Min. Blest maid! fresh roses o’er thee
The careless years shall fling;
While days and nights shall new delights
To sense and fancy bring.
Fool. Satins and silks, and feathers and lace,
Will gild life’s pill;
In jewels and gold folks cannot grow old,
Fine ladies will never fall ill.
Monks. A vanitatibus sæculi
Domine libera nos.
[Sophia descends from the Dais, leading Elizabeth. Ladies follow.]
Sophia [to the Fool]. Silence, you screech-owl.—
Come strew flowers, fair ladies,
And lead into her bower our fairest bride,
The cynosure of love and beauty here,
Who shrines heaven’s graces in earth’s richest casket.
Eliz. I come, [aside] Here, Guta, take those monks a fee—
Tell them I thank them—bid them pray for me.
I am half mazed with trembling joy within,
And noisy wassail round. ’Tis well, for else
The spectre of my duties and my dangers
Would whelm my heart with terror. Ah! poor self!
Thou took’st this for the term and bourne of troubles—
And now ’tis here, thou findest it the gate
Of new sin-cursed infinities of labour,
Where thou must do, or die!
[aloud] Lead on. I’ll follow. [Exeunt.]
Fool. There, now. No fee for the fool; and yet my prescription was as good as those old Jeremies’. But in law, physic, and divinity, folks had sooner be poisoned in Latin, than saved in the mother-tongue.
ACT II
SCENE I. A.D. 1221-27
Elizabeth’s Bower. Night. Lewis sleeping in an Alcove.