I
Douglas, in the moonless night
—Muffled oars on blue Loch Leven!—
Took her hand, a flake of white
—Beauty slides the bolts of heaven.—
Little white hand, like a flake of snow,
When they saw it, his Highland crew
Swung together and murmured low,
"Douglas, wilt thou die then, too?"
And the pine trees whispered, weeping,
"Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!
Little white hand like a tender moonbeam, soon shall you set the broadswords leaping,
It is the Queen, the Queen!" they whispered, watching her soar to the saddle anew.
"There will be trumpets blown in the mountains, a mist of blood on the heather, and weeping,
Weeping, weeping, and thou, too, dead for her, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true."
II
Carry the queenly lass along!
—Cold she lies, cold and dead,—
She whose laughter was a song,
—Lapped around with sheets of lead!—
She whose blood was wine of the South,
—Light her down to a couch of clay!—
And a royal rose her mouth,
And her body made of may! —Lift your torches, weeping, weeping,
Light her down to a couch of clay.
They should have left her in her vineyards, left her heart to her land's own keeping,
Left her white breast room to breathe, and left her light foot free to dance!
Hush! Between the solemn pinewoods, carry the lovely lady sleeping,
Out of the cold grey Northern mists, with banner and scutcheon, plume, and lance,
Carry her southward, palled in purple, weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping,—
O, ma patrie,
La plus chérie,
Adieu, plaisant pays de France!
Well, sirs, that dark tide rose within my brain!
I snatched his keys and flung them over the hedge,
Then flung myself down on a bank of ferns
And wept and wept and wept.
It puzzled him.
Perchance he feared my mind was going and yet,
O, sirs, if you consider it rightly now,
With all those ages knocking at his doors,
With all that custom clamouring for his care,
Is it so strange a grave-digger should weep?
Well—he was kind enough and heaped my plate
That night at supper.
But I could never dig my graves at ease
In Peterborough Churchyard. So I came
To London—to St. Mary Magdalen's.
And thus, I chanced to drink my ale one night
Here in the Mermaid Inn. 'Twas All Souls' Eve,
And, on that bench, where master Ford now sits
Was master Shakespeare—
Well, the lights burned low,
And just like master Ford to-night he leaned
Suddenly forward. 'Timothy,' he said,
'That's a most marvellous ruby!' My blood froze!
I stretched my hand out bare as it was born;
And he said nothing, only looked at me.
Then, seeing my pipe was empty, he bade me fill
And lit it for me.
Peach, the astrologer,
Was living then; and that same night I went
And told him all my trouble about this ring.
He took my hand in his, and held it—thus—
Then looked into my face and said this rhyme:—
The ruby ring, that only three
While Time and Tide go by, shall see,
Weds your hand to history.
Honour and pride the first shall lend;
The second shall give you gold to spend;
The third—shall warn you of your end.
Peach was a rogue, some say, and yet he spake
Most truly about the first," the sexton mused,
"For master Shakespeare, though they say in youth
Outside the theatres, he would hold your horse
For pence, prospered at last, bought a fine house
In Stratford, lived there like a squire, they say.
And here, here he would sit, for all the world
As he were but a poet! God bless us all,
And then—to think!—he rose to be a squire!
A deep one, masters! Well, he lit my pipe!"
"Why did they bury such a queen by night?"
Said Ford. "Kings might have wept for her. Did Death
Play epicure and glutton that so few
Were bidden to such a feast. Once on a time,
I could have wept, myself, to hear a tale
Of beauty buried in the dark. And hers
Was loveliness, far, far beyond the common!
Such beauty should be marble to the touch
Of time, and clad in purple to amaze
The moth. But she was kind and soft and fair,
A woman, and so she died. But, why the dark?"
"Sir, they gave out the coffin was too heavy
For gentlemen to bear!"—"For kings to bear?"
Ford flashed at him. The sexton shook his head,—
"Nay! Gentlemen to bear! But—the true cause—
Ah, sir, 'tis unbelievable, even to me,
A sexton, for a queen so fair of face!
And all her beds, even as the pedlar said,
Breathing Arabia, sirs, her walls all hung
With woven purple wonders and great tales
Of amorous gods, and mighty mirrors, too,
Imaging her own softness, night and dawn,
When through her sumptuous hair she drew the combs;
And like one great white rose-leaf half her breast
Shone through it, firm as ivory."
"Ay," said Lodge,
Murmuring his own rich music under breath,
"About her neck did all the graces throng,
And lay such baits as did entangle death."
"Well, sir, the weather being hot, they feared
She would not hold the burying!"...
"In some sort,"
Ford answered slowly, "if your tale be true,
She did not hold it. Many a knightly crest
Will bend yet o'er the ghost of that small hand."