University of Virginia Library

SCENE V.

—Garden of Lord Bruce's Castle in Lochmaben.
Enter Lord Robert Bruce and Martha his Countess.
LORD BRUCE.
My lady all mind-stricken with a dream!
Fy on it, dame!—the minds of cottagers,
That sleep in ragged and uncurtain'd pallets,
May be afeard at visions of the night,
That through the crannies of their mud-built walls
Are sifted in with Heaven's nocturnal wind,
To persecute their simple brains with terrors;
But ladies, that do sleep in golden couches,
Amid embroider'd coverlets and curtains,
To be so pester'd with such vulgar frights—
Fie on the folly!

MARTHA.
O my lord, 'tis not
The poor straw-pallet that does most attract
These gilded wasps of persecuting fancy;
On beds of state and purple canopies,
Drawn by the glare they light, to sting within
The high-born sleepers with fantastic pangs.
'Tis but a brain-born vanity, and yet
Its airy misery is not felt the less.

LORD BRUCE.
Give us the figment, good my lady-dreamer;
I hope some dreary part of it is mine,
That I may show some heart in bearing up
Against its black abodements manfully.

MARTHA.
Methought I was a-walking with my lord,
As now we do in our fair garden here;
The skies were flooded round from rim to rim,
As with a boundless sea of summer shine;
Around us our dear children, with their cousins,
Were playing on the rose-befringed walks,
With shouts and merry pranks of younker glee,
As in their jolly school-days they were wont;
And I was plucking lilies where they grew,
Tall nodding to the sun their paramour;
When all at once, as I put out my hand
To crop one of the fairest, there up rose,
In lieu of it, a prickly dangerous plant,
Surmounted by a crown, which well I knew:
Back, back I started, from that spectacle;
My hand abhorr'd the smiling invitation;
I shrunk; but round it, keenly clust'ring, came
Children and cousins, whose sweet childish mood
Of pastime now was poison'd and perverted
Into a wrathful burning emulation,
That madden'd each against the other's life;
Then, then methought the sky wax'd dim and dimmer,
And shrouded up his silver face with clouds
Up-racking black as from the mouth of hell.
Heaven, earth, and men, as if in sympathy,
Partook of our commotion, till there dropt
From the sick firmament an ugly dew,
A dark, dim drizzle of disastrous blood,
Which lay upon my garments heavily.
I shook it from my garments off in terror;
And I beheld our garden cover'd thick
With ghastly shapes of death, my children slain,
And half my kindred bleeding mortally;
Even then I heard some angel-voice on high
Round heaven's dusk cope resounding, “Fear not, lady!
A remnant shall be pluck'd from this destruction,
To make thee mother of a hundred kings!”
And I awoke, alarmed at that cry.

LORD BRUCE.
Tush, lady!—Here's a tail of consolation,
Tack'd to the body of this boding vision;
'Tis as an ugly comet, dusk with blood,
Whose tail is bright as silvery Mercury,
Illuming stronger than the body dims.
Cheer up, my Lady Carrick; there is hope
Amid the horrors of your fantasy,
Albeit it be but brain-born vapour all.—
But who comes here, so booted and so spurr'd,
Torrid with haste?
Enter Sir William Dishington.
Sir William of Ardross!
How now, good knight?—What unexpected hap
Hath blown you on the whirlwind to our shire?
Is our Queen landed?—Has St Andrew's pier
As yet been kissed by her silver slipper?

SIR WILLIAM DISHINGTON.
Lord Bruce, our Queen is dead!—Alas! the grave
Hath gaped upon her virgin innocence,
And swallow'd all our hopes!

MARTHA.
Ah! woe the while,
Poor pretty Margaret dead, and in her grave!—
Said'st thou not wrong, Sir William? I do hope
Thy tongue did stumble.—O, unspeak thy words,
And bless us with confession of mistake!

SIR WILLIAM DISHINGTON.
I saw the pall-black ship that brought the news
Gloomily anchor'd by Balcomie shore;
Her decks were silent as a funeral;
The seamen shouted not that row'd her in;
Their faces, wet with weeping, were averted
From their own much-beloved land, as if
They had no heart, no liking, to approach
And stun her with the dread intelligence;
I heard the tidings falter'd from the lips
Of those who saw our coffin'd queen let down
Into the greedy and remorseless tomb;
She's gone, and leaves poor lonesome Scotland weeping
Through all her valleys and her thousand hills!

MARTHA.
Ah, beauteous blossom, too, too delicate
To bide the bite of Norway's bitter blast!
Thine should have been a clime more merciful,
To fan thy beauty with a balmy breeze,
And bless us with thy ripen'd excellence!
Alas! I had a gift prepared for thee,
Sew'd by my hand, and blossom'd bright with gold,
Awaiting thine arrival in our land;
Now, it must lie conceal'd within its coffer,
Disown'd for ever by the hand that wrought it;
The moths and worms of death that prey upon
Thy bury'd beauty, shall appropriate, too,
And ravage its designed ornament.
Ah, cruel, partial Death! to seize upon
The beauteous just-appearing bud of youth,
And leave the aged, those who court a grave,
Hanging upon the wither'd tree of life
To drop upon the dust from rottenness!

LORD BRUCE.
Queen Margaret dead!—Ha!—Alexander's line
Extinct and in the dust! Now—now—The crown?
Whose is the crown?—Ah me—what piteous tidings!—
Death never from the palace of existence
Purloin'd a gem of life so precious:—
The crown?—Am I not Isabella's son,
Earl David's grandson?—Mine—'tis surely mine.—
My cousin, Donagill, with whom I stand
In like degree of distance from Earl David,
Though born of th'elder daughter, cannot plead,
Being female, claims like mine; and what she has,
Feeble herself, must feebler be, transmitted
To her but feeble son, John Baliol.
'Tis mine, Sir William.

MARTHA.
O, my lord, my lord,
Let the grief die, and sob itself away,
Ere Emulation fret herself to life;
Think on thy country, all at once bereaved,
And dash'd into confusion at one stroke;
But yesterday she sat upon her hill,
Exulting in her gaudiest robes of joy,
In expectation to keep holiday,
And shout a sounding welcome to her Queen:
To-day she, with her widow's wimple on,
Loathing the sunlight, shut and tombs herself
Within her darkest cavern, where she sits
A-sighing for her poor dead Margaret;—
And I, with her, must weep for Margaret:
Ah, sorrow, sorrow!—Poor dead Margaret!
[Exit Martha.

LORD BRUCE.
So—grief must have its way; 'tis honourable
Unto the living to bewail the dead:
Yet we must live, Sir William; men can't make
A meal on tears, and diet on dry sobs;
Above the grave, we must be trampling on it
As if disdainfully, and meditating
High schemes of life, and of prosperity,
Honour, and fame, in a forgetful scorn
Of all the shrouds and coffins cramm'd below.
The crown, Sir William? What think'st thou of it?
This sad demise will set a-bustling all
Earl David's progeny; but yet I think
The preference is ours; the nearest male
I to the stock; Hastings will never stir;
John Baliol only through his mother boasts
A poor pretension, more remote than mine
By one degree; his mother's claim I have
In point of distance of descent, but stronger
By preference of sex.

SIR WILLIAM DISHINGTON.
It must be yours,
As David's nearest heir; the country's voice
I hope will have it so; the House of Carrick,
Warm in the people's love, will thence derive
O'erbalance of advantage great enough
T'outweigh the shyer Baliol, to whose name
The multitude are cold and phlegmatic.

LORD BRUCE.
The States must of necessity convene,
On this our country's dismal deprivation,
To counsel for her weal, and ratify
In this dire blank and void of sov'reignty,
The crown's succession to the rightful heir.
Be it our business to pre-occupy
And ravish to ourselves, by loving-kindness,
As well as bold enforcement of our plea,
Men's minds, that ere the Parliament be met,
The bias may be given too generally,
Too strongly, to be thwarted, or oppugn'd:
Thus shall we best effectuate our scheme
Of soaring up to royalty, for the which
My temples, though time-batter'd they do seem,
Sown prematurely with some snowy specks,
Shall not unfit be proved, but bear the weight
Gloriously; giving a contrasted grace,
Even by their partial and precursive whiteness,
To the bright gemmed gold that sits upon them.