.
Wing.
And save the life of Douglas.

Mary.
I will not, no—I'm innocent.
To save myself, I would not own a crime
Of which I'm guiltless; no, not to save my child—
No—though thou o'er his cradle threatening held'st
A poniard in one hand, and in the other
That false acknowledgment,—I'd bid thee strike.

Wing.
Wilt thou persuade her?—

198

Adel.
Give me the writing.—
[Looks at it—tears it.
Now let Douglas die!
I'll choose for him, he is myself; I know
He would prefer death to the Queen's dishonour.

Wing.
I see you're frantic, and I'm loath to take
Advantage of your madness; yet a few minutes
I wish to grant, to give you time to think;
But if, when I return, you still persist
In this most foolish hardiness, the sign
Of peace must down, and in its stead—

[Exit.
Mary.
Where can I turn me? Am I doomed to doom
Poor Douglas to his death!

Fran.
Be silent.

Mary.
My silence is his sentence.

Adel.
And can you utter it?—

Mary.
It was but now you tore my condemnation,
And tearing it, you tore his pardon too.

Adel.
I knew not what I did.

Fran.
Do what is right and true, and trust in God.

Mary.
I will do what thou bid'st me, Adelaide.

Adel.
O save my Douglas—quick, quick—be resolved—
I hear, I hear the wretch's foot return.

Mary.
I said I would not seal my infamy
To save my son from the assassin's dagger;
But yet, for thee, I'll murder my good name,

199

And on its scutcheon write, adulteress,
Aye, assassin, traitress—what you will, I'll say.

Enter Wingfield.
Adel.
Douglas must die.

Wing.
Your name, I think, is Adelaide?

Adel.
What then? It is.

Wing.
I thought it was; I heard it breathed by him
While in the dungeon of the Lune-side port:
After he was condemned,
He lay an hour there.

Adel.
O Douglas! Douglas! Douglas!

Wing.
And when drawn up, and led into the light,
Though at the first, the glaring sea of eyes
Seemed to confound him, soon as he discerned
These battlements,
To them his face continued, as he passed
Along, still turned; he only once looked round,
Eying on either side, with proud contempt,
The gazing roofs.

Adel.
Yes, he despises death;
His soul floats tranquil on the storm of fate,
As the heaved sea bird, with its wing-veiled head,
Sleeps reckless of the surge's rise or fall;
And shall I wish to save the life he scorns,

200

Ransomed at such a price,—my Queen's, my friend's dishonour?

Wing.
Mark but the fateful stillness all around;
There's not one foot in the late bustling street;
Which seems as if a pestilence had swept
The human throng away: Both old and young
Are at the show; none but the bedrid absent:
There's not a crutch in Lancaster this day.
Look up—these ravens trooping to their quarry,
They wind their prey afar.

Mary.
Miscreant! thy words, far from appalling me
With the full marshalled horrors of this day,
They steel my heart; the dire reality
Daunteth not Douglas, and shall the description
Intimidate me into infamy?

Fran.
'Tis nobly said.

Wing.
Another word, and I will stab thee.

Mary.
And say that I had given my consent
To ransom Douglas with my reputation!—

Adel.
And have you given your consent—

Mary.
And say that I had given my consent
To perpetrate this perjury 'gainst myself;
How could I trust that such a man as this
Would show the thievish honesty to keep
The dear bought paction? No, he's self-absolved
Of every tie, both human and divine.

201

From my repenting hand the wretch would take
The extorted scroll, then with triumphant look,
Half smile, half grin, which fiends would vie in vain
To match, he'd laugh at my simplicity.
I dare thee, wretch, to do thy very worst.

Wing.
I will.
[Waves his hand.
Down—down—the white drops down; and see, the sign
Of blood ascends, and from its floating train
Sheds death.

[Trumpets heard at a distance.
Adel.
[As if waking from a stupor]
—Pardon! it is proclaimed—I heard it.

Wing.
None in these parts, save me, prossesses power
To pardon; no, that trumpet bays to drown
The rabble-rousing words of Douglas.

Adel.
O Mary, Mary!—Am I speaking to her?

Mary.
A secret indignation has dried up
All tears, all pity.

Adel.
My friend—my sister—myself!

Wing.
The blow is struck; fruitless were now your tears;
Your lowliest suit were vain; he gasps, he dies,
And now cut down half lifeless, falls:
The hangman's hand now revels in his breast,
And gropes to catch the fluttering heart; the heart
Eludes the grasp; aye, now he tears it out:
Now a sweet-smelling incense it sends up

202

Most grateful to Elizabeth: and now—
Now, with tucked sleeve, the butcher hand is twisted
Into the traitor's locks, and now the head
Is held on high, convulsed, whilst thus a voice
Proclaims, So die our sovereign's enemies.

[Adelaide falls.
Fran.
What so relentless as a tyrant's malice!
It even survives the wretched victim's death:
'Tis like the raging of the infuriate waves,
Which, as if all unsated with the life
Of the poor mariner they've overwhelmed,
Still toss, and dash, and mangle his drowned corse
Upon the rugged rocks.

Wingfield stamps—Enter Guards.
Wing.
Drag in this traitorous priest,
And let him down into the deepest dungeon;
And, that he ne'er may from the bottom rise,
Load him with triple irons.

Mary.
O Adelaide, I have killed thee! Of all the woes
That Mary Stewart suffers, none is so bitter
As is the bitter thought, that she is still
The cause of ruin to her dearest friends.

Wing.
Your friends! no longer shall you have to say
I see the face of friend. Mark me; henceforth

203

You are cut off from all the charities
Of life; she that lies there woe-stunned,
And you, must part; no longer shall ye plot
Escapes: To Bolton she must go, and you
To Fotheringay.—Imprisonment till death
Must be your doom. Ne'er shall the vernal gale
Play round your head:
Sighed through your window grate 'twill faintly fan
Your feverish temples, while mayhap you stretch
Your hand beyond the bars, and on it look
With envy, as it waves to feel the air.

Mary.
O Adelaide!

[Falls on her.
Adel.
[Recovering, delirious.]
Where is he laid? O lay me in his grave!
'Tis a sweet couch, 'tis downy soft.

Wing.
A grave!—look up, high up: Seest thou yon pinnacle
With fluttering shreds bedecked, the only relics,
Left by the ravens, of some rebel's fate?
Your Douglas' quartered arms shall there be blazoned.

[She dies.
Mary.
O that the Omnipotent had not denounced
A curse against self-murder.
Self-murder! No, there is another hand;
I see, I see it raised, though dim the view.
Misfortune such as mine inspires the soul
With powers prophetic. Yes, I now discern,

204

Through a long scutcheoned aisle of gloomy years,
A scaffold close the dismal perspective.

Wing.
Bear her off.

Mary.
Bereave me miserable, if not of life,
Of reason; dash down the conscious power, and make
My soul a dream without an interval.

[Curtain falls.