University of Virginia Library

ACT I

SCENE:—Gallery at Ford Castle
(Seneschal. Margery)
[Margery arranging fresh-plucked roses in the Gallery. Seneschal gazing out of the window in the raised embrasure.]
MARGERY
Roses are in September yet more sweet
Than in the lavish loveliness of June,
And by us are more fondly cherishëd;
Loved guests that are about to go away
When we would have them linger; fading friends,
Our love for whom we do but half surmise
Until the grave imperiously claims
They be to it surrendered. My lady loves
Autumnal flowers, albeit herself she be
Still in the heyday of her Summer beauty,
And these for her were gathered. There! And there!
[Mounting the steps of the embrasure.]
Oh! will the fight be fought as near as that?
I see the armies plain, the camps astir!
I almost hear their voices!

SENESCHAL
Goodly sight,
Bravest of earthly shows! It makes one fancy
Oneself a boy again, to look on it;
Thaws the congealing blood, loosens stiff joints,
And feeds afresh the flickering flame of life.
When I was young, the sword was rarely sheathed,
The spears were never stacked! War, always war,
Along the joyous Border!

MARGERY
Death too, death,
Ever in ambush!

SENESCHAL
Have we not all to die?
I have known men who, lingering at fourscore,
Had never lived an hour, and youths that died
In the full summer sunshine of their days,
But they had flowered continuously through
The season of the hawthorn and the rose,
And Autumn never seared their manly beauty,
Nor Winter piled its snow upon their hearts.
They lived still fighting—fighting still they died.
There's nothing like it, though perchance you deem
That Love is sweeter.

MARGERY
So in truth I do,
Or, rather, think I should, did I but know it.

SENESCHAL
I warrant me you know it well, and now
Nature from you her secret not withholds,
Though 'tis more maidenly you should not own it.
Viewing me now, mere winter of a man,
You well may find it full as hard to think
I ever loved as that I ever fought.
Yet, Margery, on my soul, I have done both,
And War was sweeter even than was Love,
Though Love itself's a sort of warfare too,
Wherein the boldest wins.

MARGERY
Is that quite so?
I have been told, in love the weakest wins,
The weakest, and the gentlest.

SENESCHAL
Think so, then.
But the sound sleep under the silent stars,
The clamour, the bright bustle of the dawn,
The doubt, the dangers, the delights of war—
Gone, all of them gone, for me at least, who now
Will never know them more! Of recent years,
Our English Henry, Seventh of the name,
Though grandson of gay Hal of Agincourt,
Was all for peace with Scotland, and thereto
Married his daughter Margaret to King James.
But now that a young Harry, warm in blood,
And proud and mettlesome as James himself,
Who were to-day at Flodden but he is
Afoot for fame in battle-fields of France,
Sits on the English throne, these gamesome kings,
Like two-year cockerels with their steel spurs on,
Claw at each other.

MARGERY
But the pretext, what?
There must be some pretence.

SENESCHAL
A woman, Margery,
As it has ever been since Troy Town fell.
Leastways, a woman's jewels, Margaret's,
Her brother will not yield until some wrong,
In which Sir William Heron was mixed up
And captive seized, be righted by King James.

MARGERY
When think you that the battle will be fought?

SENESCHAL
(after stiffly ascending and descending the steps of the large embrasure)
See! here comes one more like to know than I.

MARGERY
Who may that be?

SENESCHAL
One we all know right well,
The warmest yeoman on the lands of Ford,
Young Donald Grey, the Captain of the Troop,
And armed as though for martial purposes.

[Enter Donald]
DONALD
Homage to Mistress Margery, and to you,
All the respect youth pays to worth and age.

SENESCHAL
What tidings, Donald?

DONALD
Right brave ones, sir. All those I notified,
Muster in force, in honest clansmen gear,
Accoutred in their best, a hundred strong,
Stripling and adult, very flower of Ford.

[Exit Seneschal.]
MARGERY
Shall I not tell my lady you are here?

DONALD
I pray you, of your graciousness. Yet stay
One moment, if you will. There was a word,
A little word, I fain would say to you.
Forgive me if I seem to have forgotten it.

MARGERY
Then will I unto Lady Heron; meanwhile
It may come back to you.

DONALD
Nay, go not yet!
Yes, this it was: a bold yet halting word,
The oldest, freshest, biggest in the world,
That chokes the broadest-chested man alive.
I love you, Margery! Since that still night
When we 'chance met and wandered 'neath the stars,
That seemed to shine in Heaven but with your eyes,
And the husht woodlands listening to your voice,
I hear no other name, but only yours.
The very faintest breath that stirs the leaves
Still whispers “Margery! Margery!” Every stream
That sings its way adown to Till or Tweed
Trebles and carols “Margery!” Can it be
That Nature thuswise would seduce my ears,
But to bewray my heart? Tell me it doth not!

MARGERY
How can I know? Yet, since that star-crowned night,
When your voice trembled, and my soul replied,
I long for something, something! Is it you?

DONALD
It is, or, if 'tis not, it needs must be.
Let us put it to the test, and you will learn.

[Embraces her.]
MARGERY
Oh, 'tis too sudden! And the fight! the fight!—
May be you go to death, and then the life
Of her whom thus you have betrothed for yours,
Would have to wear unwedded widowhood.

DONALD
Your love will charm aside the threat of death,
And see me safely through the riskiest fray.
Love makes a man, who is verily a man,
Active in peace and valorous in war,
Too confidently knit to fail or fall.
Make me yet stronger!

MARGERY
But you must not fall,
Nor court exceeding danger overmuch.

DONALD
Yea, that I must, and shall. For Love deprives
Danger of danger, frightens fear away.
And I would win you, having helped to win
Victory for Surrey and the English Cause.
Tears! Are these tears?

MARGERY
'Tis but an April shower,
That brings the martlet to the cottage eave,
Blade to the grass, and leaf unto the bough,
And wakens every note of pairing joy
In garth and brake.

DONALD
Be mine, then, like the sun,
To smile, and kiss the glittering drops away!
See! Harvest ripens in the Autumn fields,
In this still rounding world. But young Love is
A Springtime in itself, and in my heart
I feel its blossoms, O, too long kept back,
Unfolding fearlessly.

MARGERY
Yet let us, Donald,
Prolong their loitering, lest samesome Summer
Shorten Love's sweetest season!

DONALD
But remember
I have a nest all ready for you, dear,
Only awaiting to be warmed by you,
When I will tend on you, and hourly bring
All that Love needs for brooding happiness.

MARGERY
Forbear! Forbear! or tears will rain afresh!
What do men say of Surrey?

DONALD
That he needs
Like centuried oak, an amplitude of space
To manifest his greatness. That he hath
The stoutest heart and strongest will alive,
And under him to serve the entrance is
To honour and distinction.

MARGERY
Yes! and you
Are Head and Captain of the Troop of Ford.

DONALD
Yes, by their generous choice, so must I hence
Unwillingly, and but at Duty's call,
To muster them within the Castle Court,
Where, ere they march, they trust that Lady Heron,
Her lord away, will speed them to the fight.

MARGERY
As so she will, I doubt not. I, meanwhile,
Her grateful ward, will sue to her and beg
Her sanction to our—

DONALD
Love and Marriage-bond.
But, ere we part, troth we our love anew!

[They embrace. Exit Donald, Margery accompanying him to the door, and, as she closes it, and turns,
Enter Lady Heron.]
LADY HERON
Round but the hour, and then He will be here!

MARGERY
He? Who? The King?

LADY HERON
The King! My more than King,
My towering Warrior, Hero, Conqueror, Man,
My birthright-sceptred Surrey! He will come,
Afresh red-hot from battle to my arms,
Martial voluptuary, his victor blade
Crimsoned with routed blood up to the hilt,
His face ablaze with slaughter, and his breast,
Like hammer upon anvil, beat on mine
In Love's own furnace.

MARGERY
Oh, hush, hush!
Or, though I love you gratefully, as should
The orphan you have mothered from her birth,
You can I serve no more, for those are words
Neither for you to utter, nor me to hear.

LADY HERON
Then hide within a nunnery, though even there
I have heard the vestal flame will overburn,
Fluttered by Nature, the incendiary,
And underneath the wimple woman's heart
Betray its straight descent from Lucifer.

MARGERY
How wildly you do ravin among words,
Till I can scarcely follow or understand,
Save that I somehow feel that they are wicked,
And God will punish their fierce wantonness!

LADY HERON
Dear little maiden, how Spring-fresh you are,
When you unbosom what I would not have—
And yet perchance I would!

MARGERY
I'll give you all,
The little that it is, that I do own,
So you do want it.

LADY HERON
Ah! too late! too late!
When once the dew hath vanished from the grass,
Or the frail petals fallen from the flower,
Who can bring back the freshness of the dawn,
Or who refold the rose?

MARGERY
I love you best
When you discourse like that. And, lady dear,
Be sure of this: through life's unsureness, He,
Who made us all in innocency, can
Remake us, if we would!

LADY HERON
Consoling faith!
Could we but have it for the asking! But—
What was I saying?

MARGERY
That Surrey will be here
Ere rounds the clock. Why then dispatch to James
A special, swift, and trusty messenger,
Bidding him also come? Want you them both?

LADY HERON
Yes, I want both, because I want but one,
For James's presence 'chance may profit Surrey,
Haply, myself as well.

MARGERY
Deem you that fair?

LADY HERON
Have you ne'er heard that all is fair in war,
As 'tis in love, and I have both in hand.
Can I but keep James dallying from the field,
Or fool him late for the fight, then Surrey's plans,
Then Surrey's sword, will be the better for't,
And Surrey's love more closely drawn to me.

MARGERY
That is a snare that never could I set.

LADY HERON
A snare! The fatuous ensnare themselves,
And any other bait would serve as well
For such gross feeding. But, remember, child,
To lock your lips on that, which it was rash
To think aloud, and so forget it straight.

MARGERY
Nay, you may trust me when I most do blame,
And, if you are betrayed, it is yourself
Will be the traitress to your treachery,
As so, dear lady, it doth seem to me.

LADY HERON
Seems! Seems! What matters it, forsooth, what seems?
In love one has to make what is not, seem,
And that which seems, a something different.

MARGERY
But if the King and Surrey haply meet
Here, and at such an hour?

LADY HERON
Babe! One can take
Precaution against such mischance; and none,
Were he crowned King and Emperor of the globe,
Should on my presence break, or be announced,
Were I alone with Surrey.
[Looks at the clock.]
Oh, how slow!
An hour is longer than I thought, its tick,
Like to a sickly and enfeebled pulse,
Losingly laggard! Hie you, Margery,
Hie to the topmost spiral of the Tower,
The one that faces Flodden, and see! see!
If he be coming.

MARGERY
Straightway! But I first
Would to you make a loving little prayer.

LADY HERON
And that?

MARGERY
It is to crave your tender leave
To keep a vow perhaps too rashly given
To one too worthy to refuse it him.

LADY HERON
Who is it that you love?

MARGERY
Young Donald Grey
Tells me 'tis he, and I have trust in him,
And so believe him.

LADY HERON
Thrice enviable maiden!
Lost in the mystery of a virgin love,
Loving you know not what, you scarce know whom,
Save that it is not self nor worldliness,
Nor anything that's base and surfeiting.

MARGERY
And thus I still shall dwell upon your lands,
And so be near you always. Now I go,
To do your bidding.

LADY HERON
Nay, but wait awhile!
He never yet was here afront his time,
Nor ever in the rear of it overmuch.
And I still love to long for him a little;
It sharpens meeting. Therefore, stay you here,
And sing to me some simple little song
To soften aspiration, till I float
On that delicious vacancy that rocks
'Twixt dreaming and awaking.

MARGERY
What shall I sing?
Say, shall it be the lovelorn melody
That pleased you yesterday, both air and words
Made by King James?

LADY HERON
By him—by any one—
What matters it by whom? For, were they writ
By the seraphic choristers of Heaven,
I still should think of Surrey.

MARGERY
Always Surrey!
Doth James then please no more?

LADY HERON
He never pleased.
But homage pleases from all slaves alike,
Kings most of all; and homage that is love
Claims some return from grateful loyalty.
But his? He hath a score of roaming fancies,
And one of twenty would I never be.
Thus his feigned homage, wide distributed,
Both pleaseth and displeaseth. Oh, how base,
Fatuous, and false, women and men alike
In the disport and hot pursuit of love,
Thus wrongly christened! He conceives to win,
While risking nothing. He shall sharply learn
I do not rise a loser from such game,
And, having won, will all my earnings hand
Unto straightforward Surrey. Tell me, Margery,
Am I still lovely!

MARGERY
Ah! too lovely, far.
I would not be as beautiful as you.

LADY HERON
And never be it! Pray to be halt or blear,
Ill-favoured, hunch-backed, anything you will,
Save hazard sport for foraging desire.
But now the Song!

MARGERY

LADY HERON
I like the singer better than the song.
You sang it deftly.

MARGERY
Yet the song is sweet.

LADY HERON
Perchance too sweet, and pleaseth you because
Scarce understood. Things only half surmised
Are sweeter, Margery, than things wholly seen.

MARGERY
But is that not the very spell of song,
Of poetry, love, life, earth, heaven, everything?

LADY HERON
Yes, that is so.

MARGERY
Wherefore then speak so plain
As—nay, forgive me—oftentimes you do?

LADY HERON
Because there is a yearning at my heart,
Or call it what you will, that will be out!

MARGERY
Then slacken it with hyssop and with tears,
And so subdue it.

LADY HERON
Easily said!

MARGERY
And done.
My soul my sovereign is, whereto the flesh
Is a meek subject.

LADY HERON
O, but I! But I
Am all rebellion, with no central sway,
From forehead unto footstep. But why prate?
Hie to the Tower, and from the battlements
Strain your young gaze, and see if he be coming,
And then, then hasten down, to give me time
To tolerate his coming.

MARGERY
But, lady dear,
How shall I know 'tis he, till he be nigh?

LADY HERON
Why, by the very air that will divide
To line his dignity. He walks the world
Like a stray god. If cometh he afoot,
Then know him by his strong disdainful stride;
If throned upon the saddle, then his steed
Will arch its neck and fling its mane abreeze,
And fan the dust as though its hoofs were wings
To waft him to love's haven. Now, go! go!
Nay, just a moment. Hand me the mirror, dear,
And—is there any ringlet out of place,
Or have I ruffled half my folds with gust
Of my own blowing? What a whirl am I
Of storming and subsiding!
[Taking the mirror.]
Let me see.

MARGERY
There's not a hair nor tippet crimp awry.
You seem a Queen caparisoned for Court,
Ready for all the chivalry of the South
To come and kiss the queenhood of your hand.

LADY HERON
Then, to the Tower, and I will wait for him,
With my attendant train of longing thoughts.
[Exit Margery.]
[Enter Surrey. Lady Heron, who has gone a few paces in the other direction to put down the mirror, turns, and seeing him, rushes eagerly towards him.]
Surrey! My Surrey!
[He embraces her, then paces the room.]
Here, before the hour
Named in your message, never here too soon.

SURREY
Because the hour of battle is more near
Than hope foresaw.

LADY HERON
How did you hither come?
You surely did not risk your life, alone?

SURREY
Life? Risk? Life is but one long risk,
With something of precaution in it too,
In men not daft with daring, or with love.

LADY HERON
You never would be that.

SURREY
Foresend I should!
Scouts have I out by every curve and ford
Of Tweed or Till, dingle, or dip, or wood,
Or treacherous dimple of this smiling Border;
And if one carle or gallowglass should stir
The bracken where I had not bid him hide,
His life were worthless as a mountain hare's,
With sleuthhounds on its rear, and van, and flank;
So came I unaccompanied.

LADY HERON
To pass
[She lays her hand on his shoulder.]
A peaceful hour with me!

SURREY
Yes, and to scan
From Ford's commanding fourfold parapets
The land around with a yet wider gaze,
And keener scrutiny. Say, shall I find
Stair, door, and battlement-approaches free,
Or is there one to open?

LADY HERON
Free as is
The whole of the world and womankind—to you!
Shall you be long atop?

SURREY
Not long, 'tis sure,
For I have ta'en close survey of the scene
Where I shall force the fight on, pushed James round
From ground of his own choosing, till he stands
With back to England, and to Scotland I.
At Twizell ford my fellows crossed the Till,
The stream breast high, and, had they but been ta'en
In that short hour of hazard, as I saw
That they were safe against, the feat had been
Beyond their force. I cannot think but James
Lies not in camp, for I have oft been told
Expert he is in cunning purposes,
And something must have held him elsewhere, so
The deed swift followed on the thought, and now
I have him at the 'vantage.

LADY HERON
(aside)
Fortune thus
Fosters Love's strategy!

SURREY
What said you, lady?
Forgive me, somewhat absent.

LADY HERON
That victory, then,
Is yours beforehand?

SURREY
Victory rests with Heaven,
Though have I noted, in this wavering world,
God's wont gives victory to the wise and strong,
Being just in His arbitrament, and loth
To aid the dolt and laggard,

LADY HERON
Here, here is need
For no such forceful weapon. For awhile
Turn them to me, won long since, not to woo,
Yours, maybe not God's gift, but yours withal.
Will you go first, or last, unto the Tower?

SURREY
Nay, as you will; but better, hap, the last,
For should I, gazing, see some gap unstopped,
Some vantage knoll unheld, I straight should hence
To seize it fast, and could not then return.

LADY HERON
Go last, then, but I pray you go not soon,
We have been severed, O, so long, so long!

SURREY
I cannot bide me, anyway, for long;
My thoughts are other-where.

LADY HERON
They ofttimes are.
I do suspect you deem all womankind
Mere margin of man's life, past which its text
Runs on continuously!

SURREY
So they are,
And so they should be! What, forsooth, is love,
Dainty, delicious pastime though it be,
When paragoned with statecraft or with war,
War above all? Love seems, compared with these,
As sleeping unto waking, half-shut eyes
To nerve and sinew, body, and brain, and spirit,
Astir, aflame, with splendid speculation,
Ambition, daring, danger, all that make
Existence godlike. Man by war creates
New worlds, and fashions them to meet his will,
Aye, after his own image, if he win.
Its counters are not lives alone, but kingdoms,
The future, and the fateful things to be.
Now, by God's Passion, on this very hour,
And on its undetermined issue, hangs
The future of two great opposing Realms,
Which never should be otherwise than one.
Let England win, and then the brawny race
Of stubborn Scotland, brawny, and brave, and stern,
Impetuous as its peat-embrownëd burns,
Yet fixed of purpose as its deep-laid hills,
Shall mix with ours to enrich and strengthen it.
Should Scotland win,—but Scotland must not win;
Or, if it should, and you then love me still,
Command the faggots for my funeral pyre,
Discard your gauds, and loosen your long hair,
And wail upon my lifeless body, for I
Should not survive that day of ignominy.

LADY HERON
O, but the victory, certain, will be yours!
Tell me it will, it will!

SURREY
God grant it may!
Yet, even if it were not, for there is
No hazard in this world like that of war,
Not victor, yet not vanquished, one can fall
'Mid noble shouts of battle fray, and then,
Soul, ransomed thus from flesh by death's rich stroke,
May wing its way—who knows?—to fairer realms,
In quest of spiritual battle-fields.
But like some guttering candle to go out,
With women whimpering round, and faltering tongues
Of useless leeches, on a soft-stuffed bed,
That's not a death for soldiers, or for men!

LADY HERON
Where did you get this mastery over life,
Love, death, and all things?

SURREY
From my sovran Lord,
Will, and its consort, Reason. These unthroned,
Life would to me be but disordered dream,
A jumbled reminiscence of a past
Prior existence in an unshaped world,
Where God, and Law, and Discipline were not.

LADY HERON
But, if men perish on the battle-field,
Asudden, and at once, have they then time
To make their peace with God?

SURREY
Do your duty,
Be loyal to your country and your King,
Then will you always be at peace with God,
With self, and whatsoever else there be,
Here or elsewhere.
[Seating himself by her.]
Now let us talk awhile
Of gentler themes, and tell me how you pass
Your days and Autumn twilights.

LADY HERON
Drearily,
When Surrey is not nigh, and then I wait
Till he shall please to come, apart, alone,
Or with my little maid, and talk of him,
She curious, but not understanding half
Of what I say. And then I take my spindle,
Till it goes whirling like my thoughts, but twists
To better purpose.

SURREY
You are moulded fair,
Comely and winsome, shaped for happiness
'Mid the four walls of home; for motherhood,
And honest household rule. Tell me why
There sounds an endless yearning in your voice,
Like to the wave that wandereth to and fro,
Wailing for something, nowhere to be found.

LADY HERON
Because I wail for you! The Universe,
Without you, were not boundary enough
To fold my longings.

SURREY
Where is your rightful lord?

LADY HERON
At James's Court, prisoner or fugitive,
I know not which.

SURREY
Shall I try ransom him?

LADY HERON
He scarce is worth the ransoming. He is
One of those men, born insignificant,
Who make the little world in which they live
Nor larger, nor yet smaller, for being in it:
Smaller, if anything. Know you King James?

SURREY
Not in the flesh; only his effigy,
In Scottish embassy to Harry's Court
At the betrothal of Queen Margaret.
He's a well-looking man.

LADY HERON
And is he brave?

SURREY
He is a King, and therefore is he brave,
He is a King, therefore magnanimous:
For there is something, somehow, in a Crown,
That gives the wearer princely dignity,
Or why should common folk bow down to it?

LADY HERON
Stand you in awe of it?

SURREY
Well, maybe not,
But I do honour and revere its wearer,
As doth become a leal and faithful subject!
Though in my inmost thought I will confess
The noblest of all Sceptres is the Sword:
The Sword of Peace, if men will have it so,
If not, the Sword that strikes and is resolved,
Nor scabbarded till Victory tilts the scales!
I have heard it said James is a poet, too,
Who moulds soft lays to lime frail women's hearts,
And make them stay their fluttering.

LADY HERON
Did you ever
Fashion a verse?

SURREY
Once, but a battle-song,
Rough and ungainly, lacking quite in numbers,
For aught I know. In these luxurious days,
Men seem to have learnt soft verse from Italy.
But, as for mine, the soldiers in the camp
Will troll it round their watch-fires through the night,
Till they wax drowsy. Somehow thus it runs:—
SURREY'S BATTLE-SONG

LADY HERON
It peals like sounded clarion, stirs the blood,
Is of your very self that felt and wrote it.

SURREY
Feel thoughtfully and fervidly enough,
Words sing themselves.

LADY HERON
But sang you ne'er of love?

SURREY
Not that I mind me. But I rarely dwell
On thoughts of love, save when I bide with you.

LADY HERON
And then you give me only half your thought.

SURREY
What would you, lady? More were treachery,
Desertion, cowardice, and loss of manhood.
We live in troublous and entangled times,
And 'tis my business to deal with them:
And if in snatched reposefulness I hear
Flourish of trumpet or distress of State,
To these I straightway hasten. Could you love,
Or yield to, any man that did not do so?

LADY HERON
Not wholly, solely. But methinks I could
Love to be loved by many a smaller man,
To prove my power, and test his feebleness.
For thuswise are we framed.

SURREY
Nay, nay, not all.
Methinks my mother was not like to that.
And I have whimsically deemed, though I
In such deep matters am but simpleton,
There are three sorts of women: they who move
Men to warm tenderness, not hot desire,
And these the best and noblest. Then there are
Those who o'er-brimmingly unsluice the blood,
And set it flowing and fuming in men's veins,
Then straightway tranquillise it in their own
More deep continuous current; nor would I
Defame such natures, for in sooth they are
Honest, though ofttimes differently named,
But would reserve reproving and reproach
For those, the last and lowest sure of all,
Who kindle fires to see how these will burn,
And not for need or comfort.

LADY HERON
You are not
The simpleton you deem you. Surrey! Surrey!
You know too much.

SURREY
Who is it then that taught me?

LADY HERON
Perchance 'twas I. For verily I am
Compounded of all three.

SURREY
Smother the third!
For women who are that, and that alone,
Should have a millstone round their neck, and find
An unbaptizëd coffin in the sea,
Or be exposed upon the mountain-side,
Ere they have grown to be it.

LADY HERON
For you, for you,
I fain would be the first! Withal, I am
The second, when you will it!

SURREY
Rashly said,
And no less generously; and I should be
The most ungrateful of ungrateful men
Did I not own me that I still must live,
Your bankrupt debtor!

LADY HERON
Tell me that again!
For when you pass from rough mood into smooth,
I feel as once I felt, homing from France,
When the tumultuous mountains of the sea
Subsided to a still blue land-locked lake,
And, husht, we glided into haven.

SURREY
Words
Still have you at your beck, all silky soft,
That seem to come like petted doves to call,
And settle where you will, coo at your lips,
Sue you as though you were their very mate,
And they had come to make their nest with you.
Learned you the trick in France, where I am told
'Tis best acquired, and men too practise it?
Time was, soft lays were left to Troubadours,
And steel had been ashamed to indite sleek rhymes.
But now some bravest warriors that I know
Fondle and finger a sonnet till they mould
Its roundness to their fancy.

LADY HERON
Like to James!
But, as for me, I have no trick acquired
From France or anywhere, unless it be
The trick of tricking out myself in this
Becoming flimsiness—if so it be—

SURREY
Bewitching even as your very self,
Or with it, or without it! But—I must go.

LADY HERON
Nay, go not yet! Stay just a little while.

SURREY
It is the hour; nor tarried I so long,
But that, so far as human wit can work,
I have left nought to chance. So now, farewell!

(A burst of battle Music is heard in the Court without.)
LADY HERON
Hark! What is that?

SURREY
The rough-hewn battle-song
I told you of, my wilder fellows troll
Around their watch-fires ere they sleep o'nights.
Who may these singers be?

LADY HERON
The Troop of Ford,
Mustering to start for Flodden. Will you not
Speak some brave words to them before they go,
And make their hearts as valiant as yours?

SURREY
If such should be their wish, and likewise yours.

[Enter the Troop led by Donald Grey.]
SURREY
Captain and Yeomen of the lands of Ford,
I came to see you martial-mustered here,
As so I now behold you, hill-men all,
And, like your hills, inured to winds and war.
I am a soldier, destitute of words,
And stammering in speech, the craft of peace.
But honour is the chiefest quest of man,
And, of all honours or in war or peace,
The greatest is, for Fatherland to die,
And, nearest that, to hazard life for it.
King Hal for England's honour rides through France,
That hath against him enmity proclaimed,
And into unjust quarrel Scotland dragged.
With Scotland it were natural that we
All peacefully and neighbourly should live;
But against England and her royal rights
Should the whole world unmannerly conspire,
Then, whilst our War-keels danced upon the wave,
Along our coasts the clarion would outshrill
The clanging trumpet, and your feathered shafts
Bristle along cliff, shingle, promontory,
And bid the ravenous universal hosts
Come, if they dare! I am for Peace; we all
Count peace the rightful heritage of man,
But peace with justice, liberty, and honour.
You, you brave Border striplings, mustered here,
To-day shall clustered stand behind my Knights,
And be a portion of my bodyguard;
And never an inch go backward till you see
Surrey, a craven, flying from the foe.
Now, God protect you all!

[Exeunt the Troop, headed by Donald, singing Surrey's song.]
LADY HERON
The battle done,
You hither will return?

SURREY
That rests with Heaven,
Again I say, and issue of the struggle.
Should James be routed, and his flight cut off,
Haply I may. But who as yet can see
Which way a worsted rabble-rout will wind,
Whichever wins the day. So now, farewell.
But, ere I go, accept this little sprig
Of fresh white heather plucked on mountain-side.

LADY HERON
O, welcome gift! A pledge at least by me
Of endless love, and love's expectancy!
One moment! See, your sword-belt is awry;
Let me adjust it. There! One more farewell!
Would that it never ended! Victory light
And linger on your banner till its folds
Unfurl to flash the splendour of your name
Around a dazzled world!

[Exit Surrey. Lady Heron mounts the steps of the embrasure, and watches him as he departs, the Ford Troop singing his Battle-song.]