Lady, why will you go? The King intendsThat you shall soon be royal, and therebyAdmitted to our breed: then stay with usIn this domestic privacy to mournThe grief here fallen on our family.Kneel now; I yield the eldest daughter's place.Why do you fumble in your bosom so?Put your cold hands together; close your eyes,In inward isolation to assembleYour memories of the dead, your prayers for her.
She turns to LEAR, who has approached the bed and drawn back the curtain.
What utterance of doom would the king useUpon a watchman in the castle garthWho left his gate and let an enemy in?The watcher by the Queen thus left her station:The sick bruised Queen is dead of that neglect.And what should be the doom on a seducerWho drew that sentinel from his fixt watch?
Lear:
She had long been dying, and she would have diedHad all her dutiful daughters tended her bed.
Goneril:
Yes, she had long been dying in her heart.She lived to see you give her crown away;She died to see you fondle a menial:These blows you dealt now, but what elder woundsReceived them to such purpose suddenly?What had you caused her to remember most?What things would she be like to babble overIn the wild helpless hour when fitful lifeNo more can choose what thoughts it shall encourageIn the tost mind? She has suffered you twice over,Your animal thoughts and hungry powers, this day,Until I knew you unkingly and untrue.
Lear:
Punishment once taught you daughterly silence;It shall be tried again ... What has she said?
Goneril:
You cannot touch me now I know your nature:Your force upon my mind was only terribleWhen I believed you a cruel flawless man.Ruler of lands and dreaded judge of men,Now you have done a murder with your mindCan you see any murderer put to death?Can you —
Lear:
What has she said?
Goneril:
Continue in your joy of punishing evil,Your passion of just revenge upon wrong-doers,Unkingly and untrue?
Lear:
Enough: what do you know?
Goneril:
That which could add a further agonyTo the last agony, the daily poisonOf her late, withering life; but never wordOf fairer hours or any lost delight.Have you no memory, either, of her youth,While she was still to use, spoil, forsake,That maims your new contentment with a longingFor what is gone and will not come again?
Lear:
I did not know that she could die to-day.She had a bloodless beauty that cheated me:She was not born for wedlock. She shut me out.She is no colder now ... I'll hear no more.You shall be answered afterward for this.Put something over her: get her buried:I will not look on her again.
He breaks from GONERIL and flings abruptly out by the door near the bed.
Gormflaith:
My king, you leave me!
Goneril:
Soon we follow him:But, ah, poor fragile beauty, you cannot riseWhile this grave burden weights your drooping head.
Laying her hand caressingly on GORMFLAITH'S neck, she gradually forces her head farther and farther down.
You were not nurtured to sustain a crown,Your unanointed parents could not breedThe spirit that ten hundred years must ripen.Lo, how you sink and fail.
Gormflaith:
You had best take care,For where my neck has bruises yours shall have wounds.The King knows of your wolfish snapping at me:He will protect me.
Goneril:
Ay, if he is in time.
Gormflaith (taking off the crown and holding it up blindly toward Goneril with one hand):
Take it and let me go!
Goneril:
Nay, not to me:You are the Queen's, to serve her even in death.Yield her her own. Approach her: do not fear;She will not chide you or forgive you now.Go on your knees; the crown still holds you down.
GORMFLAITH stumbles forward on her knees and lays the crown on the bed, then crouches motionlessly against the bedside.
Goneril (taking the crown and putting it on the dead Queen's head):
Mother and Queen, to you this holiest circletReturns, by you renews its purpose and pride;Though it is sullied with a menial warmth,Your august coldness shall rehallow it,And when the young lewd blood that lent it heatIs also cooler we can well forget.
She steps to GORMFLAITH.
Rise. Come, for here there is no more to do,And let us seek your chamber, if you will,There to confer in greater privacy;For we have now interment to prepare.
She leads GORMFLAITH to the door near the bed.
You must walk first, you are still the Queen elect.
When GORMFLAITH has passed before her GONERIL unsheathes her hunting knife.
Gormflaith (turning in the doorway):
What will you do?
Goneril (thrusting her forward with the haft of the knife):
On. On. On. Go in.
She follows GORMFLAITH out. After a moment's interval two elderly women, one a little younger than the other, enter by the same door: they wear black hoods and shapeless black gowns with large sleeves that flap like the wings of ungainly birds: between them they carry a heavy cauldron of hot water.
The Younger Woman:
We were listening. We were listening.
The Elder Woman:
We were both listening.
The Younger Woman:
Did she struggle?
The Elder Woman:
She could not struggle long.
They set down the cauldron at the foot of the bed.]
The Elder Woman (curtseying to the Queen's body):
Saving your presence, Madam, we are comeTo make you sweeter than you'll be hereafter,And then be done with you.
The Younger Woman (curtseying in turn):
Three days together, my Lady, y'have had me duckedFor easing a foolish maid at the wrong time;But now your breath is stopped and you are colder,And you shall be as wet as a drowned ratEre I have done with you.
The Elder Woman (fumbling in the folds of the robe that hangs on the wall):
Her pocket is empty; Merryn has been here first.Hearken, and then begin:You have not touched a royal corpse before,But I have stretched a king and an old queen,A king's aunt and a king's brother too,Without much boasting of a still-born princess;So that I know, as a priest knows his prayers,All that is written in the chamberlain's bookAbout the handling of exalted corpses,Stripping them and trussing them for the grave:And there it says that the chief corpse-washerShall take for her own use by sacred rightThe coverlid, the upper sheet, the mattressOf any bed in which a queen has died,And the last robe of state the body wore;While humbler helpers may divide among themThe under sheet, the pillow, and the bed-gownStript from the cooling queen.Be thankful, then, and praise me every dayThat I have brought no other women with meTo spoil you of your share.
The Younger Woman:
Ah, you have always been a friend to me:Many's the time I have said I did not knowHow I could even have lived but for your kindness.
The ELDER WOMAN draws down the bedclothes from the Queen's body, loosens them from the bed, and throws them on the floor.
The Elder Woman:
Pull her feet straight: is your mind wandering?
She commences to fold the bedclothes, singing as she moves about.
A louse crept out of my lady's shift —Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee —Crying "Oi! Oi! We are turned adrift;The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed,And her arm-pit's cold for me."
While the ELDER WOMAN sings, the YOUNGER WOMAN straightens the Queen's feet and ties them together, draws the pillow from under her head, gathers her hair in one hand and knots it roughly; then she loosens her nightgown, revealing a jewel hung on a cord round the Queen's neck.
The Elder Woman (running to the vacant side of the bed):
What have you there? Give it to me.
The Younger Woman:
It is mine:I found it.
The Elder Woman:
Leave it.
The Younger Woman:
Let go.
The Elder Woman:
Leave it, I say.Will you not? Will you not? An eye for a jewel, then!
She attacks the face of the YOUNGER WOMAN with her disengaged hand.
The Younger Woman (starting back):
Oh!
The ELDER WOMAN breaks the cord and thrusts the jewel into her pocket.
The Younger Woman:
Aie! Aie! Aie! Old thief! You are always thieving!You stole a necklace on your wedding day:You could not bear a child, you stole your daughter:You stole a shroud the morn your husband died:Last week you stole the Princess Regan's comb...
She stumbles into the chair by the bed, and, throwing her loose sleeves over her head, rocks herself and moans.
The Elder Woman (resuming her clothes-folding and her song):
"The lady's linen's no longer neat;" —Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee —"Her savour is neither warm nor sweet;It's close for two in a winding sheet,And lice are too good for worms to eat;So here's no place for me."
GONERIL enters by the door near the bed: her knife and the hand that holds it are bloody. She pauses a moment irresolutely.
The Elder Woman:
Still work for old Hrogneda, little Princess?
GONERIL goes straight to the cauldron, passing the women as if they were not there: she kneels and washes her knife and her hand in it. The women retire to the back of the chamber.
Goneril (speaking to herself):
The way is easy: and it is to be used.How could this need have been conceived slowly?In a keen mind it should have leapt and burnt:What I have done would have been better doneWhen my sad mother lived and could feel joy.This striking without thought is better than hunting;She showed more terror than an animal,She was more shiftless ...A little blood is lightly washed away,A common stain that need not be remembered;And a hot spasm of rightness quickly bornCan guide me to kill justly and shall guide.
LEAR enters by the door near the bed.
Lear:
Goneril, Gormflaith, Gormflaith ... Have you seen Gormflaith?
Goneril:
I led her to her chamber lately, Sir.
Lear:
Ay, she is in her chamber. She is there.
Goneril:
Have you been there already? Could you not wait?
Lear:
Daughter, she is bleeding: she is slain.
Goneril (rising from the cauldron with dripping hands):
Yes, she is slain: I did it with a knife:And in this water is dissolved her blood,
(Raising her arms and sprinkling the Queen's body)
That now I scatter on the Queen of deathFor signal to her spirit that I can slakeHer long corrosion of misery with such balm —Blood for weeping, terror for woe, death for death,A broken body for a broken heart.What will you say against me and my deed?
Lear:
That now you cannot save yourself from me.While your blind virgin power still stood apartIn an unused, unviolated life,You judged me in my weakness, and becauseI felt you unflawed I could not answer you;But you have mingled in mortalityAnd violently begun the common lifeBy fault against your fellows; and the state,The state of Britain that inheres in meNot touched by my humanity or sin,Passions or privy acts, shall be as hardAnd savage to you as to a murderess.
Goneril (taking a letter from her girdle):
I found a warrant in her favoured bosom, King:She wore this on her heart when you were crowning her.
Lear:
But this is not my hand:
(Looking about him on the floor)
Where is the other letter?
Goneril:
Is there another letter? What should it say?
Lear:
There is no other letter if you have none.(Reading)"Open your window when the moon is dead,And I will come again.The men say everywhere that you are faithless ...And your eyes shifty eyes. Ah, but I love you, Gormflaith." ...This is not hers: she'd not receive such words.
Goneril:
Her name stands twice therein: her perfume fills it:My knife went through it ere I found it on her.
Lear:
The filth is suitably dead. You are my true daughter.
Goneril:
I do not understand how men can govern,Use craft and exercise the duty of cunning,Anticipate treason, treachery meet with treachery,And yet believe a woman because she looksStraight in their eyes with mournful, trustful gaze,And lisps like innocence, all gentleness.Your Gormflaith could not answer a woman's eyes.I did not need to read her in a letter;I am not woman yet, but I can feelWhat untruths are instinctive in my kind,And how some men desire deceit from us.Come; let these washers do what they must do:Or shall your Queen be wrapped and coffined awry?
She goes out by the garden doorway.
Lear:
I thought she had been broken long ago:She must be wedded and broken, I cannot do it.
He follows GONERIL out. The two women return to the bedside.
The Elder Woman:
Poor, masterful King, he is no easier,Although his tearful wife is gone at last:A wilful girl shall prick and thwart him now.Old gossip, we must hasten; the Queen is setting.Lend me a pair of pennies to weight her eyes.
The Younger Woman:
Find your own pennies: then you can steal them safely.
The Elder Woman:
Praise you the gods of Britain, as I do praise them,That I have been sweet-natured from my birth,And that I lack your unforgiving mind.Friend of the worms, help me to lift her clearAnd draw away the under sheet for you;Then go and spread the shroud by the hall fire —I never could put damp linen on a corpse.
She sings.
The louse made off unhappy and wet; —Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee —He's looking for us, the little pet;So haste, for her chin's to tie up yet,And let us be gone with what we can get —Her ring for thee, her gown for Bet,Her pocket turned out for me.
CURTAIN.
Footnote 1:
Copyright by Gordon Bottomley, 1915, in the United States of America.
return to footnote mark
Contents
Mamua, when our laughter ends,And hearts and bodies, brown as white,Are dust about the doors of friends,Or scent ablowing down the night,Then, oh! then, the wise agree,Comes our immortality.Mamua, there waits a landHard for us to understand.Out of time, beyond the sun,All are one in Paradise,You and Pupure are one,And Taû, and the ungainly wise.There the Eternals are, and thereThe Good, the Lovely, and the True,And Types, whose earthly copies wereThe foolish broken things we knew;There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;The real, the never-setting Star;And the Flower, of which we loveFaint and fading shadows here;Never a tear, but only Grief;Dance, but not the limbs that move;Songs in Song shall disappear;Instead of lovers, Love shall be;For hearts, Immutability;And there, on the Ideal Reef,Thunders the Everlasting Sea!And my laughter, and my pain,Shall home to the Eternal Brain;And all lovely things, they say,Meet in Loveliness again;Miri's laugh, Teìpo's feet,And the hands of Matua,Stars and sunlight there shall meet,Coral's hues and rainbows there,And Teilra's braided hair;And with the starredtiare'swhite,And white birds in the dark ravine,Andflamboyantsablaze at night,And jewels, and evening's after-green,And dawns of pearl and gold and red,Mamua, your lovelier head!And there'll no more be one who dreamsUnder the ferns, of crumbling stuff,Eyes of illusion, mouth that seems,All time-entangled human love.And you'll no longer swing and swayDivinely down the scented shade,Where feet to Ambulation fade,And moons are lost in endless Day.How shall we wind these wreaths of ours,Where there are neither heads nor flowers?Oh, Heaven's Heaven! — but we'll be missingThe palms, and sunlight, and the south;And there's an end, I think, of kissing,When our mouths are one with Mouth ...Taû here, Mamua,Crown the hair, and come away!Hear the calling of the moon,And the whispering scents that strayAbout the idle warm lagoon.Hasten, hand in human hand,Down the dark, the flowered way,Along the whiteness of the sand,And in the water's soft caress,Wash the mind of foolishness,Mamua, until the day.Spend the glittering moonlight therePursuing down the soundless deepLimbs that gleam and shadowy hair,Or floating lazy, half-asleep.Dive and double and follow after,Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call,With lips that fade, and human laughter,And faces individual,Well this side of Paradise!...There's little comfort in the wise.
Contents
I have been so great a lover: filled my daysSo proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,Desire illimitable, and still content,And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,For the perplexed and viewless streams that bearOur hearts at random down the dark of life.Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strifeSteals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,My night shall be remembered for a starThat outshone all the suns of all men's days.Shall I not crown them with immortal praiseWhom I have loved, who have given me, dared with meHigh secrets, and in darkness knelt to seeThe inenarrable godhead of delight?Love is a flame; — we have beaconed the world's night.A city: — and we have built it, these and I.An emperor: — we have taught the world to die.So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,And the high cause of Love's magnificence,And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those namesGolden for ever, eagles, crying flames,And set them as a banner, that men may know,To dare the generations, burn, and blowOut on the wind of Time, shining and streaming ...These I have loved:White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crustOf friendly bread; and many-tasting food;Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soonSmooth away trouble; and the rough male kissOf blankets; grainy wood; live hair that isShining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keenUnpassioned beauty of a great machine;The benison of hot water; furs to touch;The good smell of old clothes; and other such —The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingersAbout dead leaves and last year's ferns ...Dear names,And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing;Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foamThat browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;And washen stones, gay for an hour; the coldGraveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; —All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,Whatever passes not, in the great hour,Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have powerTo hold them with me through the gate of Death.They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trustAnd sacramented covenant to the dust.— Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,And give what's left of love again, and makeNew friends, now strangers...But the best I've known,Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blownAbout the winds of the world, and fades from brainsOf living men, and dies.Nothing remains.O dear my loves, O faithless, once againThis one last gift I give: that after menShall know, and later lovers, far-removed,Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.'
Contents
When Beauty and Beauty meetAll naked, fair to fair,The earth is crying-sweet,And scattering-bright the air,Eddying, dizzying, closing round,With soft and drunken laughter;Veiling all that may befallAfter — after —Where Beauty and Beauty met,Earth's still a-tremble there,And winds are scented yet,And memory-soft the air,Bosoming, folding glints of light,And shreds of shadowy laughter;Not the tears that fill the yearsAfter — after —
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Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,Each secret fishy hope or fear.Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;But is there anything Beyond?This life cannot be All, they swear,For how unpleasant, if it were!One may not doubt that, somehow, GoodShall come of Water and of Mud;And, sure, the reverent eye must seeA Purpose in Liquidity.We darkly know, by Faith we cry,The future is not Wholly Dry.Mud unto mud! — Death eddies near —Not here the appointed End, not here!But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,Is wetter water, slimier slime!And there (they trust) there swimmeth OneWho swam ere rivers were begun,Immense, of fishy form and mind,Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;And under that Almighty Fin,The littlest fish may enter in.Oh! never fly conceals a hook,Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,But more than mundane weeds are there,And mud, celestially fair;Fat caterpillars drift around,And Paradisal grubs are found;Unfading moths, immortal flies,And the worm that never dies.And in that Heaven of all their wish,There shall be no more land, say fish.
Contents
Down the blue night the unending columns pressIn noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snowUp to the white moon's hidden loveliness.Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,As who would pray good for the world, but knowTheir benediction empty as they bless.They say that the Dead die not, but remainNear to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,In wise majestic melancholy train,And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,And men, coming and going on the earth.
Contents
(Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research)
Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor treadThose dusty high-roads of the aimless deadPlaintive for Earth; but rather turn and runDown some close-covered by-way of the air,Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, findSome whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and thereSpend in pure converse our eternal day;Think each in each, immediately wise;Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and sayWhat this tumultuous body now denies;And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.