University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—The New Forest: by a charcoal-fire. Beowulf and Wilfrith. Leofric in the distance.
Beowulf.
They turn our bread-lands to a pleasant ground.
Nature will never bear it: the fierce earth
Will rend the foreign, sacrilegious hands
As a great mastiff, humble to his lord,
Is fatal to the fondling wayfarer.
Where now I sit there was a sound of bells,
The sight of curling smoke from cotters' roofs;
I feel the undergrowth above my chin
Where there was browsing common. All the wood
Is savage, rank, o'ergrown, pestiferous,
Depopulate of man, and teeming with
The rampant, wild, unprofitable beasts
That forage on him. Ah, there is a sound,
A merry, merry horn, a laughing cry;
Let's wait.

Wilfrith.
Grandfather, you should trust in God.

Beowulf.
It's the earth I'm trusting to, I've planted it;
It feels the tie of blood down to the pith;
It will not fail.

Wilfrith.
But Bishop Wulstan says
That we should love our neighbours.

Beowulf.
So I do;
I love them so, I'd sniff about their graves
If they were here. How can we love the dead
That drop forgotten, and just rot in soul
And body, cut away from burial
And peace-endowing prayer? We must avenge.

Wilfrith.
We are so helpless.

Beowulf.
You have eyes and youth.
Age in despair is weaker than a child;
Its weather-beaten hope is mightier
Than any fitful ferment of the blood.
From the first moment of the rimless dark
In which I wake, slumber, and feel the sun,
A hope struck root, I felt it in the soil
Of my blocked brain, where thought went burrowing—
A tedious mole—and sense writhed underground.
The fibres of this hope took hold of me,
Pierced, ramified my subterranean life;
Now it has heaved out to the upper light
And spreads I know not whither.—I am blind.

Wilfrith
[aside].
He frightens me: it's like one in the grave
Who can lie quiet till the judgment-day,
Brooding his wrongs. [Aloud.]
But must we not forgive?
The Conqueror
Left our king Harold's body on the beach
In his great battle-fury. Afterward
He buried it at Waltham, penitent.

Beowulf.
We must submit, be penitent, forgive!—
But that's to change your mind; I never thought
That God changed His.—I thought within myself
The seasons were not surer than the Lord,
You might depend on Him. It's altered now;
He's God of Battle Abbey; ... on the beach
He let them huddle up King Harold's bones,
He's strewn our prayers as ashes to the wind,
Suffered such resurrection of men's bones
As modest Death cries shame of.—He repents,
His past is not prophetic of to-day;
But at the breaking-places of the wave
All keepeth constant to its habitude;
There is no change of custom in the air;
Yon oak drops acorns; I am comforted.
The earth is English still; the soil gives suck;
It will not rear strange children.
What's that noise?
I hear a whistling and the splint of wood.
Art sharpening arrows?

Leofric.
Why, they have an aim.
I'm carving, grand-dad, could you only see;—
Here is that leering abbess to the life.
Oh, I'll shoot from the gargoyles and not miss.
I'm moulding such a lot of funny curves
About the mouth—not wrinkles—it's more soft. ...
The change is gradual as youth to age.
Look, Wilfrith! ... here's a soul forgets itself,
Popping an eager face from out the cowl,
A blaze of curiosity. Can guess?

Wilfrith.
Not Uncle Godric. It's the curious dean
That frighted Twynham's canons ere his rule,
And longed to build. Why should you mimic him?
He gave you learning.

Leofric.
Bless your mother-wit!
Mock him, you numbskull! 'Tis the very life.
It's clear that he got thwarted yesterday
By the drawn brows: clear too he'll overcome,
By this huge, dominant, aggressive chin.
I've caught the very moulding of his smile;
Smiles have so many shapes.

Beowulf.
Where's Harold, lads?

Leofric
[aside].
Ah me, it's bitter seeing with the voice.
The half-blank, blundering visage overgrown
With sorrow, all the faculties shrunk down
To pollard, and a fevered ignorance
Writhing the sightless gaze. If I might notch
Those wrinkles—

[Carves.
Wilfrith
[to Beowulf].
Harold will be here anon,
Dear grandfather. [To Leofric.]
You have no shame at all
To hew a blind man's face from out that block.—
[Enter Harold, followed by Purkis.]
He's here, and looking sullen. Who's behind?
Why, father!

Purkis.
By your looks you have not seen
What's lying underneath the splintered fir.
Now, grand-dad, clap a great fist to your ear
And take the news. ... A Norman 's dead,
I found him lying stiff down in the glade;
And it's a prince, his cloak all broidered o'er
Thick as the May-buds, and that blasted red
Streaking his golden hair.

Leofric.
Where does he lie?

Purkis.
Up higher half a mile. Don't start, ye fools;
No meddling with him. One might feel him o'er
As if he were a dog; when we are dead
We are all peasants, churl and prince alike,
Except they carry us to Winchester.
And yet I dare not touch him for my eyes.
[Old dad, they gouged yours out; I had to keep
You grumbling through a night of twenty year.]
We must not smell about a fallen stag;
Just let him wither like an autumn leaf.
I think he died by nature, sort of struck.
[To Beowulf.]
Ay, chuckle, grand-dad, there's an eye in Heaven
Peering at loophole, though our chinks be bunged.
[To himself.]
He finds a sort of comfort in it like,
To feel there's some one scanning; for my part
This staring at misfortune in the way
It pleases Providence to practise,—well,
It's like the cattle; they'll stare by the hour—
They never move: the watching simply galls,
If there's no heave of rescue in the eye.
But all the same I'm pleased this happens pat
To cheer the old man up. [Aloud.]
A pretty lad,
We think it's young Prince Richard.

Harold.
Half a child,
And, curse him, such an innocent young face,—
Out ravaging; he could not understand.

Wilfrith.
Should we not bury him?

Beowulf.
Are there no beasts
To feed on him, no rain, nor loosening wind
To help him to mortality? Forbear!
We may not touch the quarry.

Leofric.
I must go
See him myself.

Purkis.
You have a cunning eye
That copies like smooth water; go your ways,
It's early yet; but come back stealthily.
[Exit Leofric.
[To Harold.]
Harold, you're in the sulks.

Harold.
He looked so helpless and so innocent
I could not hate him. Could we rise in hordes
And storm their castles; but to cut one off—

Beowulf.
Is it the work of any native hand?

Harold.
No; there are hundreds who would gladly do 't
For lack of something nobler.

Purkis.
Bide your time.
Come, you are gossiping like wenches; work.
I soon shall have to keep you, dad, and all.
Three sturdy lads, these faggots still to stack,
And that old waster trunk to hew away.
Come, Harold! I find Wilfrith on his knees,
Praying our Lady with his tools before;
And Leofric gets out a curious knife
And peels the bark;—not one can deal a blow.

Harold.
Firewood to warm mere slaves, to be put out
At curfew-bidding. Oh the weariness!
There is no choice 'twixt murder and the tools;
No soldier's part, no fearless happy death,
No hope of honourable home and love.
I have seen trees cut down for building ships,
The bonnie waving branches overhead
Straightened to twigless timber. Father, if
I could so perish for the land's defence,
All wantonness of youth I'd put away,
All sap of pleasure, all sky-peering pride,
To be a seasoned keel, an implement,
A common plank for Freedom's foot to tread;
I will not see my manhood's goodly powers
Rated with monkish imbecility.
Wilfrith may saw the wood and say his prayers,
I'll do some mischief, and so earn my death.

[Exit.
Purkis
[looking after him].
The devil, ah!
Ne'er misdirected to a gallows. If
The boy will turn from wholesome work and prayer
And live on curses, I shall find him caught
Like Absalom up yonder in the bough.
My son, my son!—I laugh when my heart aches;
Like stretching out a weary stiffened leg,
The change of posture brings a little ease.

Wilfrith.
Father, hear!
Let me set out for Twynham, tell the tale
Of the young prince's death; these holy men
Will bring a litter, bear the corpse away,
And no suspicion.

Purkis.
Make an end of it,
A decent end; I do not grudge the child
Some pretty burial chaunting and a mass.
Keep God in thought; He's haply hereabout.
Grand-dad, I'll leave you by the charcoal-fire
To watch; there's nothing else that you can do.

Beowulf.
Nothing at all; I'm best here by the fire
Hid in the turf, the oven where the wood
Is packed, and all is changed by patience.
There's nothing else to do.

Purkis
[looking back at his father].
Sometimes he'll sit
Seven days and nights in the thick oozing smoke,
Noiseless as clay, and on his countenance
A fiery revolution. Nothing comes
Peaceful across; his passions harry him,
And from their ravaged homestead in his eyes
Flee to make murderous havoc on the brow.
He'll not recover; like the Yorkshire wolds
He's scarred effectually,—no hope of corn
On the once pleasant uplands of his face.
All's bleak and desert. ... Poor old rambling dad,
They think he is a prophet!

[Exit.