Scene III.—Palace at Rouen.
King Henry, Queen Eleanor, the Bishop of Lisieux,
Cornwall, Reginald Fitz-Urse, Courtiers, Minstrels,
Attendants.
K. Hen.
Three victories in three realms had pleased me less!
This day my ten years' purpose stands fulfilled:
Those monks have given consent! Thomas Archbishop—
That hand which holds the seal wielding the staff,—
The feud of Crown and Church past for ever.
My chancellor made primate, Henry of Blois
Shall bend from his stiff back!
Q. Elea.
Have joy, good husband!
The gift of faith is yours!
K. Hen.
You trust in none;
I, trusting few, trust Thomas; I have proved him.
Those sins my youth had not the grace to shun
At least it scorned to vindicate. Who chid them?
Nor knight, nor bishop; he and he alone!
You slight your one true friend.
Q. Elea.
Hear that, fair ladies!
A spouse unfaithfuller—
K. Hen.
Henceforth I rule!
None shares with me my realm. My Lord of Lisieux,
Should not a king be king?
Lis.
May it please your Highness,
'Tis known I never walked with them that err
From duty to their king. Yet kings, forgive me,
Armed with that twofold power your Highness boasts,
Shall need a sage's prudence.
K. Hen.
Have no fear!
That twofold sway my own, the world shall wonder
Less at its greatness than the temperance meek
Wherewith I wield its functions.
Lis.
Sire, 'tis thus
Your Church shall serve you best. The garden dial
No doubt is appanage of the garden's lord;
Yet he who wills to plant it at incline
And he who scans it by the torch he carries
Know not the hour o' the day.
K. Hen.
My kingdom's bishops
Shall keep full power to mulct ill clerks; and Rome,
Albeit reduced, retain her vantage-place—
The loftiest tassel on the Church's cap.
Q. Elea.
What cap is that? In Guienne some would answer,
‘A fool's cap on a palsy-stricken head— —’
O, 'tis a beauteous and a beaming land!
I ever hated Paris! There that monk,
Bernard, held sway; but in my sunny South,
Strong as the North in arms and wiser thrice,
'Twas banquet still, and song. ‘Mysteries’ and ‘plays’
Alternate graced our halls. Gay Troubadours!
Amid our ‘Courts of Love’ I judged the prize—
They sware my song was best!
K. Hen.
Rise, Southern sea,
And drown for aye that sun-burnt land of ‘Oc!’
An oak-wood of the North were worth it all!
Your Troubadours have but one song among them,
And that's the grasshopper's! Their garrulous land
Scorns kings as much as priests! Your grandfather
In spleen forsook it, lived in Spain, cave-roofed,
The knightly armour hid by hermit weeds,
And, worn by penance, died.
Q. Elea.
A priestly legend!
He revelled to the last and died in sleep:
Heaven grant us all such end! I tell you, Henry,
My land's a land of mind yet more than mirth:
There are who whisper there that marriage vows,
Like vows monastic, mean but cleric gain;—
Poor Petronilla! Rodolf loved her well:
What marred that love? A dotard Pope, preferring
To theirs the claim of Rodolf's beldam wife
Espoused in ignorant youth!
K. Hen.
You fought their fight;
And thirteen hundred boors were burnt, they say,
In Vitry's church, when Vitry fell.
Q. Elea.
Which error
We cancelled fighting in the Holy Land.
O, what a clime! What flowers, what fruits, what odours!
What stars, clear-imaged in those Asian streams
Whose coldest ripple wafts an amorous tune:
That land hath but one blot—Jerusalem!
A city like a nightmare, legend-choked;
Black den of Saints!
K. Hen.
Your ‘Amazons’ and you,
Whose quaint apparel wonder-struck the world,
Ended, ere long, I think, that high crusade.
Q. Elea.
When captains shape their march to please a lady,
The shame is theirs, not hers. 'Twas frolic all,
And so in frolic died.
K. Hen.
A frolic! woman!
My earliest dream was of some great crusade;
That work shall yet be mine, my last, my chief:
Ay, but I'll build my empire first! That done,
My brave and loyal sons shall share my toils,
Or guard my realms at home.
Q. Elea.
How chill 'tis grown!
Swift Southern springs, that with a flame of flowers
In one day light the earth, how unlike you
This tardy Norman May! See those poor monkeys!
Despite their coats of scarlet and of gold
They shake from ear to tail. Fitz-Urse, some music!
Fitz-Urse.
Madam, there stands a Trouvère!
Q. Elea.
Let him sing.
Minstrel, what poems make you?
Trou.
Please your Highness,
The proud old pagan poets made their songs;
We Trouvères find, not make them, deeming earth
God's poem, beauty-stored.
Q. Elea.
Then find me one.
(Trouvère
sings.)
I make not songs, but only find;
Love following still the circling sun
His carol casts on every wind,
And other singer is there none.
I follow Love, though far he flies;
I sing his song, at random found
Like plume some bird of Paradise
Drops, passing, on our dusky bound.
In some, methinks, at times there glows
The passion of some heavenlier sphere:
These too I sing; but sweetest those
I dare not sing, and faintly hear.
Q. Elea.
That's psalm, not song! Sing me some love-song old,
Of Grecian gods and nymphs.
Trou.
On Grecian hills
Traditionary melodies survive
Pagan, yet touched in part by tenderer feeling:
I know one—‘Phœbus and the Doe.’
Q. Elea.
Sing that.
(Trouvère
sings.)
Phœbus paced the wooded mountains;
These stanzas are in part taken from a Romaic poem, one of
the ‘Robber songs’ sung for centuries by the bandits, more
properly called ‘outlaws,’ on the mountains of Greece. The
mingling of Greek mythology with a sentiment tenderer than
that which commonly belonged to the poetry engendered by
that mythology in Pagan times, is interesting.
Kindled dawn, and met a doe;
‘Child, what ails thee that thou rovest
O'er my bright hills sad and slow?
‘That upon thy left side only
Thou thy noontide sleep dost take;
That thy foot the fountain troubles
Ever ere thy thirst thou slake?’
Answered thus the weeping creature:
‘Once beside me raced a fawn;
Seest her, O thou God all-seeing!
O'er thy hills, in wood or lawn?
‘On my left side sleep I only,
For 'tis there my anguish stirs;
And my foot the fountain troubles,
Lest it yield me shape like hers.’
—Then the Sun-God marvelled, musing,
‘When my foolish Daphne died,
Rooted 'mid Peneian laurels,
Scarce one little hour I sighed.’
Q. Elea.
A love-song that! An icicle it is
Added to winter! Phœbus was a fool
Else had he captured Daphne ere she rooted;
Your doe a fool to weep for gladness past.
What says King Henry?
De Tracy
(entering).
May it please your Highness,
Four priests are come, sent by my lord the primate,
With letters and a casket.
K. Hen.
Bid them enter.
Thomas has sent some offering!
[John of Salisbury enters, followed by three abbots.
Q. Elea.
(to one of her ladies).
Lo, their saint!
Large fame is his, and long I craved to see him:
Princely he is, but lacks the princely pride;
Rather some prince's phantom, gaunt and wan;
Methinks that moon which maddens him looks through him!
Saint he is none! his countenance is not humble.
[John of Salisbury presents a letter to the king.
K. Hen.
The casket first! Belike a crown im perial!
Q. Elea.
Not so! A diamond necklace; and for me!
[She tears open the casket, out of which rolls the
Great Seal of England.
John of Sal.
This missive, sovereign liege, humbly sets forth
Those forceful, yet unwelcome counter-duties,
The exigence whereof compelled my lord—
K. Hen.
To hurl at England's head England's Great Seal!
At last I know him! Traitor!
[He tears up the letter, and flings it on the fire.
Burn unread,
Foul web of lies! Thou too, England's Great Seal,
Once type of justice and of law, this day
Spurned from the traitor's clutch that long defiled thee!
Dishonour's badge! poor clod of kneaded vileness!
I crush thee 'neath my feet!
[He tramples on the Great Seal.
John of Sal.
May it please your Highness—
K. Hen.
Hence, lest I strike thee and thy fellows dead!
O sharp-toothed worm! this heart it was that nursed thee;
Lo, thou hast gnawed thy passage to the day!
Base churl, thou show'st at last thine English breed
And king-defying fierceness. Vengeance! Vengeance!
'Twas with a smile he said our love was past:
He'll find my hate begun. Cornwall! Fitz-Urse!
This night to England: stay the consecration!
Say that my will is changed.
