That all you said was but sad preparation
30For happy news. O, there are words and looks
To bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them,
Now I forget them at my dearest need.
What think you if I seek him out, and bathe
His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?
35Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain
With my perpetual cries, until in rage
He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample
Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood
May stain the senseless dust on which he treads,
40And remorse waken mercy? I will do it!
O, wait till I return! [Rushes out.
Camillo. Alas! poor boy!
A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray
To the deaf sea.
[Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded.
Beatrice. I hardly dare to fear
That thou bring’st other news than a just pardon.
45 Camillo. May God in heaven be less inexorable
To the Pope’s prayers, than he has been to mine.
Here is the sentence and the warrant.
Beatrice (wildly). Oh,
My God! Can it be possible I have
To die so suddenly? So young to go
50Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
To be nailed down into a narrow place;
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost—
55How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be …
What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad!
Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;
The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
60If all things then should be … my father’s spirit,
His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
Even the form which tortured me on earth,
65Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come
And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!
For was he not alone omnipotent
On Earth, and ever present? Even tho’ dead,
70Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,
And work for me and mine still the same ruin,
Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned
To teach the laws of death’s untrodden realm?
Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now,
75O, whither, whither?
Lucretia. Trust in God’s sweet love,
The tender promises of Christ: ere night,
Think we shall be in Paradise.
Beatrice. ’Tis past!
Whatever comes my heart shall sink no more.
And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill:
80How tedious, false and cold seem all things. I
Have met with much injustice in this world;
No difference has been made by God or man,
Or any power moulding my wretched lot,
’Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.
85I am cut off from the only world I know,
From light, and life, and love, in youth’s sweet prime.
You do well telling me to trust in God,
I hope I do trust in him. In whom else
Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold.
[During the latter speeches GIACOMO has retired conversing with CAMILLO, who now goes out; GIACOMO advances.
90 Giacomo. Know you not, Mother … Sister, know you not?
Bernardo even now is gone to implore
The Pope to grant our pardon.
Lucretia. Child, perhaps
It will be granted. We may all then live
To make these woes a tale for distant years:
95O, what a thought! It gushes to my heart
Like the warm blood.
Beatrice. Yet both will soon be cold.
O, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:
It is the only ill which can find place
100Upon the giddy, sharp and narrow hour
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring:
Plead with awakening Earthquake, o’er whose couch
Even now a city stands, strong, fair and free;
105Now stench and blackness yawns, like death. O, plead
With famine, or wind-walking Pestilence,
Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!
Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,
In deeds a Cain. No, Mother, we must die:
110Since such is the reward of innocent lives;
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.
And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,
Smiling and slow, walk thro’ a world of tears
To death as to life’s sleep; ’twere just the grave
115Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,
And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
Live ye, who live, subject to one another
120As we were once, who now …
[BERNARDO rushes in.
Bernardo. Oh, horrible!
That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,
Should all be vain! The ministers of death
Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
125Blood on the face of one … what if ’twere fancy?
Soon the heart’s blood of all I love on earth
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
As if ’twere only rain. O, life! O, world!
Cover me! let me be no more! To see
130That perfect mirror of pure innocence
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon …
Thee, light of life … dead, dark! while I say, sister,
135To hear I have no sister; and thou, Mother,
Whose love was a bond to all our loves …
Dead! The sweet bond broken!
[Enter CAMILLO and Guards.
They come! Let me
Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
Are blighted … white … cold. Say farewell, before
140Death chokes that gentle voice! O, let me hear
You speak!
Beatrice. Farewell, my tender brother. Think
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now:
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee
Thy sorrow’s load. Err not in harsh despair,
145But tears and patience. One thing more, my child,
For thine own sake be constant to the love
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,
Tho’ wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
Lived ever holy and unstained. And though
150Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those, who perhaps love thee in their graves.
155So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
Bernardo. I cannot say, farewell!
Camillo
. O, Lady Beatrice!
Beatrice. Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tie
160My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; aye, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another; now
We shall not do it any more. My Lord,
165We are quite ready. Well, ’tis very well.
THE END.
THE MASK OF ANARCHY
WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
5I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh—
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him:
All were fat; and well they might
10Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
15Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
20Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
25On a crocodile rode by.
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers or spies.
30Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.
And he wore a kingly crown,
35And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw—
‘I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW.’
With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
40Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude.
And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
45For the service of their Lord.
And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.
50O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.
And each dweller, panic-stricken,
55Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.
For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
60The hired murderers, who did sing
‘Thou art God, and Law, and King.
‘We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
65Give us glory, and blood, and gold.’
Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer, not over loud,
Whispering—‘Thou art Law and God.’—
70Then all cried with one accord,
‘Thou art King, and God, and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!’
And Anarchy, the Skeleton,
75Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.
For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
80His the sceptre, crown, and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.
So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
85To meet his pensioned Parliament,
When one fled past, a Maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:
90‘My father Time is weak and grey
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!
‘He has had child after child
95And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me—
Misery, oh, Misery!’
Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses’ feet,
100Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud and Anarchy.
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail,
105Like the vapour of a vale:
Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,
110It grew—a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper’s scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain:
On its helm, seen far away,
115A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
With step as soft as wind it passed
O’er the heads of men—so fast
120That they knew the presence there,
And looked,—but all was empty air.
As flowers beneath May’s footstep waken,
As stars from Night’s loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
125Thoughts sprung where’er that step did fall.
And the prostrate multitude
Looked—and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:
130And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust, the murderers thronged behind.
135A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and felt—and at its close
These words of joy and fear arose
As if their own indignant Earth
140Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a Mother’s throe
Had turned every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
145To an accent unwithstood,—
As if her heart had cried aloud:
‘Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
150Hopes of her, and one another;
‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to Earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
155Ye are many—they are few.
‘What is Freedom?—ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well—
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.
160‘’
Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants’ use to dwell,
‘So that ye for them are made,
165Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will, bent
To their defence and nourishment.
‘’Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
170When the winter winds are bleak,—
They are dying whilst I speak.
‘’Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
175Surfeiting beneath his eye;
‘’Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More than e’er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.
180‘Paper coin—that forgery
Of the title deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.
‘’Tis to be a slave in soul
185And to hold no strong controul
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.
‘And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
190’Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew
Ride over your wives and you—
Blood is on the grass like dew.
‘Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
195Blood for blood—and wrong for wrong—
Do not thus when ye are strong.
‘Birds find rest, in narrow nest
When weary of their winged quest;
Beasts find fare, in woody lair
200When storm and snow are in the air.
‘Horses, oxen have a home
When from daily toil they come;
Household dogs, when the wind roars,
Find a home within warm doors.