English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
715. The King’s Tragedy
James I of Scots.—20th February, 1437I C
A name to all Scots dear;
And Kate Barlass they’ve called me now
Through many a waning year.
Most deft ’mong maidens all
To rein the steed, to wing the shaft,
To smite the palm-play ball.
It has shone most white and fair;
It has been the rest for a true lord’s head,
And many a sweet babe’s nursing-bed,
And the bar to a King’s chambère.
And hark with bated breath
How good King James, King Robert’s son,
Was foully done to death.
The princely James was pent,
By his friends at first and then by his foes,
In long imprisonment.
By treason’s murderous brood
Was slain; and the father quaked for the child
With the royal mortal blood.
Was his childhood’s life assured;
And Henry the subtle Bolingbroke,
Proud England’s King, ’neath the southron yoke
His youth for long years immured.
Himself did he approve;
And the nightingale through his prison-wall
Taught him both lore and love.
To the opened window-pane,
In her bowers beneath a lady stood,
Like a lily amid the rain.
He framed a sweeter Song,
More sweet than ever a poet’s heart
Gave yet to the English tongue.
And when, past sorrow and teen,
He stood where still through his crownless years
His Scottish realm had been,
At Scone were the happy lovers crowned,
A heart-wed King and Queen.
And song be turned to moan,
And Love’s storm-cloud be the shadow of Hate,
When the tempest-waves of a troubled State
Are beating against a throne.
Whom well the King had sung,
Might find on the earth no truer hearts
His lowliest swains among.
With Scottish maids in her train,
I Catherine Douglas won the trust
Of my mistress, sweet Queen Jane.
And oft along the way
When she saw the homely lovers pass
She has said, “Alack the day!”
Till England’s wrong renewed
Drove James, by outrage cast on his crown,
To the open field of feud.
At the leaguer of Roxbro’ hold,
The Queen o’ the sudden sought his camp
With a tale of dread to be told.
That spoke of treasonous strife,
And how a band of his noblest lords
Were sworn to take his life.
In the camp or the court,” she said:
“But for my sake come to your people’s arms
And guard your royal head.”
And the castle’s nigh to yield.”
“O face your foes on your throne,” she cried,
“And show the power you wield;
And under your Scottish people’s love
You shall sit as under your shield.”
When he bade them raise the siege,
And back to his Court he sped to know
How the lords would meet their Liege.
The louring brows hung round,
Like clouds that circle the mountain-head
Ere the first low thunders sound.
And curbed their power and pride,
And reached out an arm to right the poor
Through Scotland far and wide;
And many a lordly wrong-doer
By the headsman’s axe had died.
The bold o’ermastering man:—
I set you under their ban!
Of service and fealty,
Even in likewise you pledged your oath
Their faithful sire to be:—
Have mourned dear kith and kin
Since first for the Scottish Barons’ curse
Did your bloody rule begin.”
“Is this not so, my lords?”
But of all who had sworn to league with him
Not one spake back to his words.
Nor doth it avow thy gage.
Let my liege lords hale this traitor hence!”
The Græme fired dark with rage:—
“Who works for lesser men than himself,
He earns but a witless wage!”
He won by privy plots,
And forth he fled with a price on his head
To the country of the Wild Scots.
To the King at Edinbro’:—
“No Liege of mine thou art; but I see
From this day forth alone in thee
God’s creature, my mortal foe.
My heritage and lands;
And when my God shall show me a way,
Thyself my mortal foe will I slay
With these my proper hands.”
That year the King bade call
I’ the Black Friars’ Charterhouse of Perth
A solemn festival.
In a close-ranked company;
But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
Did we reach the Scottish Sea.
’Neath a toilsome moon half seen;
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between.
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave with life
As the King drew nigh to it.
Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
When near we came, we knew it at last
For a woman tattered and old.
Her writhen limbs were wrung;
And as soon as the King was close to her,
She stood up gaunt and strong.
On high in her hollow dome;
And still as aloft with hoary crest
Each clamorous wave rang home,
Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
Amid the champing foam.
“O King, thou art come at last;
To my sight for four years past.
’Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu,
A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,
And that shape for thine I knew.
I saw thee pass in the breeze,
With the cerecloth risen above thy feet
And wound about thy knees.
As a wanderer without rest,
Thou cam’st with both thine arms i’ the shroud
That clung high up thy breast.
And well mine eyes may note
That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast
And risen around thy throat.
That of death hast such sore drouth,—
Except thou turn again on this shore,—
The winding-sheet shall have moved once more
And covered thine eyes and mouth.
Of thy fate be not so fain;
But these my words for God’s message take,
And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake
Who rides beside thy rein!”
As if it would breast the sea,
And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale
The voice die dolorously.
But the King gazed on her yet,
And in silence save for the wail of the sea
His eyes and her eyes met.
Man is but shadow and dust.
Last night I prayed by His altar-stone;
To-night I wend to the feast of His Son;
And in Him I set my trust.
And have not feared the sting
Of proud men’s hate,—to His will resign’d
Who has but one same death for a hind
And one same death for a King.
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.
Thy sorcery on my path,
My heart with the fear of death to fill,
And turn me against God’s very will
To sink in His burning wrath?”
And moved nor limb nor eye;
And when we were shipped, we saw her there
Still standing against the sky.
Sank slow in her rising pall;
And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King,
And I said, “The Heavens know all.”
How my name is Kate Barlass:—
But a little thing, when all the tale
Is told of the weary mass
Of crime and woe which in Scotland’s realm
God’s will let come to pass.
That the King and all his Court
Were met, the Christmas Feast being done,
For solace and disport.
And against the casement-pane
The branches smote like summoning hands
And muttered the driving rain.
And made the whole heaven frown,
It seemed a grip was laid on the walls
To tug the housetop down.
Than a lily in garden set;
And the king was loth to stir from her side;
For as on the day when she was his bride,
Even so he loved her yet.
Sat with him at the board;
And Robert Stuart the chamberlain
Who had sold his sovereign Lord.
Would fain have told him all,
And vainly four times that night he strove
To reach the King through the hall.
Though the poison lurk beneath;
Within whose shade may the adder be
That shall turn thy life to death.
Whom he called the King of Love;
And to such bright cheer and courtesy
That name might best behove.
For his gentle knightliness;
And with him the King, as that eve wore on,
Was playing at the chess.
And soothe the Queen thereby;)—
“In a book ’tis writ that this same year
A King shall in Scotland die.
And this have I found, Sir Hugh,—
There are but two Kings on Scottish ground,
And those Kings are I and you.
And you are yourself alone;
So stand you stark at my side with me
To guard our double throne.
As well your heart shall approve,
In full surrender and soothfastness,
Beneath your Kingdom of Love.”
But I knew her heavy thought,
And I strove to find in the good King’s jest
What cheer might thence be wrought.
Now sing the song that of old
You made, when a captive Prince you lay,
And the nightingale sang sweet on the spray,
In Windsor’s castle-hold.”
When he thought to please the Queen;
The smile which under all bitter frowns
Of hate that rose between,
For ever dwelt at the poet’s heart
Like the bird of love unseen.
And the music sweetly rang;
And when the song burst forth, it seemed
’Twas the nightingale that sang.
Of bliss your kalends are begun:
Sing with us, Away, Winter, away!
Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun!
Awake for shame,—your heaven is won,—
And amorously your heads lift all:
Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call!”
The speech whose praise was hers
It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring
And the voice of the bygone years.
That ever I saw before that hour,
The which o’ the sudden made to start
The blood of my body to my heart.
Or heavenly thing in form of nature?”
With wonder and beauteous things;
And the harp was tuned to every change
Of minstrel ministerings;
But when he spoke of the Queen at the last,
Its strings were his own heart-strings.
Upon Love’s rock that’s easy and sure,
In guerdon of all my love’s space
She took me her humble creäture.
Thus fell my blissful aventure
In youth of love that from day to day
Flowereth aye new, and further I say.
As it happed when lessen gan my sore,
Of my rancor and woful chance,
It were too long,—I have done therefor.
And of this flower I say no more
But unto my help her heart hath tended
And even from death her man defended.”
For I thought of the day when she
Had borne him the news, at Roxbro’ siege,
Of the fell confederacy.
With an arrow deadly bright;
And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof,
And the wings were spread far over the roof
More dark than the winter night.
Of Love’s high pomp and state,
There were words of Fortune’s trackless doom
And the dreadful face of Fate.
The voice of dire appeal
That is under Fortune’s wheel.
An ugly Pit as deep as hell,
That to behold I quaked for fear:
And this I heard, that who therein fell
Came no more up, tidings to tell:
Whereat, astound of the fearful sight,
I wist not what to do for fright.”
These words of the changeful song:—
“Wist thou thy pain and thy travàil
To come, well might’st thou weep and wail!”
And our wail, O God! is long.
And well his heart was grac’d
With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes
As his arm went round her waist.
Close clung the necklet-chain
As he bent her pearl-tir’d head aside,
And in the warmth of his love and pride
He kissed her lips full fain.
The very red of the rose
That, couched on the happy garden-bed,
In the summer sunlight glows.
That sang so sweet through the song
Were in the look that met in their eyes,
And the look was deep and long.
And the usher sought the King.
My Liege, would tell you a thing;
And she says that her present need for speech
Will bear no gainsaying.”
To-morrow will serve, I ween.”
Then he charged the usher strictly, and said:
“No word of this to the Queen.”
“Shall I call her back?” quoth he:
“For as she went on her way, she cried,
‘Woe! Woe! then the thing must be!’”
Then he called for the Voidee-cup;
And as we heard the twelfth hour strike,
There by true lips and false lips alike
Was the draught of trust drained up.
To bed went all from the board;
And the last to leave of the courtly train
Was Robert Stuart the chamberlain
Who had sold his sovereign lord.
Had the traitor riven and brast;
And that Fate might win sure way from afar,
He had drawn out every bolt and bar
That made the entrance fast.
To the moat of the outer wall,
And laid strong hurdles closely across
Where the traitors’ tread should fall.
Alone were left behind;
Against the winter wind.
More clearly we heard the rain
That clamored ever against the glass
And the boughs that beat on the pane.
And through empty space around
The shadows cast on the arras’d wall
’Mid the pictured kings stood sudden and tall
Like spectres sprung from the ground.
And as he stood by the fire
The king was still in talk with the Queen
While he doffed his goodly attire.
Of many a bygone year;
And many a loving word they said
With hand in hand and head laid to head;
And none of us went anear.
A child in the piteous rain;
And as he watched the arrow of Death,
He wailed for his own shafts close in the sheath
That never should fly again.
A wild voice suddenly:
And the King reared straight, but the Queen fell back
As for bitter dule to dree;
And all of us knew the woman’s voice
Who spoke by the Scottish Sea.
They drove me from thy gate;
But alas! it comes too late!
When the moon was dead in the skies
O King, in a death-light of thine own
I saw thy shape arise.
The doom had gained its growth;
And the shroud had risen above thy neck
And covered thine eyes and mouth.
And still thy soul stood there;
And I thought its silence cried to my soul
As the first rays crowned its hair.
In very despite of Fate,
Lest Hope might still be found in God’s will:
But they drove me from thy gate.
His death grows up from his birth
In a shadow-plant perpetually;
And thine towers high, a black yew-tree,
O’er the Charterhouse of Perth!”
And none but we in the room
Might hear the voice that rose beneath,
Nor the tread of the coming doom.
And a clang of arms there came;
And not a soul in that space but thought
Of the foe Sir Robert Græme.
O’er mountain, valley, and glen,
Three hundred armèd men.
And like a King did he stand;
But there was no armor in all the room
Nor weapon lay to his hand.
And thought to have made it fast:
But the bolts were gone and the bars were gone
And the locks were riven and brast.
As the iron footsteps fell,—
Then loosed her, standing alone, and said,
“Our bliss was our farewell!”
And he crossed his brow and breast;
And proudly in royal hardihood
Even so with folded arms he stood,—
The prize of the bloody quest.
“Catherine, help!” she cried.
And low at his feet we clasped his knees
Together side by side.
“Oh! even a King, for his people’s sake,
From treasonous death must hide!”
The pang that my words would wring.
And the iron tongs from the chimney-nook
I snatched and held to the King:—
“Wrench up the plank! and the vault beneath
Shall yield safe harboring.”
The heavy heft did he take;
And as he frowned through the open floor,
Again I said, “For her sake!”
For her hands were clasped in prayer.
And down he sprang to the inner crypt;
And straight we closed the plank he had ripp’d
And toiled to smoothe it fair.
Wherethro’ the King might have fled;
But three days since close-walled had it been
By his will; for the ball would roll therein
When without at the palm he play’d.)
And I to this will suffice!”
At her word I rose all dazed to my feet,
And my heart was fire and ice.
And the tramp of men in mail;
Until to my brain it seemed to be
As though I tossed on a ship at sea
In the teeth of a crashing gale.
We strove with sinews knit
To force the table against the door;
But we might not compass it.
To the place of the hearthstone-sill;
And the Queen bent ever above the floor,
For the plank was rising still.
And “God, what help?” was our cry.
And was I frenzied or was I bold?
I looked at each empty stanchion-hold,
And no bar but my arm had I!
The staple I made it pass:—
Alack! it was flesh and bone—no more!
’Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,
But I fell back Kate Barlass.
Half dim to my failing ken;
And the space that was but a void before
Was a crowd of wrathful men.
Behind the door I had fall’n and lay,
Yet my sense was wildly aware,
And for all the pain of my shattered arm
I never fainted there.
Where the King leaped down to the pit;
And lo! the plank was smooth in its place,
And the Queen stood far from it.
And within the presses all
The traitors sought for the King, and pierced
The arras around the wall.
Like lions loose in the lair,
And scarce could trust to their very eyes,—
For behold! no King was there.
“Now tell us, where is thy lord?”
And he held the sharp point over her heart:
She dropped not her eyes nor did she start,
But she answered never a word.
But it was the Græme’s own son
Cried, “This is a woman,—we seek a man!”
And away from her girdle-zone
He struck the point of the murderous steel;
And that foul deed was not done.
And ’twas empty space once more;
And my eyes sought out the wounded Queen
As I lay behind the door.
For I cannot help you now;
But fly while you may, and none shall reck
Of my place here lying low.”
Then she looked to the distant floor,
And clasping her hands, “Oh God help him,”
She sobbed, “for we can no more!”
If it mean to live or to die;
And what sore sorrow and mighty moan
On earth it may cost ere yet a throne
Be filled in His house on high.
And through the open door
The night-wind wailed round the empty room
And the rushes shook on the floor.
Whence the arras was rent away;
And the firelight still shone over the space
Where our hidden secret lay.
The window high in the wall,—
Bright beams that on the plank that I knew
Through the painted pane did fall
And gleamed with the splendor of Scotland’s crown
And shield armorial.
And the climbing moon fell back;
And nought remained on its track;
And high in the darkened window-pane
The shield and the crown were black.
And partly I heard in sooth,
And partly since from the murderers’ lips
The torture wrung the truth.
And fast through the hall it fell;
But the throng was less; and ere I saw,
By the voice without I could tell
That Robert Stuart had come with them
Who knew that chamber well.
With his mantle round him flung;
And in his eye was a flaming light
But not a word on his tongue.
And he found the thing he sought;
And they slashed the plank away with their swords;
And O God! I fainted not!
All smoking and smouldering;
And through the vapor and fire, beneath
In the dark crypt’s narrow ring,
With a shout that pealed to the room’s high roof
They saw their naked King.
Who yet could do and dare;
With the crown, the King was stript away,—
The Knight was reft of his battle-array,—
But still the Man was there.
Sir John Hall was his name;
With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault
Beneath the torchlight-flame.
A man right manly strong,
And mightily by the shoulder-blades
His foe to his feet he flung.
Sprang down to work his worst;
And the King caught the second man by the neck
And flung him above the first.
And a long month thence they bare
All black their throats with the grip of his hands
When the hangman’s hand came there.
But the sharp blades gashed his hands.
Oh James! so armed, thou hadst battled there
Till help had come of thy bands;
And oh! once more thou hadst held our throne
And ruled thy Scottish lands!
With a heart that nought could tame,
Another man sprang down to the crypt;
And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp’d
There stood Sir Robert Græme.
Who durst not face his King
Till the body unarmed was wearied out
With two-fold combating!
As oft ye have heard aright:—
Who slew our King, God give thee shame!”
For he slew him not as a knight.)
But his strength had passed the goal,
And he could but gasp:—“Mine hour is come;
But oh! to succor thine own soul’s doom,
Let a priest now shrive my soul!”
And said:—“Have I kept my word?—
Yea, King, the mortal pledge that I gave?
No black friar’s shrift thy soul shall save,
But the shrift of this red sword!”
And all they three in that pen
Fell on him and stabbed and stabbed him there
Like merciless murderous men.
Ere the King’s last breath was o’er,
Turned sick at heart with the deadly sight
And would have done no more.
“If him thou do not slay,
The price of his life that thou dost spare
Thy forfeit life shall pay!”
Or how should I tell the rest?
But there at length our King lay slain
With sixteen wounds in his breast.
And the murderers turned and fled;—
Too late, too late, O God, did it sound!—
And I heard the true men mustering round,
And the cries and the coming tread.
Somewise did I creep and steal;
And lo! or ever I swooned away,
Through the dusk I saw where the white face lay
In the Pit of Fortune’s Wheel.
Dread things of the days grown old,—
Even at the last, of true Queen Jane
May somewhat yet be told,
And how she dealt for her dear lord’s sake
Dire vengeance manifold.
In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,
That the slain King’s corpse on bier was lain
With chant and requiem-knell.
Was the body purified:
And none could trace on the brow and lips
The death that he had died.
With orb and sceptre in hand;
And by the crown he wore on his throne
Was his kingly forehead spann’d.
How the curling golden hair,
As in the day of the poet’s youth,
From the King’s crown clustered there.
That throbbed beneath those curls,
Then Scots had said in the days to come
That this their soil was a different home
And a different Scotland, girls!
And oft she knelt in prayer,
That shrouded her shining hair.
And only to me some sign
She made; and save the priests that were there
No face would she see but mine.
And now fresh couriers fared
Still from the country of the Wild Scots
With news of the traitors snared.
Her pallor changed to sight,
And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
That burnt her visage white.
She bent to her dead King James,
And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
She spoke the traitors’ names.
Was the one she had to give,
I ran to hold her up from the floor;
For the froth was on her lips, and sore
I feared that she could not live.
And still was the death-pall spread;
For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
Till his slayers all were dead.
And of torments fierce and dire;
And nought she spake,—she had ceased to speak,—
But her eyes were a soul on fire.
Of the stern and just award,
She kissed the lips of her lord.
And she knelt on the chapel-floor,
And whispered low with a strange proud smile,—
“James, James, they suffered more!”
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
To winter of life-long grief.
“Alas for the woful thing,
That a poet true and a friend of man,
In desperate days of bale and ban,
Should needs be born a King!”