University of Virginia Library

ACT V.

SCENE I.

A view of Snowdon with tents at a distance.
QUEEN, and MORTIMER, meeting.
QUEEN.
I joy to meet thee, Mortimer! Thy spirit
Will not, in weak compassion to a woman,
Lull me with false reports: Say! I conjure thee,
Is the King wounded?

MORTIMER.
No! on my life, not wounded!

QUEEN.
Why then, forgetting his accustomed care
To quiet my quick fears, why came he not
Back to my anxious arms, when victory
Restored him from this hot tumultuous conflict?
Where, as his hasty messenger avowed,
Danger, in many a new and hideous shape,
Made e'en the sternest soldiers stand aghast,
And deem their sovereign lost.

MORTIMER.
My royal mistress!
Who reignest o'er the hearts of youth and age,
Trust a rough veteran's word! my voice, unpractised
In uttering falsehood, should I wish to speak it,
Still to thy piercing spirit must betray
The evil it would hide.

QUEEN.
Dost thou assure me
Not one of all those vengeful mountaineers,
Whose rage was pointed at my Edward's life,
Had power to wound the too impetuous hero?

MORTIMER.
No! for he bears an amulet, whose power
Turns peril to security: that courage,
Which on the pressure of occasion, springs
To such exertion, as to common souls
Appeared impossible. Excess of toil
Has tempted him to rest on Snowdon's brow:
As he retired, exhausted to his tent,
He issued orders, that the captive bard
Should to the mountain's open front be led,
And by our archers suffer speedy death.

QUEEN.
Good Heaven! the mandate is not yet fulfilled?

MORTIMER.
Not yet! but guards are passing, to conduct
The hoary traitor to the lofty spot,
Chosen to give his doom conspicuous terror.

QUEEN.
O Mortimer! this order was the dictate
Of an o'er-heated mind: When cooled by slumber,
The generous temper of the King will surely
Incline to pardon; canst thou not suspend—

MORTIMER.
Forgive me, gentle sovereign, if I own
I have no power, nor will, I must avow,
To stop the rebel's death: and I must haste,
According to the King's most anxious bidding,
To watch impassioned Clyfford, lest that youth,
Entangled in the snares of Cambrian beauty,
Should madden at the sufferings of the fair one,
And in his frenzy strive to snatch once more,
Her guilty father, from the stroke of justice.

QUEEN.
I, on my knees, will creep to Edward's couch,
And in the name of that protecting Heaven,
Who has delivered him from signal hazard,
Wake, and inspire his spirit to exert
Its best prerogative, the power to save!

(Exeunt.

SCENE II.

—A ROYAL TENT.
KING EDWARD, (Sleeping on a Couch with his armour by the side of it.)
CLYFFORD,
(entering.)
Why shakes my frame, in this tempestuous conflict
Of warring thoughts? The minute past I seemed
Led hither by an angel's hand, to rescue
Virtue from wrongs, and nature from oppression.
Now, clouds of horror blot my heavenly vision
And I feel dragged by demons to this spot,
To execute the task of hell.—Avaunt!
Ye tempters of my soul! ye shall not force me
To stab the royal patron of my youth:
No! I will kneel, beside his quiet pillow,
Invoking Heaven to quicken, in his mind,
The only virtue, his high spirit wants,
Heart-winning clemency! sleep on, secure!
Majestic, glorious Edward! only wake
To mercy, and munificence!

KING EDWARD,
(in troubled sleep starting.)
Away!
And lead him to his death!

CLYFFORD.
Inhuman sounds!
Implacable oppressor! Cruelty
Infects thy dreams: thy sanguinary soul
Glares thro' the trembling veil of ruffled sleep,
Betraying thy resolves!—Barbarity
So absolute must cancel every bond:
Humanity inspires me: injured nature
Bids me destroy the merciless destroyer.

SCENE III.

KING EDWARD, CLYFFORD, QUEEN.
(While Clyfford raises his dagger, the Queen enters and seizes his arm.)
QUEEN.
Hold! frantic Clyfford! hold! can mad affection
Urge thy young heart to worse than parricide?
Has not the bounteous King cherished thy youth,
With care surpassing e'en a father's fondness?

CLYFFORD.
He has, angelic Eleanor! and I
Prepared to stab him sleeping: but these tears,
That burst perforce from my o'er-burthened heart,
Tell thee, I feel how curst a wretch I am.

QUEEN.
Be comforted! for timely penitence
Makes solid virtue of ideal guilt.

CLYFFORD.
Guide of my life! and guardian of my soul!
Thou art too good: I have not merited,
Thus on thy pure and heavenly form to rest
A brain, that burns with complicated anguish.

KING EDWARD,
(starting up.)
Give me my battle-axe! I will pursue
Those trait'rous fugitives: 'twas but a dream.
Ha! my sweet love! art thou within my tent?
Say! what mischance has given our youthful Clyfford
That pallid air of anguish, and dismay?

QUEEN.
O my too fearless Edward! who that live,
As we do in thy life, could be informed
Of thy undaunted eagerness to court
Extremes of danger, with thy dread escape
From toils so full of terror, and retain
The native quiet of untroubled features?

CLYFFORD.
No! thou benignant angel, think not thus
With tenderness unmerited, to hide
The wild atrocity of one, whose heart
Was never formed for guilt, or for disguise.
Ingratitude, hypocrisy are fiends,
That, frantic as I am, I still abjure.

KING EDWARD.
Thy looks, and language equally exceed
The reach of my conjecture.

CLYFFORD.
Royal Edward!
Relentless as thou art, thy soul is noble;
Thou never wilt surmise, thy fostered Clyfford
Could lift against thee an assassin's dagger;
But to a heart like mine the worst of tortures
Would be concealment of intended crimes.
Had not this lovely seraph been thy guard,
I had destroyed my King, my friend, my father!
My guilt is manifest: my misery
Beyond endurance: I conjure thee, now
Let both thy justice, and thy pity grant me
The death I have deserved!

KING EDWARD.
Unhappy youth!
Thy hasty passion for the Cambrian fair,
Whose stubborn father scorned our terms of pardon,
Has harrassed thee to madness.

QUEEN.
Let his sufferings,
His duty, his remorse, and my fond prayers
Now plead for each offender!
(A Dead March is heard.)
Gracious Heaven!
What mean these notes of death?

KING EDWARD.
Those sounds announce,
What even thy entreaty, best beloved!
Must not avert; the bard's approaching fate!
See! the guards lead him from the vale below.

CLYFFORD.
Inhuman ministers of death! suspend
Your fatal march, for ye mistake your victim.
Glory and life should be Llandorvin's portion;
Disgrace and death belong to me alone;
I fly to save him by the just exchange.

(Rushes madly out.
KING EDWARD.
Stay! thou rash youth!—His madness will not hear me.

QUEEN.
Lord of my heart!—If, by a life of duty,
I yet may plead against thy settled purpose—

KING EDWARD.
No! Eleanor, 'tis fixt: I must not cancel
The firm decree of policy and justice,
To soothe the amorous frenzy of a boy,
Tho' dear to me, as if he were my child.
But let me lead thee to yon neighbouring tent,
To save thee better from this mournful scene,
And seek an active guardian, who may watch
O'er the wild steps of this distracted stripling!

(Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

Another part of the Mountain with a distant prospect of a more elevated spot, on which may be discovered an attendant croud, and preparations for execution:
LLANDORVIN, GUARDS.
LLANDORVIN.
Unhappy agents of injurious power!
I pardon your base taunts: alas! ye know not
To what depravity you sink your nature,
When you insult a guiltless, wronged old man,
Who unreluctant hastes to join the spirits
Of dear companions lost, bards! warriors! princes!
Whose fortitude and genius could not save
This dear devoted land from desolation,
Or shield their bright existence from the stroke
Of tyrannous extinction.

GUARD.
You forget,
Loquacious traitor! we have yet to mount
The steepest of these craggs.

LLANDORVIN.
Rude monitor?
I am not now to learn, that your stern King,
I thank his unmeant kindness, has appointed
My death on yonder heights: I could not wish
A nobler scene, to shew how willingly
I seal, with blood, the bond of my attachment
To wounded freedom, and my ruined country.
Martyrs of liberty, like those of faith,
By public sufferings, with a soul unshaken,
Become the source of blessings infinite
To unborn ages, and my soaring spirit
Pierces thro' distant time to hail those blessings.
A father's feelings still, to this dread instant,
Recal my heart, and on this spot I pause,—
But to bestow, what tyranny itself
Must grant a parent, leave to give his child,
A dying benediction!

GUARD.
Then in vain
You halt; for see! where wiser friends are busy
To draw the damsel hence.

LLANDORVIN.
Tormenting slaves!
Wound me not there! O glorious Gwendylen!
Lo! her indignant spirit has eluded
Their vile constraint: like an impassive seraph,
That mortal limitation cannot stop,
She flies, Heaven-warranted! to give her father
All he demands on earth.

SCENE V.

GWENDYLEN, rushes into the arms of her Father.
LLANDORVIN.
Child of my heart!
One only wish disturbed my parting soul;
And thou, most perfect in all filial virtues!
The loveliest daughter, that e'er blest a parent!
With tenderness unwearied, thou art come
To hear my latest counsel: thou wilt make it
The treasure of thy fond, thy faithful bosom,
And I shall die, exulting to have saved thee
From perils, worse than ignominous death.

GWENDYLEN.
Here, thou dear source and glory of my life!
Here would I grow: and be but as a leaf
Upon its parent tree, that severed thence,
Must quickly perish: for since Heaven denies me,
The bliss I hoped, to have preserved thy being,
My sole ambition is to share thy doom.

LLANDORVIN.
No! my brave child! I have a task to give thee
Much harder than to die.

GWENDYLEN.
O haste to name it!
And be the task more arduous, than ever
Mortal received, that I may shew the world
With what impassioned truth I love my father.

LLANDORVIN.
Exquisite girl! see! our good angels send
The only friend now left me upon earth,
To whom, as to thyself, my dying counsel
Deeply imports.

SCENE VI.

LLANDORVIN, GWENDYLEN, CLYFFORD, GUARDS.
CLYFFORD,
(entering wildly.)
Thou honoured sire! whom genius, virtue, age
Have sanctified: I come, a guilty youth,
To die, as I have merited, for thee.

LLANDORVIN.
What means my generous friend?

CLYFFORD.
Full of thy wrongs,
And madd'ning at thy lovely daughter's anguish,
My soul forgot how much I owed my King;
And as a murderer—

LLANDORVIN.
Ah! my prophetic fears!
Thou hast not killed the patron of thy youth?

CLYFFORD.
No! his angelic Eleanor defeated
My frantic aim.

LLANDORVIN.
Then hear me, noble Clyfford,
And since her beauties, and my injured age
Inflame thy heart to such a fond excess,
Hear and obey a dying friend's injunction!
Dear youth! to thy most perilous age, and temper
Crimes, and enormities of deepest die,
From the false light of passion, catch the semblance
Of splendid enterprise. Thou lov'st my daughter,
And she is worthy of a prince's heart:
But never shall the wrongs, I suffer, tempt me
To make the illusive ardor of thy love
My instrument of vengeance, as I might,
Against my deadliest foe.

CLYFFORD.
Thou godlike sufferer!
Canst thou, thus dying by a stern oppressor,
Spare, and forgive the tyrant, who destroys thee?

LLANDORVIN.
There was a time, brave Clyfford! when my blood
Grew hot like thine, at thoughts of tyranny;
When my impassioned harp was ever ready
To vibrate, at the sound of Edward's name,
With notes of execration, and defiance:
The hallowed quiet of approaching death
Gives me serener force, and purer courage;
The oppressor I abhorred, I now can pity;
And with a mind unheated own the good,
Mixed with his dire defects: from this wronged country
He merits detestation; but from thee,
Trained as thou art by his domestic kindness,
He justly claims the obedience of a child:
Atone then for one start of guilty passion
By future duty! and, I charge thee, never
Wake his paternal wrath by a rash union
With this poor orphan, lovely as she is!

CLYFFORD.
I am a wretch not meriting such bliss:
And only would redeem my darkened spirit
From self-abhorrence by most freely giving
My life for yours.

LLANDORVIN.
No! dear ingenuous youth,
Live! and protect, I charge thee, from all outrage
This dear, and friendless darling of my heart!
I have but thee, to whom I can bequeath her,
But that your pure attachment may be free
From guilt and misery ('tis my dying counsel:)
Unless my death should soften your stern king,
Protect her only with fraternal love!
I pause too long: my children! one embrace!
And we must part: may all the wrongs, I suffer,
Be recompensed in blessings upon you!
That fond idea gilds the gloom of death,
Endearing all its pangs! farewell for ever!

(Exit with Guards.

SCENE VII.

GWENDYLEN, CLYFFORD.
GWENDYLEN.
I lose him, and the world's a stony desert,
That seems to petrify my heart within me.
O that kind Heaven would, in the very moment,
When his freed spirit flies from this base earth,
Release me from a life, that now affords me
No hope to form, no duty to fulfill.

CLYFFORD.
Dear victim of barbarity, my soul
Still in fond unison with thine, partakes
Thy filial wish, regarding life with scorn.

GWENDYLEN.
O generous Clyfford, grant me one request:
While yet my father breathes, O grant me still
To gaze upon him; and forbid, I pray thee,
Forbid officious care to force my weakness
From the attractive scene of death! I hear,
Surely I hear a pitying angel's voice,
That kindly tells my sympathetic heart
That, in beholding, I may share his fate.

CLYFFORD.
An heavenly impulse seems against my reason
To force me to obey thee.

GWENDYLEN.
Haste, my friend!

CLYFFORD.
I will conceal me in a peasant's garb;
And thou shalt choose the spot, where we will stand,
In mutual awe and agony to catch
The latest accents of thy sacred sire!

(Exeunt.

SCENE VIII.

—THE KING'S TENT.
KING EDWARD, QUEEN.
QUEEN.
Yet, my dear lord, by all your perils past,
By all your ardent hopes of future honor,
Yet, while the pressing minutes urge my voice
To most important prayer, while time allows
My fearless conqueror to make sweet mercy
The blest confirmer of his perfect glory,
Yet, yet recall from death this brave old man!
O save like Heaven, in the distressful moment,
When safety's vanished from the eyes of hope.

KING EDWARD.
Dearest of supplicants! it pains me ever
To thwart the wishes of thy gentle spirit;
But it is royalty's severest duty,
To keep the sword of punishment unbiassed
By the quick outcries of too tender pity.

QUEEN.
No! my mistaken lord! it is not pity
For those, who suffer by thy fatal wrath,
Tho' I acknowledge my heart bleeds for them;
'Tis love for thee: 'tis passion for thy glory,
That gives thy Eleanor the strength to plead
Against this stern decree: O gracious Edward!
I wish thy noble nature prized and loved
By every subject, as it is by me:
I know, in seeming cruel to this land,
It is thy aim, by sage austerity,
To fill the savage mind with useful terror:
But has not gentleness the blessed power
To rule the willing heart, while o'erstrained rigor
Gains but the fearful semblance of dominion
O'er the forced acts of alienated souls?

KING EDWARD.
Sweet advocate of mercy! were all hearts
Pure as thy own, thy pleading should prevail,
But for the government of baser beings,
Obedience must be founded upon fear.

QUEEN.
Fear leads to hate: and hate to strife, and frenzy:
Think of young Clyfford! O! if he, who felt
Thy fostering care, and idolized thy virtues,
If he was driven to momentary madness
By one harsh mandate of the King he loved,
What may thy people, who ne'er view like him,
Thy private scene, that blissful sanctuary
Of true domestic tenderness! O Edward!
Pride of my soul! I plead for thy renown:
Dearer to me than empire! while thou canst,
Save I conjure thee, save this aged bard!
To let him perish would obscure thy glory
With the base sin of black ingratitude;
For he with pure disinterested spirit,
Professing enmity to thy dominion,
Yet wished to shield thy life from hideous peril.
He with a father's gentleness to me
Spoke all his just surmises, and suggested
Means to restore to reason and to duty
The fascinated mind of frantic Clyfford.

KING EDWARD.
I can no more withstand, dear Eleanor,
Thy tender eloquence: thy prayer is granted:
One of the guard shall bring the rescued victim
To bless thee for that life, for which thy sweetness
Pleads irresistibly.

QUEEN.
Let me, let me,
My gracious lord, the happiest of thy servants!
O let me fly the herald of thy grace!
Mercy will lend me her auspicious wings;
And joy inspire me with his piercing voice,
To spread from rock to rock my welcome tidings
“THE PARDON OF LLANDORVIN.”

SCENE IX.

KING EDWARD, QUEEN, GWENDYLEN.
GWENDYLEN,
(entering, and almost expiring.)
'Tis in vain,
Too lovely consort of a crowned assassin!
In vain thy active tenderness attempts
To cancel his barbarity: My father,
With firm triumphant fortitude, has past
To those blest realms, whence not the voice of Kings,
Nor the more sacred breath of spotless virtue,
Can now recall his earth-contemning spirit.

KING EDWARD.
Unhappy daughter! hast thou seen him perish!
Where then was Clyfford, whose impetuous pity
Flew hence unwarranted to save thy sire.

GWENDYLEN.
Relentless Edward! hear his fate, and feel
How cruelty, in its blind rage, recoils,
And like a madd'ning serpent, stings itself!
That generous youth, whom I shall soon rejoin,
Suffers no longer in a world, which thou,
Inhuman monster! by thy savage sway,
Hast made a residence, unfit for beings,
Who with a heart like his embrace the injured.
Hark! I am called: their free, ascending spirits
Wait yet for me: I come: The generous Clyfford
At my request conducted me to view
The horrid scene, that my prophetic soul
Felt by anticipation a release
From all thy tyranny—yes, I beheld
Thy murderous archers pierce my father's breast—
That shaft to me was like the friendly lightning,
That makes convulsive anguish sink to peace.
Lifeless I fell, and, as I since have learnt,
Kind Clyfford deemed me dead, and nobly flew
To bless my dying father, and to tell him
That death's kind angel had conveyed his daughter
To wait for him in Heaven!

QUEEN.
What fatal chance
Destroyed my Clyfford?

GWENDYLEN.
In a peasant's garb
He rushed upon the weapons of the soldiers
That sought to bar him from my sire's embrace—
They did not know their prince, till his life-blood
Stained their accursed steel—He spurned their aid
Embraced my sire then dying, and retired
To die near her, whom he had left as dead.
His honored voice recalled my parting soul
Only to bless him in his death, and bring
His benediction to his heart's pure queen
His guardian Eleanor—this duty done
To my loved Clyfford, to that glorious youth,
Who gave me proof how pleasing 'tis to die,
Kind nature now is rapidly dissolving
The mortal ties, that yet withhold my spirit
From him, and from my sire: now earth receive
This poor incumbrance, that my willing soul
Exults to quit—

(She falls.)
QUEEN.
O yet abjure not life,
Dear Gwendylen! thou shalt be as my child,
And join with me to grace thy Clyfford's grave.

GWENDYLEN.
No! thou mild angel, wedded to a fiend!
Rather would I, to recompense thy goodness,
Share with thee a blest death, that terminates
Unmerited affliction: but thy doom
Is to live long, and live a wounded witness
Of mad ambition, which thou canst not temper.
My parting soul, rapt in prophetic vision,
Sees all the future reign of thy fierce Edward;
Another realm, like injured Cambria, waits
To crouch beneath his desolating sway,
And curse the proud invader: His stern soul,
Unsoftened by thy tenderness, shall lose thee;
But thou, sweet Eleanor! Thou shalt be mourned,
With honors, such as never Queen before thee
Won from imperial sorrow.

KING EDWARD.
Pray! be silent,
Thou poor distracted girl, and let us try
If salutary care may still—

GWENDYLEN.
Stand off, rash tyrant! yet respect the dying!
And hear thy destiny! Thy joy is conquest,
And conquest shall be thine: iniquity
Draws, as its curse from fortune, all it wishes.
Power shall not sate thee, nor affliction soften:
E'en death itself, whose visible approach
Can bend ambition to new thoughts of peace,
Shall fail from thy infuriate soul to banish
Thy savage thirst of empire and of carnage.
Thy dying voice shall bid thy very bones
Be borne to battle in thy army's front,
Tho' dead still proving the accurst oppressor!
But mark the fruit of all thy victories!
Thy child, so basely made the lord of Cambria,
Shall die the vilest death: hurled from a throne
Stained by thy guilt, and his ignobler vices!
Ages shall rise, when thy enlightened country,
No longer dazzled by thy martial triumph,
Shall see thy crimes, as my just father saw them,
And English bards shall execrate thy name.
I faint: ye friendly spirits hovering round me,
Receive me to your fellowship!—My father!—

(Dies.
KING EDWARD.
O Eleanor! the ravings of this damsel
Have struck an icy tremor thro' my breast,
Ne'er felt before! See thou her corse be honored,
And laid with our lost Clyfford as his bride!
Had I, thou mild remembrancer of mercy!
Had I but listened to the first entreaty,
Of thy benignant heart, we had escaped
This hour of vain regret, and deep remorse.