The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Llewellen, Fitz-Stephen.
Llew.
These princes and these prelates keep not time:
Each fears to come the first.

Fitz-Ste.
Lo, there our king:
The French king not. That ‘kiss of peace,’ withheld
From Becket, moves his spleen. 'Mid Henry's train
I see that beast, Fitz-Urse.

Llew.
Right opposite
Rides Becket; at his left Earl Theobald,
And Sens' Archbishop at his right.

Fitz-Ste.
The king
Makes speed to meet him, with uncovered head:
And lo, with what a zeal he grasps his hand!
Now they embrace. Was that the kiss of peace?

Llew.
Not so:—the king's horse swerved. Beasts have true instincts.

K. Hen.
The unhappy, sour, and anger-venomed time,
By craft of others clouded and confused,
Hath drifted past us; and once more shines out

279

The sky of earlier days. Papal ambitions
Drave in betwixt us, Thomas!

Bec.
Sire, my king,
Those cloudy days at times had better gleams;
Their summer promise, like a witch's gold,
Still left me poorer.

K. Hen.
Nay, not promises!
Forward I ever was to speak my hopes;
Slow to pledge grace.

Bec.
Beneath Montmartre you pledged it:
The French king heard you and my Lord of Sens
And many a French and English knight beside.
I prayed for restitution of those lands
From Canterbury torn. It pleased your Highness
To grant that prayer; yet till this hour that pledge
Lies void as bankrupt's bond.

K. Hen.
This must be looked to.

Bec.
I made another and a weightier suit:
Those benefices dowered for God's high worship
And temporal service of the poor of Christ,
By sacrilegious barons clutched and sold
To trencher priests the Church's scourge and scandal,
For these I made demand. It pleased your Highness
To pledge your word that rapine should surcease:
Sire, for two little months the plague was stayed;
Then burst it forth anew.

K. Hen.
They hid it from me.

Bec.
The vacant abbeys, widowed bishoprics
Glut still the royal coffers.

K. Hen.
Some, I think,
Have gained true shepherds late: the rest shall win them.
I made delay fearing lest rash elections

280

Might vex the Church's peace.

Bec.
To me and mine
Return was promised to our native land
Where rest the bones of them who went before us:
Your coasts are closed against us; and my friends—
Of hunger many, more of grief have died
In alien lands, and sleep in nameless graves.

K. Hen.
Now by the Saints of Anjou and of Maine,
England to you is open as this hand,
And hath been since that coronation-day
Which made your pupil king.

Bec.
Your Highness touches
Our latest wrong. The see of Canterbury
Hath privilege sole to crown our English kings:
My Lord of York usurped that dignity
Crowning your son.

K. Hen.
The Conqueror's self was crowned
By York's Archbishop, not by holy Stigand
Primate that day. My grandfather was crowned
By Hereford's bishop.

Bec.
Stigand had not won
From Rome the pallium, and the see was vacant:
Hereford's bishop served in Anselm's place,
An exile then for God. Anselm, returned,
Re-crowned the ill-crowned king.

K. Hen.
By Anjou's Saints,
Your bishops snared me. Let them pay the forfeit!

Bec.
My Lords of York and London are suspended:
May it please your Highness plainly to declare
If you confirm that sentence?

K. Hen.
I confirm it!
'Tis three times ratified. I tell you, Thomas,
I'll have the old times again. The princess scorned

281

Unction not yours: ere long your hands shall crown her,
Your hands re-crown my son.

Bec.
Alas! the grief
To win all rights, all but the best, the dearest!
You make no mention of the—

K. Hen.
Name them not!
This day is festal: bring no cloud upon it!

Bec.
O would that I had never heard them named,
Ne'er seen them blazoned—

K. Hen.
Thomas, on English shores
All wrongs shall be made right.

Bec.
A morn there was—
Your Highness then had scarce been three months king—
When, in a window of your Woodstock palace—
The birds were singing 'mid the bowers below—
We read some history of pagan days;
It pierced your heart: you started up: you cried,
‘Thrice better were these pagans than your saints!
They loved their native land! They set their eyes
On one small city, small but yet their mother,
And died in its defence!’

K. Hen.
Again I say it!

Bec.
I answered thus; ‘They knew the State alone:
They played at dim rehearsals, yet were true
To truth then man's. They gazed with tearful eyes
Not on their city only, but that rock,
Its marble mother which above it soared
Crowned with that city's fortress and its fanes:
Beyond their gods lived on the “God Unknown:”
Above base mart and popular shout survived
The majesty of law.’

282

K. Hen.
'Tis true. Thus spake you.

Bec.
But added this:—‘Our God is not unknown:
In omnipresent majesty among us
His Church sits high upon her rock tower-crowned,
Fortress of Law divine and Truth Revealed,
Enthroned o'er every city, realm, and people!
Had we the man-heart of the men of old,
With what a spirit of might invincible
For her should we not die!’

K. Hen.
With tears you spake it.

Bec.
Then judge me justly, O my king, my friend,
Casting far from you, like a sundered chain,
A thought abhorred, an ignominy down-trodden,
The oppression of dead error. Say, shall I,
A Christian bishop, and a subject sworn,
Be pagan more than pagan, doubly false—
False to a heavenly kingdom throned o'er earth,
False to an earthly kingdom raised to heaven,
And ministering there high on the mount of God
'Mid those handmaiden daughters of a King
The kingdoms and the nations of this world,
Who gird the Queen gold-vested? Pagans, sire,
Lived not, though dark, in Babylonian blindness:
The laws of that fair city which they loved
Subjecting each man, raised him and illumed.
We too are citizens of no mean City:
Her laws look forth on us from rite and creed:
In her we venerate Man's Race Redeemed,
Which—cleansed from bestial, and ill spirits expelled—
In unity looks down on us, God's Church,
The Bride of Christ beside the great King throned,
Yea by His sceptre stayed. My king, my friend!
I have done to you no wrong! My many sins

283

Lay otherwhere. Tenfold their compt would rise
If, sane myself, I pandered to your madness.

K. Hen.
Thomas, you lack what only might convert me:
Could you be England's King, her primate I,
Your part I too would play!

Bec.
And O how nobly
And unlike me in fashion you would play it!
How petty my discourse hath been till now:
Sir, see these things as you will one day see them!
Two lots God places in the hand of each:
We choose; and oft we choose the lot least loved.
Least, though the headlong moment's whim or passion
Yields it a moment's crown:
The youth who slays life's hope in random pleasures
Knows not that deep within his heart—far deeper
Than all base cravings—those affections live
Which sanctified his father's home. Years pass:
Sad memories haunt the old man in his house,
Sad shadows strike the never-lighted hearth,
Sad echoes shake the child-untrodden floors:
A great cry issues from his famished heart—
‘I spurned the lot I loved.’

K. Hen.
My youth is past:
It had its errors; yet within my house
Are voices young and sweet.

Bec.
God keep them such!
Far better silence and the lonely halls
Than war-cries round the hearth. God guard your children!
If you have risen against the Church, your mother,
God guard them from revolt against their sire!
I spake not, sir, of errors in your youth:

284

A parable was mine.
The soul's revolt is deadlier than the body's:
Sir, that revolt is pride. In time, beware!
That God who shapes us all to glorious end
Proffered to you a glory beyond glory:
Your heart's chief yearning was a new Crusade:
Spurn not true greatness for a phantom greatness!
Your flatterers are your danger: them you trust:
You fear the Church: to her you owe your all:
From her you gat your crown.

K. Hen.
That word is true:
The Church and Theobald, and you not less,
Propped me at need. What then? A king perforce
Reveres the ancient ways.

Bec.
O never in you
Was tender reverence for the ancient ways!
Another mind is yours, a different will,
An adverse aim;—that aim I deem not base:
There's greatness in it; but your means are ruthless.
You love your children; there's your sum of love;
Yours are the passions which torment our clay,
The intellect and the courage which exalt it,
The clear conception of a state and empire—
Yet seen but from below. To raise that state
You crush all ancient wont, all rights and heights:
Your kingdom you would level to a plain
O'erlooked by one hill only, and, thereon
The royal tent.

K. Hen.
God made my heart ambitious.

Bec.
Then be ambitious with a high ambition!
You scorn the lofty daring. Lions nigh,
You hunt the forest vermin.

K. Hen.
Thomas, Thomas!

285

We kings should tender more our country's peace
Than any personal greatness.

Bec.
Royal sir,
Play not the sophist with yourself or God:
You, you alone have marred your country's peace,
Sapping her faith! Faith is a nation's safety.
Remember, sir, the ‘Battle of the Standard!’
The Scotch king, David, harried all the North:
No king against him marched: 'twas mitred Thurlston:
The freemen of the people round him flocked:
High in a chariot central 'mid that host
Hung the great banners of four English Saints—
Not Saints, Lord King, of Anjou or of Maine—
Cuthbert of Durham, John of Beverley,
Wilfred of Ripon, Peter named of York:
The cry of Albin swept the world before it!
Alone that chariot with its banners stood:
Back fell the astonished clans, and Carlisle's towers
Heard their last wail.

K. Hen.
Barbaric days, my friend!
Turn we to nearer themes. You deem me false,
I know, to friendship old. Impute that fault
To friendship's self. I looked to you for help:
I found my friend my foe.

Bec.
I ne'er deceived you:
I taught you from the first the Church's rights,
Therein through zeal offending your great mother
Who sleeps in God, and moving oft your spleen;
Taught you that nations were not ravening beasts,
Each with its separate spoil and will unquestioned,
But sisters in the bond of Christendom:
I told you pagan nations knew two laws,
Domestic—civil; Christian nations three,

286

Domestic, civil, apostolical;
Man, that begins a family, through grace
Dilating to the family of Christ,
His utmost limit, and his nature's crown;—
Three spheres engird man's life: I said that none
Might wrong the lesser, none affront the greater:
You knew my heart; from first to last you knew it:
You thought the world would change it; for which cause
You willed me primate.

K. Hen.
Ay, and curse that madness!
I spurn alike your parables and sermons:
I rule my land alone! No more of this!
(After a pause)
The tempest swept athwart me;—it is past.
Thomas, we're friends. Ere long we meet in England:
There you shall have your fill of rights restored:
There, 'mid your frowning foes, the kiss of peace,
That knightly and that kingly pledge of love
Which whoso violates thenceforth is base,
Shall seal our meeting. Louis more than once
Besought me to concede it. What remains
Claim from my son.

Bec.
Sire, ere a king's permission
Had made between a bishop and his see
Plain way once more, your coasts still armed against me
As citizens guard their house by night from thieves,
My course was taken and announced:—return
Once more to my great change.

K. Hen.
A festive nation
Shall meet you landing there.

Bec.
The first, De Broc!

287

He graces, ten long years, Saltwood, my manor,
And swears that ere this throat has swallowed down
Two English loaves, his knife shall wind around it!
Your pardon, sire; your wandering eye denotes
Your thoughts elsewhere.

K. Hen.
I sought a man I trust:
Would I could send my Lords of Sens and Rouen
To adorn your glad return! I need them both:
Not less a worthy guide shall grace your way,
My friend—a scholar noted—John of Oxford.

Bec.
I know him; and I trust him not. Whoe'er
Your Highness wills is free to share my journey.
I see what I foresaw, and see the end.

K. Hen.
Farewell, my lord: we meet ere long in England!

Bec.
Farewell! I think we shall not meet in England,
And therefore bless you, sire, in France, and now.

K. Hen.
Not meet?

Bec.
I go to England, sire, to die.

K. Hen.
Am I a traitor, Thomas?

Bec.
(after a pause).
Sire, not so.

University of Virginia Library

Scene VII.—The ‘Traitor's Meadow’ near Freitval.