The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950

  [Enter THOMAS]

  THOMAS. Peace, and be at peace with your thoughts and visions.

  These things had to come to you and you to accept them,

  This is your share of the eternal burden,

  The perpetual glory. This is one moment,

  But know that another

  Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy

  When the figure of God’s purpose is made complete.

  You shall forget these things, toiling in the household,

  You shall remember them, droning by the fire,

  When age and forgetfulness sweeten memory

  Only like a dream that has often been told

  And often been changed in the telling. They will seem unreal.

  Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

  [Enter PRIESTS]

  PRIESTS [severally]. My Lord, you must not stop here. To the minster.

  Through the cloister. No time to waste. They are coming back,

  armed. To the altar, to the altar.

  THOMAS. All my life they have been coming, these feet. All my life

  I have waited. Death will come only when I am worthy,

  And if I am worthy, there is no danger.

  I have therefore only to make perfect my will.

  PRIESTS, My Lord, they are coming. They will break through

  presently.

  You will be killed. Come to the altar.

  Make haste, my Lord. Don’t stop here talking. It is not right.

  What shall become of us, my Lord, if you are killed;

  what shall become of us?

  THOMAS. Peace! be quiet! remember where you are, and what is

  happening;

  No life here is sought for but mine,

  And I am not in danger: only near to death.

  PRIESTS. My Lord, to vespers! You must not be absent from vespers.

  You must not be absent from the divine office. To vespers.

  Into the Cathedral!

  THOMAS. Go to vespers, remember me at your prayers.

  They shall find the shepherd here; the flock shall be spared.

  I have had a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper,

  And I would no longer be denied; all things

  Proceed to a joyful consummation.

  PRIESTS. Seize him! force him! drag him!

  THOMAS. Keep your hands off!

  PRIESTS. To vespers! Hurry.

  [They drag him off. While the CHORUS speak, the scene is changed to the cathedral.]

  CHORUS [while a Dies Iræe is sung in Latin by a choir in the distance]. Numb the hand and dry the eyelid,

  Still the horror, but more horror

  Than when tearing in the belly.

  Still the horror, but more horror

  Than when twisting in the fingers,

  Than when splitting in the skull.

  More than footfall in the passage,

  More than shadow in the doorway,

  More than fury in the hall.

  The agents of hell disappear, the human, they shrink and dissolve

  Into dust on the wind, forgotten, unmemorable; only is here

  The white flat face of Death, God’s silent servant,

  And behind the face of Death the Judgement

  And behind the Judgement the Void, more horrid than active

  shapes of hell;

  Emptiness, absence, separation from God;

  The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land

  Which is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void,

  Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind

  To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretence,

  Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no

  tones,

  No colours, no forms to distract, to divert the soul

  From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing,

  Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death,

  We fear, we fear. Who shall then plead for me,

  Who intercede for me, in my most need?

  Dead upon the tree, my Saviour,

  Let not be in vain Thy labour;

  Help me, Lord, in my last fear.

  Dust I am, to dust am bending,

  From the final doom impending

  Help me, Lord, for death is near.

  [In the cathedral. THOMAS and PRIESTS]

  PRIESTS. Bar the door. Bar the door

  The door is barred.

  We are safe. We are safe.

  They dare not break in.

  They cannot break in. They have not the force.

  We are safe. We are safe.

  THOMAS. Unbar the doors! throw open the doors!

  I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ,

  The sanctuary, turned into a fortress.

  The Church shall protect her own, in her own way, not

  As oak and stone; stone and oak decay,

  Give no stay, but the Church shall endure.

  The Church shall be open, even to our enemies. Open the door!

  PRIESTS. My Lord! these are not men, these come not as men come, but

  Like maddened beasts. They come not like men, who

  Respect the sanctuary, who kneel to the Body of Christ,

  But like beasts. You would bar the door

  Against the lion, the leopard, the wolf or the boar,

  Why not more

  Against beasts with the souls of damned men, against men

  Who would damn themselves to beasts. My Lord! My Lord!

  THOMAS. You think me reckless, desperate and mad.

  You argue by results, as this world does,

  To settle if an act be good or bad.

  You defer to the fact. For every life and every act

  Consequence of good and evil can be shown.

  And as in time results of many deeds are blended

  So good and evil in the end become confounded.

  It is not in time that my death shall be known;

  It is out of time that my decision is taken

  If you call that decision

  To which my whole being gives entire consent.

  I give my life

  To the Law of God above the Law of Man.

  Unbar the door! unbar the door!

  We are not here to triumph by fighting, by stratagem, or by

  resistance,

  Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast

  And have conquered. We have only to conquer

  Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.

  Now is the triumph of the Cross, now

  Open the door! I command it. OPEN THE DOOR!

  [The door is opened. The KNIGHTS enter, slightly tipsy]

  PRIESTS. This way, my Lord! Quick. Up the stair. To the roof.

  To the crypt. Quick. Come. Force him.

  KNIGHTS. Where is Becket, the traitor to the King?

  Where is Becket, the meddling priest?

  Come down Daniel to the lions’ den,

  Come down Daniel for the mark of the beast.

  Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

  Are you marked with the mark of the beast?

  Come down Daniel to the lions’ den,

  Come down Daniel and join in the feast.

  Where is Becket the Cheapside brat?

  Where is Becket the faithless priest?

  Come down Daniel to the lions’ den,

  Come down Daniel and join in the feast.

  THOMAS. It is the just man who

  Like a bold lion, should be without fear.

  I am here.

  No traitor to the King. I am a priest,

  A Christian, saved by the blood of Christ,

  Ready to suffer with my blood.

  This is the sign of the Church always.

  The sign of blood. Blood for blood.

  His blood given to buy my life,

  My blood given
to pay for His death,

  My death for His death.

  FIRST KNIGHT. Absolve all those you have excommunicated.

  SECOND KNIGHT. Resign the powers you have arrogated.

  THIRD KNIGHT. Restore to the King the money you appropriated.

  FIRST KNIGHT. Renew the obedience you have violated.

  THOMAS. For my Lord I am now ready to die,

  That his Church may have peace and liberty.

  Do with me as you will, to your hurt and shame;

  But none of my people, in God’s name,

  Whether layman or clerk, shall you touch.

  This I forbid.

  KNIGHTS. Traitor! traitor! traitor!

  THOMAS. You, Reginald, three times traitor you:

  Traitor to me as my temporal vassal,

  Traitor to me as your spiritual lord,

  Traitor to God in desecrating His Church.

  FIRST KNIGHT. No faith do I owe to a renegade,

  And what I owe shall now be paid.

  THOMAS. Now to Almighty God, to the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to the blessed John the Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, to the blessed martyr Denys, and to all the Saints, I commend my cause and that of the Church.

  While the KNIGHTS kill him, we hear the

  CHORUS. Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take stone from

  stone and wash them.

  The land is foul, the water is foul, our beasts and ourselves defiled

  with blood.

  A rain of blood has blinded my eyes. Where is England? where is

  Kent? where is Canterbury?

  O far far far far in the past; and I wander in a land of barren boughs:

  if I break them, they bleed; I wander in a land of dry stones: if

  I touch them they bleed.

  How how can I ever return, to the soft quiet seasons?

  Night stay with us, stop sun, hold season, let the day not come, let

  the spring not come.

  Can I look again at the day and its common things, and see them

  all smeared with blood, through a curtain of falling blood?

  We did not wish anything to happen.

  We understood the private catastrophe,

  The personal loss, the general misery,

  Living and partly living;

  The terror by night that ends in daily action,

  The terror by day that ends in sleep;

  But the talk in the market-place, the hand on the broom,

  The night-time heaping of the ashes,

  The fuel laid on the fire at daybreak,

  These acts marked a limit to our suffering.

  Every horror had its definition,

  Every sorrow had a kind of end:

  In life there is not time to grieve long.

  But this, this is out of life, this is out of time,

  An instant eternity of evil and wrong.

  We are soiled by a filth that we cannot clean, united to supernatural

  vermin,

  It is not we alone, it is not the house, it is not the city that is defiled,

  But the world that is wholly foul.

  Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take the stone from the

  stone, take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from the

  bone, and wash them. Wash the stone, wash the bone, wash the

  brain, wash the soul, wash them wash them!

  [The KNIGHTS, having completed the murder, advance to the front of the stage and address the audience.]

  FIRST KNIGHT. We beg you to give us your attention for a few moments. We know that you may be disposed to judge unfavourably of our action. You are Englishmen, and therefore you believe in fair play: and when you see one man being set upon by four, then your sympathies are all with the under dog. I respect such feelings, I share them. Nevertheless, I appeal to your sense of honour. You are Englishmen, and therefore will not judge anybody without hearing both sides of the case. That is in accordance with our long-established principle of Trial by Jury. I am not myself qualified to put our case to you. I am a man of action and not of words. For that reason I shall do no more than introduce the other speakers, who, with their various abilities, and different points of view, will be able to lay before you the merits of this extremely complex problem. I shall call upon our eldest member to speak first, my neighbour in the country: Baron William de Traci.

  THIRD KNIGHT. I am afraid I am not anything like such an experienced speaker as my old friend Reginald Fitz Urse would lead you to believe. But there is one thing I should like to say, and I might as well say it at once. It is this: in what we have done, and whatever you may think of it, we have been perfectly disinterested. [The other KNIGHTS: ‘Hear! hear!’] We are not getting anything out of this. We have much more to lose than to gain. We are four plain Englishmen who put our country first. I dare say that we didn’t make a very good impression when we came in just now. The fact is that we knew we had taken on a pretty stiff job; I’ll only speak for myself, but I had drunk a good deal — I am not a drinking man ordinarily — to brace myself up for it. When you come to the point, it does go against the grain to kill an Archbishop, especially when you have been brought up in good Church traditions. So if we seemed a bit rowdy, you will understand why it was; and for my part I am awfully sorry about it. We realised this was our duty, but all the same we had to work ourselves up to it. And, as I said, we are not getting a penny out of this. We know perfectly well how things will turn out. King Henry — God bless him — will have to say, for reasons of state, that he never meant this to happen; and there is going to be an awful row; and at the best we shall have to spend the rest of our lives abroad. And even when reasonable people come to see that the Archbishop had to be put out of the way — and personally I had a tremendous admiration for him — you must have noted what a good show he put up at the end — they won’t give us any glory. No, we have done for ourselves, there’s no mistake about that. So, as I said at the beginning, please give us at least the credit for being completely disinterested in this business. I think that is about all I have to say.

  FIRST KNIGHT. I think we will all agree that William de Traci has spoken well and has made a very important point. The gist of his argument is this: that we have been completely disinterested. But our act itself needs more justification than that; and you must hear our other speakers. I shall next call upon Hugh de Morville, who has made a special study of statecraft and constitutional law. Sir Hugh de Morville.

  SECOND KNIGHT. I should like first to recur to a point that was very well put by our leader, Reginald Fitz Urse: that you are Englishmen, and therefore your sympathies are always with the under dog. It is the English spirit of fair play. Now the worthy Archbishop, whose good qualities I very much admired, has throughout been presented as the under dog. But is this really the case? I am going to appeal not to your emotions but to your reason. You are hardheaded sensible people, as I can see, and not to be taken in by emotional clap-trap. I therefore ask you to consider soberly: what were the Archbishop’s aims? and what are King Henry’s aims? In the answer to these questions lies the key to the problem.

  The King’s aim has been perfectly consistent. During the reign of the late Queen Matilda and the irruption of the unhappy usurper Stephen, the kingdom was very much divided. Our King saw that the one thing needful was to restore order: to curb the excessive powers of local government, which were usually exercised for selfish and often for seditious ends, and to reform the legal system. He therefore intended that Becket, who had proved himself an extremely able administrator — no one denies that — should unite the offices of Chancellor and Archbishop. Had Becket concurred with the King’s wishes, we should have had an almost ideal State: a union of spiritual and temporal administration, under the central government. I knew Becket well, in various official relations; and I may say that I have never known a man so well qualified for the highest rank of the Civil Service. And what happened? The moment that Becket,
at the King’s instance, had been made Archbishop, he resigned the office of Chancellor, he became more priestly than the priests, he ostentatiously and offensively adopted an ascetic manner of life, he affirmed immediately that there was a higher order than that which our King, and he as the King’s servant, had for so many years striven to establish; and that — God knows why — the two orders were incompatible.