 | William Rufus |  |
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Scene III.
—Malwood Lodge, in the New Forest. Enter Walter Tirel, William of Breteuil, and Robert Fitzhamon.Tirel.
'Tis strange he loves the forest with a lust
The green leaves wake to madness; yet its shade
Hath been a brother's hearse, a nephew's doom:
Fate spins beneath its beeches.
Breteuil.
True, the king
Pants with ungoverned joy within its ways.
He loves to scent the honeyed, sylvan air,
To break the greenwood holly with a cry
That peals above the comely-headed trees,
And pierces the remote and quiet deer
Before the dart is through them.
Fitz-hamon.
'Tis a weald
For royal pleasure.
Tirel.
Doubtless; yet methinks
About the silver trunks and mossied paths
There is a noiseless awe, an influence
That passes to the heart and sits within
Unasked, unwelcome, irremovable.
Fitz-hamon.
Our Tirel is besprited in the glades.
'Tis said they swarm with magic shapes and sounds
That make the Saxon chatter with dismay
And superstition.
Tirel.
Well, our Norman woods
Are sunnier and sparser and more soft
In entertainment to the traveller
Than this gigantic forest. I am strange
To such dense multitude of vaulted boughs
As keep the healthy sun from entering.
Breteuil.
We hunt to-day. To-morrow we take horse
For distant Gloucester where the Council meets.
God grant we get a primate; for the king
Still holds the sainted visitor from Bec,
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And will not let him sail.
Tirel.
'Tis strange, most strange;
The king is unmoved in his blasphemy
And pride against the Church, and yet he keeps
Its brightest jewel by him.
Fitz-hamon.
Hark! the horn,
The press of dogs, the steed's uneasy pace,
The burly prickers and the merry knaves!
[They enter singing.]
Song.
To the forest, ho!
Where the tall deer run,
We'll go, we'll go,
And every one
Shall bend his duteous bow.
Where the tall deer run,
We'll go, we'll go,
And every one
Shall bend his duteous bow.
To the forest, heigh!
Where the green oaks stand,
We'll ride away,
A jolly band,
With, ho! for a greenwood day!
Where the green oaks stand,
We'll ride away,
A jolly band,
With, ho! for a greenwood day!
[Enter the King with boisterous following.]
Rufus.
Here I breathe free; here am I over-lord
Of man and wold; here the subservient soil
I privilege, or starve to barrenness,
As my caprice resolves. I punish here.
Ha, ha! Here am I absolute. I roar
A lion through the woods, and fugitive
Slinks the unmanèd and offenceless herd;
Or scans me with a trembling constancy,
Too much appalled for flight. My will is law,
Fair Forest-Law,—that is my perfect will.
It dooms the poacher to the swinging bough,
The hound to cringing service, and the deer
To the large liberty of wide confine.
I'm generous here to my brute prisoners,
Yielding them charters with a liberal hand,—
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At the king's pleasure—the condition.—Ah!
The Church herself must hold her revenues
As ebbs and flows my treasury's yellow tide.
I am the source of all munificence.
When I confer a primate on my realm
The halo will be beaming on his brow,
And he in saintliness excel as far
As I in sovereign empire.
[The King's horse is led in.
Noble roan!
This master-stirrup, fitted to my foot,
Confirms my pre-appointment to excess
In natural dominion. I am stout
In body and gigantic in desire
Of sport; the meagre meshes of this wood
Chafe me; its dwarfish pleasures mock my pride.
I will afforest more; there shall be dark
Through flawless umbrage of serene arcades
From dawn to sunset, ere my hunter's lust
Confess satiety. Mount, gentlemen!
[Exeunt.
| William Rufus | |