But of what sins I have not strength to say
Nor hardly to remember.”
After all that has gone before, that reads remarkably like a wilful lie, as Mr. Swinburne's bishop might have hinted, particularly as she has memory enough left to enumerate her virtues, which conclude with this:
“I have held mine own faith fast, and with my lips
Have borne him [God] witness if my heart were whole.”
Whereupon the worthy bishop takes occasion to repeat his blunder. Glossing beautifully over her sins in a graceful sentence or two, the queen proceeds to “remit all faults against her done,” and ends in this edifying strain:
“I will not take death's hand
With any soil of hate or wrath or wrong
About me, but, being friends with this past world,
Pass from it in the general peace of love.”