University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

—Between Balcomie Castle and the Sea-shore.
Enter Sir Michael Scot and Sir David Wemyss, as just landing from shipboard; with them Duncan, Earl of Fife, Archbishop Fraser, and Sir John Cuming.
FRASER.
Five weeks have we been lingering by the shore,
From hill and turret that command the sea
Watchful of each uncertain speck that rose
Afloat upon the horizon's fluid ring,
Our eyes interpreting it into the bark
Joy-freighted, dancing onward to our shores,
Rich with the jewel of Queen Margaret.
Alas, thus has your ship arriv'd at last
Gloomy and coffin-black with death, her sails
And streamers of the dun disastrous pall
That mantled the Norwegian maiden's corse!

SIR DAVID WEMYSS.
Alas, alas! we are unwillingly
The heralds of affliction; would to God
Th'unpitying deep had swallow'd us in mercy,
And with our life had choked our utterance,
That other lips than ours had been the first
T'announce our country's terrible bereavement!

EARL OF FIFE.
O heavy news for Scotland! never came
To our sweet shores a ship so melancholy,
To chill with disappointment all the land,
And blast it suddenly from joy to grief.

SIR JOHN CUMING.
Ha, dead! how pregnant is that little word!

[Aside.
SIR MICHAEL SCOT.
Even from the first, methought the elements
Warr'd inauspiciously against our voyage:
Ere we attain'd the port of Elsinore,
Three perilous and blustering weeks were past
Amid the tossings of the eastern deep;
The skies seem'd surly with hostility,
Lest we should foot th'unwilling land before
The spirit of our gentle Queen was gone;
For she had died the morning of the day
Whereon we landed; and we found her, not
A joyous queen, bedeck'd with marriage-robes,
To welcome us to palace-banquetings;
But a poor corpse trimm'd out for burial,
Her bridemaids changed to mourners round her bier,
And her bereaved father sitting lone
Amid his chamber, inconsolable,
Forbidding us to see th'excess of grief
That did unking his lofty royalty.

ARCHBISHOP FRASER.
O Haquo, Haquo, doleful was the day
That broke thy aged heart, and snapp'd asunder
The golden chain of life that bound thee to us!
Thou art left desolate and childless; we
An orphan people; both alike in tears!

SIR MICHAEL SCOT.
And when we left the Norway land, to bear
The message home which death gave us to carry,
Again the spirit of the skies was up
Against our voyage, and assail'd our masts
With angry squalls, that seem'd to flout at us
For wafting home so terrible a tale;
Thrice did our ship, when half-way o'er the flood,
Rebound before the thwartings of the west
Into the harbour whence she sail'd before:
At last, sea-batter'd, and consumed with storm,
Watchings, and fast, we re-salute our land,
Though late, alas! too soon, afflicting it,
By our arrival and our first few words,
Into a speechless, helpless, endless sorrow.

EARL OF FIFE.
I see, I see in this woe-pregnant death
A cloud of mischief, as a man's hand small,
Low in the horizon of futurity,
Which soon dilating up into our sky
Will drench poor Scotland with a bloody rain.
In Marg'ret's grave, our Alexander's name
And line is buried; and the Scottish crown
Now lies unown'd, a disputable thing,
To be tugg'd for by hot competitors,
In fields where bitter and confronting factions
Will congregate, and roll into themselves
The pith of all the land, to settle it
With swords in bloody barb'rous controversy.

ARCHBISHOP FRASER.
Heaven's mercy interpose itself to save
Our country from that fearful termination!
In Heaven alone is remedy; for man
Has in him only all the sinful seeds
Of jealousy, and strife, and bad ambition,
Which, when contested crowns provoke to sin,
Sprout out into the fellest outrages.

SIR JOHN CUMING.
Beshrew me, but a crown's too rich a pearl
Not to be dived for through a sea of blood;
He is a weakling, and affronts his sires,
Rebelling 'gainst the blood his veins inherit,
That will not doff his subject garb, and dip
For royalty, were't to the ocean's bottoms!—
My cousin Baliol at this woeful news,
I hope, will brisk him like a cockerel up,
And fire his every feather with ambition:
If he be slack, I'll dash for it myself
Some pretty enterprise.—But we let sleep
The news too long;—I'll be myself the post
To Galloway, to greet my grieving coz
With advertisement of the maiden's death.
[Exit Sir John.

ARCHBISHOP FRASER.
It works already; hardly hath the grief
Just grazed upon the surface of our hearts,
When the vile sleeping asp of emulation,
That lurks within, reanimates and stirs,
Rejoicing in the tears that quicken him.
Cuming is gone, and bears upon his lips
Words that will sicken Scotland, but excite
To bustling hopes the race of Huntington.

SIR MICHAEL SCOT.
Let us within, my friends; for much our hearts
Need to be 'stablish'd by good household cheer
From stomach-qualms and dizzyings of the wave;
We'll talk then of our voyage more at large,
And of the joyless prospects of this land.