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CHARLES THE FIRST.

FRAGMENTS.

ACT I. SCENE I.

The Pageant to [celebrate] the arrival of the Queen.

a pursuivant.

Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!

first speaker.

What thinkest thou of this quaint masque, which turns,
Like morning from the shadow of the night,
The night to day, and London to a place
Of peace and joy?

second speaker.

And Hell to Heaven.
Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer’s rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
Where now reigns vanity—in nine years more
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound as an orphan’s cry,
The patience of the great avenger’s ear.

third speaker.(a youth).

Yet, father, tis a happy sight to see,
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;—’tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a paradise,
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
O, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present
Dark as the future!—
* * * * * * *
When avarice and tyranny, vigilant fear,
And open-eyed conspiracy lie sleeping
As on Hell’s threshold; and all gentle thoughts
Waken to worship him who giveth joys
With his own gift.

second speaker.

How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this grey world! Canst thou not think
Of change in that low scene, in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor? []
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel’s done;
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found
My inn of lasting rest, but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.
* * * * * * *

first speaker.

That
Is the Archbishop.

second speaker.

Rather say the Pope.
London will be soon his Rome: he walks
As if he trod upon the heads of men.
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;—
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
Which turns Heaven’s milk of mercy to revenge.

another citizen(lifting up his eyes).

Good Lord! rain it down upon him. [[ ]]
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
There’s old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.
When lawyers mask ’tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
* * * * * * *

fourth speaker(a pursuirant)

Give place, give place!—
You torch-bearers advance to the great gate,
And then attend the Marshal of the Masque
Into the Royal presence.

fifth speaker(a law student).

What thinkest thou
Of this quaint show of ours, my aged friend?

first speaker.

I will not think but that our country’s wounds
May yet be healed—The king is just and gracious,
Though wicked counsels now pervert his will:
These once cast off—

second speaker.

As adders cast their skins
And keep their venom, so kings often change;
Councils and counsellors hang on one another,
Hiding the loathsome []
Like the base patchwork of a leper’s rags.

third speaker.

O, still those dissonant thoughts—List! loud music
Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches
Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided
Like waves before an Admiral’s prow.
* * * * * *

another speaker.

Give place—
To the Marshal of the Masque!

third speaker.

How glorious! See those thronging chariots
Rolling like painted clouds before the wind:
Some are
Like curved shells dyed by the azure depths
Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;
And some like cars in which the Romans climbed
(Canopied by Victory’s eagle wings outspread)
The Capitolian—See how gloriously
The mettled horses in the torchlight stir
Their gallant riders, while they check their pride,
Like shapes of some diviner element!

second speaker.

Aye, there they are—
Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,
Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,
On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows.
Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,
Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.
These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,
Who toil not, neither do they spin,—unless
It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.
Here is the surfeit which to them who earn
The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves
The tithe that will support them till they crawl
Back to its cold hard bosom. Here is health
Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,
Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,
And England’s sin by England’s punishment.
And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,
Lo, giving substance to my words, behold
At once the sign and the thing signified—
A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,
Horsed upon stumbling shapes, carted with dung,
Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins
And rotten hiding-holes to point the moral
Of this presentiment, and bring up the rear
Of painted pomp with misery!

speaker.

’Tis but
The anti-masque, and serves as discords do
In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers
If they succeeded not to Winter’s flaw;
Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself
Without the touch of sorrow?
* * * * * *

SCENE II.

A Chamber in Whitehall.

Enter theKing, Queen, Laud, Wentworth,andArchy.

king.

Thanks, gentlemen, I heartily accept
This token of your service: your gay masque
Was performed gallantly.

queen.

And, gentlemen,
Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant
Rose on me like the figures of past years,
Treading their still path back to infancy,
More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer
The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept
To think I was in Paris, where these shows
Are well devised—such as I was ere yet
My young heart shared with [[ ]] the task,
The careful weight of this great monarchy.
There, gentlemen, between the sovereign’s pleasure
And that which it regards, no clamour lifts
Its proud interposition.
* * * * * *

king.

My lord of Canterbury.

archy.

The fool is here.

laud.

I crave permission of your Majesty
To order that this insolent fellow be
Chastised, he mocks the sacred character,
Scoffs at the stake, and—

king.

What, my Archy!
He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,
Yet with a quaint and graceful license—Prithee
For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
Primate of England.
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot,
Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Of a queen’s bower over the public way,
Blasphemes with a bird’s mind:—his words, like arrows
Which know no aim beyond the archer’s wit,
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.

queen.

Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
Ten minutes in the rain: be it your penance
To bring news how the world goes there. Poor Archy!
He weaves about himself a world of mirth
Out of this wreck of ours.

laud.

I take with patience, as my master did,
All scoffs permitted from above.

king.

My Lord,
Pray overlook these papers. Archy’s words
Had wings, but these have talons.

queen.

And the lion
That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord,
I see the new-born courage in your eye
Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time.
* * * * *
Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose,
And be that tempered as the Ebro’s steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace,
And not betray thee with a traitor’s kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels,
Who think that she is fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
Out of our worshipped state.
* * * * *

laud.

* * And if this suffice not,
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring
What we possess, still prate of christian peace,
As if those dreadful messengers of wrath,
Which play the part of God ’twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields,
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride,
Where it indeed were christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter’s hand:
And when our great Redeemer, when our God
Is scorned in his immediate ministers,
They talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now.
* * * * *

queen.

My beloved lord,
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.

It partly is,
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning;
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals in the winter fire, idlers find
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.

queen.

Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts;
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy,—and you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made,
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
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.

Hamiden, Pym, Cromwell,and the youngerVane.

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
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,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.
Mark too that flock of fleecy winged clouds
Sailing athwart St. Margaret’s.

hampden.

Hail, fleet herald
Of tempest! that wild pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny! And thou,
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
Bright as the path to a beloved home,
O light us to the isles of th’ evening land!
Like floating Edens, cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Tinged 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
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
Towards the worm, who envies us his love,
Receive thou young [[ ]] of Paradise,
These exiles from the old and sinful world!
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through the veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
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,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault:
The mighty universe becomes a cell
Too narrow for the soul that owns no master.
While the loathliest spot
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradled 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 over the [[ ]] thoughts
That cannot die, and may not be repelled.
* * * * *

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CHARLES THE FIRST. FRAGMENTS. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems [1824]

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CHARLES THE FIRST. FRAGMENTS.

ACT I. SCENE I.

a pursuivant.

first speaker.

second speaker.

third speaker.(a youth).

second speaker.

first speaker.

second speaker.

another citizen(lifting up his eyes).

fourth speaker(a pursuirant)

fifth speaker(a law student).

first speaker.

second speaker.

third speaker.

another speaker.

third speaker.

second speaker.

speaker.

SCENE II.

king.

queen.

king.

archy.

laud.

king.

queen.

laud.

king.

queen.

laud.

queen.

king.

queen.

king.

SCENE III.

hampden.

vane.

hampden.

CHARLES THE FIRST.

FRAGMENTS.