The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley

  335

  Cottington. Meanwhile

  We must begin first where your Grace leaves off.

  Gold must give power, or—–

  Laud. I am not averse

  From the assembling of a parliament.

  Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon

  340

  The lesson to obey. And are they not

  A bubble fashioned by the monarch’s mouth,

  The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose,

  A word dissolves them.

  Strafford. The engine of parliaments

  Might be deferred until I can bring over

  345

  The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure

  The issue of the war against the Scots.

  And, this game won—which if lost, all is lost—

  Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,

  And call them, if you will, a parliament.

  350

  King. Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood,

  Guilty though it may be! I would still spare

  The stubborn country of my birth, and ward

  From countenances which I loved in youth

  The wrathful Church’s lacerating hand.

  355

  (To LAUD.) Have you o’erlooked the other articles?

  [Re-enter ARCHY.

  Laud. Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,

  Cromwell, and other rebels of less note,

  Intend to sail with the next favouring wind

  For the Plantations.

  Archy. Where they think to found

  360

  A commonwealth like Gonzalo’s in the play,

  Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.

  King. What’s that, sirrah?

  Archy. New devil’s politics.

  Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:

  Lucifer was the first republican.

  365

  Will you hear Merlin’s prophecy, how three [posts?]

  ‘In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,

  Shall sail round the world, and come back again:

  Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,

  And come back again when the moon is at full:’—

  370

  When, in spite of the Church,

  They will hear homilies of whatever length

  Or form they please.

  [Cottington?] So please your Majesty to sign this order

  For their detention.

  Archy. If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout, rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., and you found these diseases had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man?

  King. If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;

  But in this case—–(writing). Here, my lord, take the warrant,

  And see it duly executed forthwith.—

  That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.

  [Exeunt all but KING, QUEEN, and ARCHY.

  Archy. Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud—who would reduce a verdict of ‘guilty, death,’ by famine, if it were impregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays.

  Queen. Is the rain over, sirrah?

  King. When it rains

  And the sun shines, ’twill rain again to-morrow:

  And therefore never smile till you’ve done crying.

  Archy. But ’tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene.

  Queen. What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?

  Archy. Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers.

  There’s a rainbow in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for

  400

  ‘A rainbow in the morning

  Is the shepherd’s warning;’

  and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast.

  King. The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.

  Queen. But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more.

  Archy. Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.—The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops, … and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven—like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the mean est feet.

  Queen. Who taught you this trash, sirrah?

  425

  Archy. A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.—But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and … until the top of the Tower . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower—– But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.

  King. Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience.

  Archy. Then conscience is a fool.—I saw there a cat caught in a rattrap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.

  Queen. Archy is shrewd and bitter.

  430

  Archy. Like the season,

  So blow the winds.—But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre?

  King. Vane’s wits perhaps.

  435

  Archy. Something as vain. I saw

  440

  a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes—the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass.

  Queen. Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane

  She place my lute, together with the music

  Mari received last week from Italy,

  In my boudoir, and—–

  [Exit ARCHY.

  King. I’ll go in.

  Queen. My beloved lord,

  445

  Have you not noted that the Fool of late

  Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words

  Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?

  What can it mean? I should be loth to think

  Some factious slave had tutored him.

  King. Oh, no!

  450

  He is but Occasion’s pupil. Partly ’tis

  That our minds piece the vacant intervals

  Of his wild words with their own fashioning,—

  As in the imagery of summer clouds,

  Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find

  455

  The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:

  And partly, that the terrors of the time

  Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;

  And in the lightest and the least, may best

  Be seen the current of the coming wind.

 
460

  Queen. Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.

  Come, I will sing to you; let us go try

  These airs from Italy; and, as we pass

  The gallery, we’ll decide where that Correggio

  Shall hang—the Virgin Mother

  465

  With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,

  Whose reign is men’s salvation. And you shall see

  A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,

  Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;

  Liker than any Vandyke ever made,

  470

  A pattern to the unborn age of thee,

  Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy

  A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow

  Did I not think that after we were dead

  Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that

  475

  The cares we waste upon our heavy crown

  Would make it light and glorious as a wreath

  Of Heaven’s beams for his dear innocent brow.

  King. Dear Henrietta!

  SCENE III.—The Star Chamber, LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, and others, as Judges. PRYNNE as a Prisoner, and then BASTWICK.

  Laud. Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk

  Recite his sentence.

  Clerk. ‘That he pay five thousand

  Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded

  With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,

  5

  And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle

  During the pleasure of the Court.’

  Laud. Prisoner,

  If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence

  Should not be put into effect, now speak.

  Juxon. If you have aught to plead in mitigation,

  Speak.

  10

  Bastwick. Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I

  Were an invader of the royal power,

  A public scorner of the word of God,

  Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,

  Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,

  15

  Void of wit, honesty, and temperance;

  If Satan were my lord, as theirs,—our God

  Pattern of all I should avoid to do:

  Were I an enemy of my God and King

  And of good men, as ye are;—I should merit

  20

  Your fearful state and gilt prosperity,

  Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn

  To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.

  But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not

  The only earthly favour ye can yield,

  25

  Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,—

  Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.

  even as my Master did,

  Until Heaven’s kingdom shall descend on earth,

  Or earth be like a shadow in the light

  30

  Of Heaven absorbed—some few tumultuous years

  Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes

  His will whose will is power.

  Laud. Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,

  And be his tongue slit for his insolence.

  Bastwick. While this hand holds a pen—–

  Laud. Be his hands—–

  35

  Juxon. Stop!

  Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak

  No terror, would interpret, being dumb,

  Heaven’s thunder to our harm; …

  And hands, which now write only their own shame,

  40

  With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away.

  Laud. Much more such ‘mercy’ among men would be,

  Did all the ministers of Heaven’s revenge

  Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I

  Could suffer what I would inflict.

  [Exit BASTWICK guarded.

  Bring up

  The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.—

  45

  (To STRAFFORD.) Know you not

  That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds

  Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,

  Were found these scandalous and seditious letters

  Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?

  50

  I speak it not as touching this poor person;

  But of the office which should make it holy,

  Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.

  Mark, too, my lord, that this expression strikes

  His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.

  Enter BISHOP WILLIAMS guarded.

  55

  Strafford. ’Twere politic and just that Williams taste

  The bitter fruit of his connection with

  The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,

  Who owed your first promotion to his favour,

  Who grew beneath his smile—–

  Laud. Would therefore beg

  60

  The office of his judge from this High Court,—

  That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,

  In my assumption of this sacred robe,

  Have put aside all worldly preference,

  All sense of all distinction of all persons,

  65

  All thoughts but of the service of the Church.—

  Bishop of Lincoln!

  Williams. Peace, proud hierarch!

  I know my sentence, and I own it just.

  Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,

  In stretching to the utmost

  · · · · · · ·

  SCENE IV.—HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, his Daughter, and young SIR HARRY VANE.

  Hampden. England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,

  Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!

  I held what I inherited in thee

  As pawn for that inheritance of freedom

  5

  Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler’s smile:

  How can I call thee England, or my country?—

  Does the wind hold?

  Vane. The vanes sit steady

  Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings

  Of the evening star, spite of the city’s smoke,

  10

  Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.

  Mark too that flock of fleecy-wingèd clouds

  Sailing athwart St. Margaret’s.

  Hampden. Hail, fleet herald

  Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide

  Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,

  15

  Beyond the shot of tyranny,

  Beyond the webs of that swoln spider …

  Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies?]

  Of atheist priests! And thou

  Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,

  20

  Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,

  Bright as the path to a belovèd home,

  Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!

  Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer

  Of sunset, through the distant mist of years

  25

  Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,

  Where Power’s poor dupes and victims yet have never

  Propitiated the savage fear of kings

  With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew

  Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake

  30

  To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;

  Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo

  Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites

  Wrest man’s free worship, from the God who loves,

  To the poor worm who envies us His love!

  35

  Receive, thou young of Paradise.

  These exiles from the old and sinful world!

  This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
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  Dart mitigated influence through their veil

  Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green

  40

  The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;

  This vaporous horizon, whose dim round

  Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,

  Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,

  Presses upon me like a dungeon’s grate,

  45

  A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.

  The boundless universe

  Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul

  That owns no master; while the loathliest ward

  Of this wide prison, England, is a nest

  50

  Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,—

  To which the eagle spirits of the free,

  Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm

  Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,

  Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die

  55

  And cannot be repelled.

  Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,

  They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop

  Through palaces and temples thunderproof.

  SCENE V

  Archy. I’ll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old [roots?] as the [wind?] plays the song of

  ‘A widow bird sate mourning

  Upon a wintry bough.’

  [Sings]

  5

  ‘Heigho! the lark and the owl!

  One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:—

  Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,

  Sings like the fool through darkness and light.

  10

  ‘A widow bird sate mourning for her love

  Upon a wintry bough;

  The frozen wind crept on above,

  The freezing stream below.

  ‘There was no leaf upon the forest bare,

  No flower upon the ground,

  15

  And little motion in the air

  Except the mill-wheel’s sound.’