The Lives & Legacy of Extraordinary Women. Kate Dickinson Sweetser
The branches smote like summoning hands
And muttered the driving rain.
And when the wind swooped over the lift
And made the whole heaven frown,
It seemed a grip was laid on the walls
To tug the housetop down.
And the Queen was there, more stately fair
Than a lily in garden set;
And the King was loth to stir from her side;
For as on the day when she was his bride,
Even so he loved her yet.
And the Earl of Athole, the King's false friend,
Sat with him at the board;
And Robert Stuart the chamberlain
Who had sold his sovereign Lord.
Yet the traitor Christopher Chaumber there
Would fain have told him all,
And vainly four times that night he strove
To reach the King through the hall.
But the wine is bright at the goblet's brim
Though the poison lurk beneath;
And the apples still are red on the tree
Within whose shade may the adder be
That shall turn thy life to death.
There was a knight of the King's fast friends
Whom he called the King of Love;
And to such bright cheer and courtesy
That name might best behove.
And the King and Queen both loved him well
For his gentle knightliness;
And with him the King, as that eve wore on,
Was playing at the chess.
And the King said (for he thought to jest
And soothe the Queen thereby),
"In a book 'tis writ that this same year
A King shall in Scotland die.
"And I have pondered the matter o'er,
And this have I found, Sir Hugh,
There are but two Kings on Scotish ground,
And those Kings are I and you.
"And I have a wife and a newborn heir,
And you are yourself alone;
So stand you stark at my side with me
To guard our double throne."
"For here sit I and my wife and child,
As well your heart shall approve,
In full surrender and soothfastness,
Beneath your Kingdom of Love."
And the Knight laughed, and the Queen, too, smiled;
But I knew her heavy thought,
And I strove to find in the good King's jest
What cheer might thence be wrought.
And I said, "My Liege, for the Queen's dear love
Now sing the song that of old
You made, when a captive Prince you lay,
And the nightingale sang sweet on the spray,
In Windsor's castle-hold."
Then he smiled the smile I knew so well
When he thought to please the Queen;
The smile which under all bitter frowns
Of hate that rose between,
For ever dwelt at the poet's heart
Like the bird of love unseen.
And he kissed her hand and took his harp,
And the music sweetly rang;
And when the song burst forth, it seemed
'T was the nightingale that sang.
"Worship, ye lovers, on this May: Of bliss your kalends are begun: Sing with us, Away, Winter, away! Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun! Awake for shame, your heaven is won, And amorously your heads lift all: Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call!"
But when he bent to the Queen, and sang
The speech whose praise was hers,
It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring
And the voice of the bygone years.
"The fairest and the freshest flower That ever I saw before that hour, The which o' the sudden made to start The blood of my body to my heart.
* * * * *
Ah sweet, are ye a worldly creature Or heavenly thing in form of nature?"
And the song was long, and richly stored
With wonder and beauteous things;
And the harp was tuned to every change
Of minstrel ministerings;
But when he spoke of the Queen at the last,
Its strings were his own heart-strings.
"Unworthy but only of her grace, Upon Love's rock that's easy and sure, In guerdon of all my love's space She took me her humble creäture. Thus fell my blissful aventure In youth of love that from day to day Flowereth aye new, and further, I say.
"To reck all the circumstance As it happed when lessen gan my sore, Of my rancor and woeful chance, It were too long—I have done therefor. And of this flower I say no more But unto my help her heart hath tended And even from death her man defended."
"Ay, even from death," to myself I said;
For I thought of the day when she
Had borne him the news, at Roxbro' siege,
Of the fell confederacy.
But death even then took aim as he sang
With an arrow deadly bright;
And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof,
And the wings were spread far over the roof
More dark than the winter night.
Yet truly along the amorous song
Of Love's high pomp and state,
There were words of Fortune's trackless doom
And the dreadful face of Fate.
And oft have I heard again in dreams
The voice of dire appeal
In which the King sang of the pit
That is under Fortune's wheel.
"And under the wheel beheld I there An ugly Pit as deep as hell, That to behold I quaked for fear: And this I heard, that who therein fell Came no more up, tidings to tell: Whereat, astound of the fearful sight, I wist not what to do for fright."
And oft has my thought called up again
These words of the changeful song:
"Wist thou thy pain and thy travàil To come, well might'st thou weep and wail!" And our wail, O God! is long.
But the song's end was all of his love;
And well his heart was grac'd
With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes