Texts
The New King Arthur: An Opera Without Music (Act II) by Edgar Fawcett (1885)
GUINEVERE.
(Singing.) O lady moon, O mother moon, O moon that movest high,
Elucidate, explain to me, the wherefore and the why!
What is it that coerces us our mortal term to mar
By always wishing we were not the very thing we are?
O lady moon, in splendid state,
In beauty pure and high,
Investigate and intimate
The wherefore and the why!
O queenly moon, O saintly moon, pale priestess of the sky,
If X be X, what makes him want forever to be Y?
If Y is Y, and well-to-do, then wherefore is he led
Invariably to repine because he is not Z?
O lady moon, in lonely state,
Attend my longing sigh;
Enunciate and extricate
The wherefore and the why!
O sombre moon, O sober moon, however well we thrive,
Why should we mourn that two and two make four instead of five?
And when our ducks are healthy ducks, and swim in handsome lakes,
Why should we droop with discontent because they are not drakes?
O lady moon, of glow sedate,
With gracious heed reply;
Communicate and indicate
The wherefore and the why!
(Lancelot now appears, joining Guinevere.)
SIR LANCELOT.
My Queen, it lacks not long of twelve o'clock.
Thy knowledge, as I trust, is now complete,
By just what means to grasp and gain the sword.
GUINEVERE.
Yes, yes . . . Oh, Lancelot, should I quite break down!
SIR LANCELOT.
Break down? Ah, that would break me up, my Queen!
Forgive the jest, which hath a modern tinge,
Unseemly in our quaint Arthurian age.
GUINEVERE.
Oh, Lancelot, I'm a very foolish queen!
Thou knowest I am; deny it not . . . Pray tell,
Shall not my altered tresses and new skin
Find many to admire them in your realm?
SIR LANCELOT.
Myself above all others, glorious Queen!
GUINEVERE.
How many others?
SIR LANCELOT.
We in family
Are seven, if I count fair the list of us.
GUINEVERE.
What! seven! And shall no more than fourteen eyes
Pay homage to my beauty every day?
SIR LANCELOT.
Yes, vassals, village-folk, and –
GUINEVERE.
Out on thee!
What care I whether these admire or no?
Shall I be Queen of Love and Beauty, then,
At no more jousts? or head no cavalcade
Of merry falconers in forests green?
No court, no knights, no ladies, as of yore!
Only the secrets of old Merlin's flasks,
The face-wash and the hair-dye, and –
SIR LANCELOT.
Myself!
My passionate homage, Guinevere, will hold
All other that their deed or speech could pay.
(He takes a lute from near by, and sings.)
If I should make some perfect song,
Your smile to claim,
Another voice, more sweet and strong,
Would wake another song and shame
My own, erelong –
If I should make some perfect song,
Your smile to claim.
If I should match in marble pure
That shape divine,
The years would level and obscure
My sculpture till no certain sign
Were left secure –
If I should match in marble pure
That shape divine!
If I caught colors from the sea,
The flowers, the sun,
To paint your picture with – ah me!
Back to their native bournes each one
At last would flee –
If I caught colors from the sun,
The flowers, the sea!
Since I can praise from many ways
No deathless way,
'Tis sweet to dream that for all days
Immortally my love shall stay,
Its own best praise –
Since I can praise from many ways
No deathless way!
(Singing.) O lady moon, O mother moon, O moon that movest high,
Elucidate, explain to me, the wherefore and the why!
What is it that coerces us our mortal term to mar
By always wishing we were not the very thing we are?
O lady moon, in splendid state,
In beauty pure and high,
Investigate and intimate
The wherefore and the why!
O queenly moon, O saintly moon, pale priestess of the sky,
If X be X, what makes him want forever to be Y?
If Y is Y, and well-to-do, then wherefore is he led
Invariably to repine because he is not Z?
O lady moon, in lonely state,
Attend my longing sigh;
Enunciate and extricate
The wherefore and the why!
O sombre moon, O sober moon, however well we thrive,
Why should we mourn that two and two make four instead of five?
And when our ducks are healthy ducks, and swim in handsome lakes,
Why should we droop with discontent because they are not drakes?
O lady moon, of glow sedate,
With gracious heed reply;
Communicate and indicate
The wherefore and the why!
(Lancelot now appears, joining Guinevere.)
SIR LANCELOT.
My Queen, it lacks not long of twelve o'clock.
Thy knowledge, as I trust, is now complete,
By just what means to grasp and gain the sword.
GUINEVERE.
Yes, yes . . . Oh, Lancelot, should I quite break down!
SIR LANCELOT.
Break down? Ah, that would break me up, my Queen!
Forgive the jest, which hath a modern tinge,
Unseemly in our quaint Arthurian age.
GUINEVERE.
Oh, Lancelot, I'm a very foolish queen!
Thou knowest I am; deny it not . . . Pray tell,
Shall not my altered tresses and new skin
Find many to admire them in your realm?
SIR LANCELOT.
Myself above all others, glorious Queen!
GUINEVERE.
How many others?
SIR LANCELOT.
We in family
Are seven, if I count fair the list of us.
GUINEVERE.
What! seven! And shall no more than fourteen eyes
Pay homage to my beauty every day?
SIR LANCELOT.
Yes, vassals, village-folk, and –
GUINEVERE.
Out on thee!
What care I whether these admire or no?
Shall I be Queen of Love and Beauty, then,
At no more jousts? or head no cavalcade
Of merry falconers in forests green?
No court, no knights, no ladies, as of yore!
Only the secrets of old Merlin's flasks,
The face-wash and the hair-dye, and –
SIR LANCELOT.
Myself!
My passionate homage, Guinevere, will hold
All other that their deed or speech could pay.
(He takes a lute from near by, and sings.)
If I should make some perfect song,
Your smile to claim,
Another voice, more sweet and strong,
Would wake another song and shame
My own, erelong –
If I should make some perfect song,
Your smile to claim.
If I should match in marble pure
That shape divine,
The years would level and obscure
My sculpture till no certain sign
Were left secure –
If I should match in marble pure
That shape divine!
If I caught colors from the sea,
The flowers, the sun,
To paint your picture with – ah me!
Back to their native bournes each one
At last would flee –
If I caught colors from the sun,
The flowers, the sea!
Since I can praise from many ways
No deathless way,
'Tis sweet to dream that for all days
Immortally my love shall stay,
Its own best praise –
Since I can praise from many ways
No deathless way!
The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy (Act II, Scene 3) by Richard Hovey (1891)
GUENEVERE. You may withdraw, ladies.
(Exeunt LADIES.)
GUENEVERE.
They did him wrong
Who called him but the goodliest of men,
For he is like a god. What did she say?
"There is not maid nor wife in Camelot
Whose heart is not a spaniel at his feet."
Oh, I should hate them if they loved him not,
And hate them that they love him. What if he hide
Unworth behind that fair exterior!
And shall he add me to his list of slaves?
Yet, though I hate myself that am so cheap,
And love myself that he should be so dear,
And am a thousand things at once, each eyewink
In arms against its neighbor--what should I do,
If he--? I am too poor a thing to live,
And yet so happy that I am so poor!
And yet so wretched that I am so happy!
Why, had he laughed into my startled eyes
And asked "Dost thou adore me?" I had lacked
Power to keep back the "Yes" within my soul.
Or had he clutched my wrist and pulled me to him
And bade me love him, there before them all,
I would have put my lips up for a kiss.
...Yonder he comes. Why should he seek me out?
I am nought to him, one of a thousand women
Whose lives have crossed his somewhere and then passed
Into the dark. His Queen--a stupid word!
His Queen, when he may hear the lightest wish
Some other utters, as a Queen's command?
No Queen at all, unless his Queen in all!
I will not love--and he shall never know.
I would I had not sent my maids away.
I lie; I am glad they are not here. I felt
That he was coming when I bade them go.
(Enter LAUNCELOT.)
GUENEVERE.
Does he do reverence to the Queen or me?--
Good-morrow, sir. You like our gardens, too.
'T is a sweet place; June lays her heart bare here
And sighs her soul out through the passionate air.
LAUNCELOT.
There is no garden like it in the world.
GUENEVERE.
I did not guess you were so fond of gardens.
I thought of you with lance and battle-axe
In the forefront of war--yet not as one
That kills his fellows with a savage joy--
But with pale brow where anger never writ
His ugly name in frowns.
LAUNCELOT.
You thought of me?
GUENEVERE.
Who does not think of you? Your fame is blown
Further than Cameliard.
LAUNCELOT.
And you thought of me
As hard and cruel?
GUENEVERE.
Never for a breath!
And yet I did not think that you would feel
The strange delicious sweet of such a place.
LAUNCELOT.
I never felt it as I do to-day,--
Though I remember, when I was a boy,
There was a beautiful lady who would come
Across the lake and take me in her skiff
And tell me wondrous tales, tales which still make
A low confusèd murmur in my brain
Like the vague undertone of many bees.
I called her "fairy mother" then, but now
Men tell me that she was that Nimue,
The Lady of the Lake, whom Merlin loves.
I know not. I remember only how
I leaned my head over the boat's edge, looking
Deep through the water to another sky,
So clear the water was; and, as I leaned,
My soul went swooning down that crystal space,
Down, down forever, till sinking seemed to turn
To rising, with the sky not far away.
GUENEVERE.
Tell me more of your life. You must have seen
So much in its young course--have done so much.
LAUNCELOT.
Nay, little that I can remember. I am
Strangely unable to distinguish one
Good or ill hap out of the blur of things,
Battles and tourneys, one much like the other,
And lost already in the murmurous past.
I feel as if I were just born to-day
With life before me like this summer air,
Hushed, as in waiting for a bird to sing,
Who yet delays, and all is fresh and fair,
And hope stands flushing like a rosy boy
Upon a threshold which he fears to cross.
But what I fear or what I hope, indeed
I hardly know--and yet I hope and fear.
GUENEVERE.
But surely some recognizable peak
Soars up among the mountains of your deeds
That you can show me.
LAUNCELOT.
Indeed there is a height
So near me that it shuts out all my life;
But I have not attained it. One event
I well remember, but it was a vision,
Not an achievement. That was when I first
Beheld you.
GUENEVERE.
Have you seen me, then, before?
And you remember it and I forget?
LAUNCELOT.
I should have died of faintness in the hills
If you had not stood by.
GUENEVERE.
What, were you he
Whom Dagonet the Fool saved?
LAUNCELOT.
I am he.
GUENEVERE.
How strangely are the threads of life inwoven!--
Yet since you will not tell me of your deeds,
Tell me at least for whom you do them.
LAUNCELOT.
Ah, me!
GUENEVERE.
I know that for some dame or damosel
You do them. Tell me, by the faith you owe me,
Who is the lady? For I know thou lovest.
LAUNCELOT.
Say that I do so, were it not far better
That this new birth had never been conceived;
Since even while I babble of its joy,
Grief glooms above it like the shadow of death?
GUENEVERE.
What part hath grief in thee, Sir Launcelot?
I might as soon paint sorrow on the face
Of blessed Michael standing in the sun.
LAUNCELOT.
Queen, that I love is true; and love should be
More joy on earth than Michael hath in heaven.
But I have been too much beloved of Fortune;
And she hath dowered me with all goodly gifts
Only in the end to turn them to a gibe.
For all my feats of arms were done for you,
And if you love me not, it had been better
My mother died a maid--and should you love,
Which yet I dare not hope, our lives must be
Like outcast angels, glorious with shade,
A bitter gladness and a radiant woe.
Ay, for 't is you I love. Love leaped to life
Within me when I saw you in the hills,
As Saint John leaped within his mother's womb
When Mary drew near, childing of the Christ.
Speak to me! Will you outstare marble? God!
I say, I love you. See, I crawl to you!--
I pray you pardon me. I see you are
Too merciful to speak. I give you pain;--
I have spoken wildly. Fare you well! I will not--(Rushes off.)
GUENEVERE.
He loves me! Oh, how good it is to draw
Deep breaths of this rich-scented air. The odor
Seems to pass into me. Does love transfigure
The world like this? Nay, then it is a god,
That's certain.
(Exeunt LADIES.)
GUENEVERE.
They did him wrong
Who called him but the goodliest of men,
For he is like a god. What did she say?
"There is not maid nor wife in Camelot
Whose heart is not a spaniel at his feet."
Oh, I should hate them if they loved him not,
And hate them that they love him. What if he hide
Unworth behind that fair exterior!
And shall he add me to his list of slaves?
Yet, though I hate myself that am so cheap,
And love myself that he should be so dear,
And am a thousand things at once, each eyewink
In arms against its neighbor--what should I do,
If he--? I am too poor a thing to live,
And yet so happy that I am so poor!
And yet so wretched that I am so happy!
Why, had he laughed into my startled eyes
And asked "Dost thou adore me?" I had lacked
Power to keep back the "Yes" within my soul.
Or had he clutched my wrist and pulled me to him
And bade me love him, there before them all,
I would have put my lips up for a kiss.
...Yonder he comes. Why should he seek me out?
I am nought to him, one of a thousand women
Whose lives have crossed his somewhere and then passed
Into the dark. His Queen--a stupid word!
His Queen, when he may hear the lightest wish
Some other utters, as a Queen's command?
No Queen at all, unless his Queen in all!
I will not love--and he shall never know.
I would I had not sent my maids away.
I lie; I am glad they are not here. I felt
That he was coming when I bade them go.
(Enter LAUNCELOT.)
GUENEVERE.
Does he do reverence to the Queen or me?--
Good-morrow, sir. You like our gardens, too.
'T is a sweet place; June lays her heart bare here
And sighs her soul out through the passionate air.
LAUNCELOT.
There is no garden like it in the world.
GUENEVERE.
I did not guess you were so fond of gardens.
I thought of you with lance and battle-axe
In the forefront of war--yet not as one
That kills his fellows with a savage joy--
But with pale brow where anger never writ
His ugly name in frowns.
LAUNCELOT.
You thought of me?
GUENEVERE.
Who does not think of you? Your fame is blown
Further than Cameliard.
LAUNCELOT.
And you thought of me
As hard and cruel?
GUENEVERE.
Never for a breath!
And yet I did not think that you would feel
The strange delicious sweet of such a place.
LAUNCELOT.
I never felt it as I do to-day,--
Though I remember, when I was a boy,
There was a beautiful lady who would come
Across the lake and take me in her skiff
And tell me wondrous tales, tales which still make
A low confusèd murmur in my brain
Like the vague undertone of many bees.
I called her "fairy mother" then, but now
Men tell me that she was that Nimue,
The Lady of the Lake, whom Merlin loves.
I know not. I remember only how
I leaned my head over the boat's edge, looking
Deep through the water to another sky,
So clear the water was; and, as I leaned,
My soul went swooning down that crystal space,
Down, down forever, till sinking seemed to turn
To rising, with the sky not far away.
GUENEVERE.
Tell me more of your life. You must have seen
So much in its young course--have done so much.
LAUNCELOT.
Nay, little that I can remember. I am
Strangely unable to distinguish one
Good or ill hap out of the blur of things,
Battles and tourneys, one much like the other,
And lost already in the murmurous past.
I feel as if I were just born to-day
With life before me like this summer air,
Hushed, as in waiting for a bird to sing,
Who yet delays, and all is fresh and fair,
And hope stands flushing like a rosy boy
Upon a threshold which he fears to cross.
But what I fear or what I hope, indeed
I hardly know--and yet I hope and fear.
GUENEVERE.
But surely some recognizable peak
Soars up among the mountains of your deeds
That you can show me.
LAUNCELOT.
Indeed there is a height
So near me that it shuts out all my life;
But I have not attained it. One event
I well remember, but it was a vision,
Not an achievement. That was when I first
Beheld you.
GUENEVERE.
Have you seen me, then, before?
And you remember it and I forget?
LAUNCELOT.
I should have died of faintness in the hills
If you had not stood by.
GUENEVERE.
What, were you he
Whom Dagonet the Fool saved?
LAUNCELOT.
I am he.
GUENEVERE.
How strangely are the threads of life inwoven!--
Yet since you will not tell me of your deeds,
Tell me at least for whom you do them.
LAUNCELOT.
Ah, me!
GUENEVERE.
I know that for some dame or damosel
You do them. Tell me, by the faith you owe me,
Who is the lady? For I know thou lovest.
LAUNCELOT.
Say that I do so, were it not far better
That this new birth had never been conceived;
Since even while I babble of its joy,
Grief glooms above it like the shadow of death?
GUENEVERE.
What part hath grief in thee, Sir Launcelot?
I might as soon paint sorrow on the face
Of blessed Michael standing in the sun.
LAUNCELOT.
Queen, that I love is true; and love should be
More joy on earth than Michael hath in heaven.
But I have been too much beloved of Fortune;
And she hath dowered me with all goodly gifts
Only in the end to turn them to a gibe.
For all my feats of arms were done for you,
And if you love me not, it had been better
My mother died a maid--and should you love,
Which yet I dare not hope, our lives must be
Like outcast angels, glorious with shade,
A bitter gladness and a radiant woe.
Ay, for 't is you I love. Love leaped to life
Within me when I saw you in the hills,
As Saint John leaped within his mother's womb
When Mary drew near, childing of the Christ.
Speak to me! Will you outstare marble? God!
I say, I love you. See, I crawl to you!--
I pray you pardon me. I see you are
Too merciful to speak. I give you pain;--
I have spoken wildly. Fare you well! I will not--(Rushes off.)
GUENEVERE.
He loves me! Oh, how good it is to draw
Deep breaths of this rich-scented air. The odor
Seems to pass into me. Does love transfigure
The world like this? Nay, then it is a god,
That's certain.
The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy (Act III, Scene 34 & Act IV, Scene 1) by Richard Hovey (1891)
LAUNCELOT.
It is the hour; and yet they do not come.
The sentinels grow drowsy at their posts;
And the wind rustles through the moonlit leaves
Like one that tosses on a sleepless bed
And wishes for the dawn. The shadows sleep,
Silent as time, beneath the silent stars;
And distant dogs behowl the loneliness.
O Moon, look down and lead my love to me!...
Sir Galahault! Sir Galahault! I wonder
If it were wise to trust to you so far.
Nay, 't is unknightly in me to misdoubt
So true a heart. Who else but he had made
The evil fortune of my love his own
And dared for me all I myself can dare?
And yet to take my joy within his doors,
With secret entrance like a midnight thief,--
It irks me. Bah, I am a fool! What's place
Or time, when I clasp hands with Guenevere?
To look into her eyes is to forget
That space exists, beyond her circling arms!
Hark! did I hear the rustle of a cloak?
Or was 't the wind i' the lilacs? (Seeing.) Galahault! Alone?
GALAHAULT.
Are you alone? And is all safe?
For what I bring with me is worth all Britain.
LAUNCELOT.
All Britain? All the world!
(Enter GUENEVERE.)
LAUNCELOT.
My queen! my queen!
GUENEVERE.
Sir Galahault, needs must that once you loved.
'T is some lost lady's memory, sure, that stirs
Your will to do these gentle deeds
GALAHAULT.
I know
Love is the one intelligible word
Life utters.-But I pray you, pardon me [smiling],
I know, besides, that though you throw an alms
Of kind thoughts to a man whose life is lived,
The fleet-foot hours are restless to become
Spendthrift of richer treasure. Fare you well!
I will not irk you with a formal leave. (Exits.)
GUENEVERE.
Now!
LAUNCELOT.
Heart to heart!
GUENEVERE.
Oh, do not jar with speech
This perfect chord of silence!-Nay, there needs
Thy throat's deep music. Let thy lips drop words,
Like pearls, between thy kisses.
LAUNCELOT.
Thy speech breaks
Against the interruption of my lips,
Like the low laughter of a summer brook
Over perpetual pebbles.
GUENEVERE.
Nay but, love,
It is the saucy pebbles that provoke
The brook's discourse; for, where the bed is smooth,
The waters glide as silent as a Dryad
That disappears among the silent trees.
LAUNCELOT.
And so our kisses still provoke our speech.
GUENEVERE.
Why, if the night must first be smooth of kisses,
I fear that I shall talk until the dawn.
LAUNCELOT.
Alas, that dawn should be so soon!
GUENEVERE.
We will
Divide each moment in a thousand parts,
And every part a pearl; and they shall make
A rosary of little lucent globes,
Innumerous as the dewdrops of the dawn:
And, counting them, night shall seem infinite.
LAUNCELOT.
Yet even now we count them, and they pass.
Sit, Guenevere, here where the moonlight laughs
Across your hair, and the night wind may touch
Your throat and chin, as I do now.
GUENEVERE.
O love,
My lips will weary you, too often kissed.
LAUNCELOT.
Why, then the night will weary of the moon.
GUENEVERE.
But I'll be strange and chide; and then a cloud
Will pass between you and the moon.
LAUNCELOT.
Nay, then
The moon will 'broider with her light the cloud,--
And I will kiss again, to hear your chiding.
GUENEVERE.
My voice will weary you, too rarely still.
LAUNCELOT.
Then will the leaves grow weary of the wind.-
Hark, how they laugh into each other's ears
And whisper secrets for pure merriment!
GUENEVERE.
My love will weary you, too undisguised,
Too wild, too headlong, too unlimited!
LAUNCELOT.
Then God will weary of the joy of heaven!
O love, in whom even Love's perversity
Is lovely! O chameleon-colored heart!
Look, I have seen a sky at sunset lapse
From gold and flame to misted violet
And through a thousan shifting colors more,
Olive and pearl and myriad hues of rose,
Each lovelier than the last. Even such a sky
Thy heart is.
GUENEVERE.
Then must thou be like the sun,
For from his kiss the sky takes on her hue.
And surely, if the sun took human shape,
He would become even such a man as thou,
My live Apollo! Spendthrift of thy brightness!
--Nay, let us stay awhile yet, for the night
Doth seem attunèd to our hearts and they
Incorporate with the night. Was e'er befoe
Such rapture in the air?
LAUNCELOT.
O teasing Queen!
You slip through my desires and glide away
As a seal swims. Ah, why will you be coy?
Yet coy or bold, each shifting mood you wear
More than the last entrains.
GUENEVERE.
I give you all;
I am no niggard to keep something back.
But yet, I pray you, stay a little while.
There is a sweetness in all things that pass;
We love the moonlight better for the sun,
And the day better when the night is near;
The last look on a place where we have dwelt
Reveals more beauty than we dreamed before,
When it was daily. This is my last hour
Of girlhood; and, although the wider days
Bring greater guerdons and more large delights,
Yet this one thing they shall not bring again.
Love, yet a little while!
LAUNCELOT.
Your girlhood, say you?
GUENEVERE.
I know not how to tell you--
The morn that followed on my wedding night,
War called the King to Cornwall,--since which hour
I have not seen him.-That one night, indeed,
We lay down side by side;--but, seeing I shrank
And shook as one that fears she knows not what,
The King unsheathed his sword Excalibur
And placed it for a sign between us twain,
--And all night long the sword divided us.
LAUNCELOT.
Mine, mine, all mine!
GUENEVERE.
All thine, my Launcelot,
Body and soul! My husband!
LAUNCELOT.
Ay, dear wife,
Although the cowled monastic trees have been
The only priests of our great bridal.
GUENEVERE.
Husband!
I laugh into your hair with the mere joy
Of saying it over so...The wicked stars
Are twinkling with a mischievous delight
To spy on us.
LAUNCELOT.
Then are they like you now,
The roguery of heaven. Anon, you'll change
And be its splendor and its mystery.
Let us go in; I have seen you as a vision
Of morning in the hills, and as a Queen,
And as the dainty mimicry of a boy;
But I would see you grand and undisguised
And clothed upon with moonlight and sweet air.
(They enter the house. Then all is silent, save for a rustle of wind in the leaves and the voice of a distant watchman, calling the hour. A nightingale begins to sing in the thicket. CURTAIN.)
(A little while later, they re-enter.)
LAUNCELOT.
It is the morning star that hangs so high;
Love, you must leave me.
GUENEVERE.
Must I so indeed?
How can I leave you?-For I live in you.
You are the only concord in my life;
Without you I am but a jarring note
And all the world mere noise.
LAUNCELOT.
No, leave me not.
What though the world outcast us! We will be
A world unto ourselves. Let Britain sink
Beneath the Atlantic and the solid base
And universal dome of things dissolve
And like the architecture of a cloud
Melt in the blue inane! You are my country,
My world, my faith, my rounded orb of life.
GUENEVERE.
Without you life would be but breathing death.
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, we will find some island in the seas,
Some place forsaken of the unjust world,
A larger image of this garden here,
Where nature's luxury and Art's decay
Proclaim emancipation--
GUENEVERE.
There's no such place.
The greedy world would rush in at your heels
And turn your paradise into a mart.
Nay, you were right, and I must leave you, love,
And ere yon pale streaks ripen into rose,
Resume the Queen. But yet one breath beneath
These morning-cool old elms before we part,
One last love-dreaming!-How can I be sure
Thou lovest me? Is life so generous of joy?
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, look in my true eyes and say
If thou canst doubt me!
GUENEVERE.
Nay, I doubt thee not.
If I had doubted, could I thus have stolen
At midnight in a shameless page's suit
And-oh, thou knowest I could not!
LAUNCELOT.
Sweet and true!
GUENEVERE.
I feel as if I had put off the Queen
With the Queen's robes and had become your page.
LAUNCELOT.
You are my Queen, whatever garb you wear,
And I your knight forever. But, thus clad,
A thousand beauties are revealed, before
Known only to surmise, or by foreknowledge
That every beauty must be yours divined.
Ay, cover 't with thy cloak! The prettiness
O' the action o'er-repays my beggared eyes,
Robbed of the treasure of that loveliness.
GUENEVERE.
For thy delight, love, I will dress me so
Ten times a day-but never as a mask
Again. Why wouldst thou send Sir Galahault
To bring me here?
LAUNCELOT.
or thy security.
Here we are free from Argus-eyed intrigue.
GUENEVERE.
I like it not-or rather would not like it,
Were I not too content to let my head
Lie on your shoulder here-so-while Time seems
To pause awhile and dream, beholding us.
It is too much as if we shrank some peril;
And I would shrink from nothing. Prithee, love,
Henceforward let us meet without these shifts.
LAUNCELOT.
O royal-hearted!
GUENEVERE.
Sweet, you hurt me.
LAUNCELOT.
Nay,
I would not hurt you. I would have my love
A furnace fiery as the orient king's,
But you should walk in it and be unharmed.
GUINEVERE.
Was ever woman loved as you love me?
LAUNCELOT.
I think there never was; 't is something new
Whereof I am discoverer.
(Exeunt among the trees.)
It is the hour; and yet they do not come.
The sentinels grow drowsy at their posts;
And the wind rustles through the moonlit leaves
Like one that tosses on a sleepless bed
And wishes for the dawn. The shadows sleep,
Silent as time, beneath the silent stars;
And distant dogs behowl the loneliness.
O Moon, look down and lead my love to me!...
Sir Galahault! Sir Galahault! I wonder
If it were wise to trust to you so far.
Nay, 't is unknightly in me to misdoubt
So true a heart. Who else but he had made
The evil fortune of my love his own
And dared for me all I myself can dare?
And yet to take my joy within his doors,
With secret entrance like a midnight thief,--
It irks me. Bah, I am a fool! What's place
Or time, when I clasp hands with Guenevere?
To look into her eyes is to forget
That space exists, beyond her circling arms!
Hark! did I hear the rustle of a cloak?
Or was 't the wind i' the lilacs? (Seeing.) Galahault! Alone?
GALAHAULT.
Are you alone? And is all safe?
For what I bring with me is worth all Britain.
LAUNCELOT.
All Britain? All the world!
(Enter GUENEVERE.)
LAUNCELOT.
My queen! my queen!
GUENEVERE.
Sir Galahault, needs must that once you loved.
'T is some lost lady's memory, sure, that stirs
Your will to do these gentle deeds
GALAHAULT.
I know
Love is the one intelligible word
Life utters.-But I pray you, pardon me [smiling],
I know, besides, that though you throw an alms
Of kind thoughts to a man whose life is lived,
The fleet-foot hours are restless to become
Spendthrift of richer treasure. Fare you well!
I will not irk you with a formal leave. (Exits.)
GUENEVERE.
Now!
LAUNCELOT.
Heart to heart!
GUENEVERE.
Oh, do not jar with speech
This perfect chord of silence!-Nay, there needs
Thy throat's deep music. Let thy lips drop words,
Like pearls, between thy kisses.
LAUNCELOT.
Thy speech breaks
Against the interruption of my lips,
Like the low laughter of a summer brook
Over perpetual pebbles.
GUENEVERE.
Nay but, love,
It is the saucy pebbles that provoke
The brook's discourse; for, where the bed is smooth,
The waters glide as silent as a Dryad
That disappears among the silent trees.
LAUNCELOT.
And so our kisses still provoke our speech.
GUENEVERE.
Why, if the night must first be smooth of kisses,
I fear that I shall talk until the dawn.
LAUNCELOT.
Alas, that dawn should be so soon!
GUENEVERE.
We will
Divide each moment in a thousand parts,
And every part a pearl; and they shall make
A rosary of little lucent globes,
Innumerous as the dewdrops of the dawn:
And, counting them, night shall seem infinite.
LAUNCELOT.
Yet even now we count them, and they pass.
Sit, Guenevere, here where the moonlight laughs
Across your hair, and the night wind may touch
Your throat and chin, as I do now.
GUENEVERE.
O love,
My lips will weary you, too often kissed.
LAUNCELOT.
Why, then the night will weary of the moon.
GUENEVERE.
But I'll be strange and chide; and then a cloud
Will pass between you and the moon.
LAUNCELOT.
Nay, then
The moon will 'broider with her light the cloud,--
And I will kiss again, to hear your chiding.
GUENEVERE.
My voice will weary you, too rarely still.
LAUNCELOT.
Then will the leaves grow weary of the wind.-
Hark, how they laugh into each other's ears
And whisper secrets for pure merriment!
GUENEVERE.
My love will weary you, too undisguised,
Too wild, too headlong, too unlimited!
LAUNCELOT.
Then God will weary of the joy of heaven!
O love, in whom even Love's perversity
Is lovely! O chameleon-colored heart!
Look, I have seen a sky at sunset lapse
From gold and flame to misted violet
And through a thousan shifting colors more,
Olive and pearl and myriad hues of rose,
Each lovelier than the last. Even such a sky
Thy heart is.
GUENEVERE.
Then must thou be like the sun,
For from his kiss the sky takes on her hue.
And surely, if the sun took human shape,
He would become even such a man as thou,
My live Apollo! Spendthrift of thy brightness!
--Nay, let us stay awhile yet, for the night
Doth seem attunèd to our hearts and they
Incorporate with the night. Was e'er befoe
Such rapture in the air?
LAUNCELOT.
O teasing Queen!
You slip through my desires and glide away
As a seal swims. Ah, why will you be coy?
Yet coy or bold, each shifting mood you wear
More than the last entrains.
GUENEVERE.
I give you all;
I am no niggard to keep something back.
But yet, I pray you, stay a little while.
There is a sweetness in all things that pass;
We love the moonlight better for the sun,
And the day better when the night is near;
The last look on a place where we have dwelt
Reveals more beauty than we dreamed before,
When it was daily. This is my last hour
Of girlhood; and, although the wider days
Bring greater guerdons and more large delights,
Yet this one thing they shall not bring again.
Love, yet a little while!
LAUNCELOT.
Your girlhood, say you?
GUENEVERE.
I know not how to tell you--
The morn that followed on my wedding night,
War called the King to Cornwall,--since which hour
I have not seen him.-That one night, indeed,
We lay down side by side;--but, seeing I shrank
And shook as one that fears she knows not what,
The King unsheathed his sword Excalibur
And placed it for a sign between us twain,
--And all night long the sword divided us.
LAUNCELOT.
Mine, mine, all mine!
GUENEVERE.
All thine, my Launcelot,
Body and soul! My husband!
LAUNCELOT.
Ay, dear wife,
Although the cowled monastic trees have been
The only priests of our great bridal.
GUENEVERE.
Husband!
I laugh into your hair with the mere joy
Of saying it over so...The wicked stars
Are twinkling with a mischievous delight
To spy on us.
LAUNCELOT.
Then are they like you now,
The roguery of heaven. Anon, you'll change
And be its splendor and its mystery.
Let us go in; I have seen you as a vision
Of morning in the hills, and as a Queen,
And as the dainty mimicry of a boy;
But I would see you grand and undisguised
And clothed upon with moonlight and sweet air.
(They enter the house. Then all is silent, save for a rustle of wind in the leaves and the voice of a distant watchman, calling the hour. A nightingale begins to sing in the thicket. CURTAIN.)
(A little while later, they re-enter.)
LAUNCELOT.
It is the morning star that hangs so high;
Love, you must leave me.
GUENEVERE.
Must I so indeed?
How can I leave you?-For I live in you.
You are the only concord in my life;
Without you I am but a jarring note
And all the world mere noise.
LAUNCELOT.
No, leave me not.
What though the world outcast us! We will be
A world unto ourselves. Let Britain sink
Beneath the Atlantic and the solid base
And universal dome of things dissolve
And like the architecture of a cloud
Melt in the blue inane! You are my country,
My world, my faith, my rounded orb of life.
GUENEVERE.
Without you life would be but breathing death.
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, we will find some island in the seas,
Some place forsaken of the unjust world,
A larger image of this garden here,
Where nature's luxury and Art's decay
Proclaim emancipation--
GUENEVERE.
There's no such place.
The greedy world would rush in at your heels
And turn your paradise into a mart.
Nay, you were right, and I must leave you, love,
And ere yon pale streaks ripen into rose,
Resume the Queen. But yet one breath beneath
These morning-cool old elms before we part,
One last love-dreaming!-How can I be sure
Thou lovest me? Is life so generous of joy?
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, look in my true eyes and say
If thou canst doubt me!
GUENEVERE.
Nay, I doubt thee not.
If I had doubted, could I thus have stolen
At midnight in a shameless page's suit
And-oh, thou knowest I could not!
LAUNCELOT.
Sweet and true!
GUENEVERE.
I feel as if I had put off the Queen
With the Queen's robes and had become your page.
LAUNCELOT.
You are my Queen, whatever garb you wear,
And I your knight forever. But, thus clad,
A thousand beauties are revealed, before
Known only to surmise, or by foreknowledge
That every beauty must be yours divined.
Ay, cover 't with thy cloak! The prettiness
O' the action o'er-repays my beggared eyes,
Robbed of the treasure of that loveliness.
GUENEVERE.
For thy delight, love, I will dress me so
Ten times a day-but never as a mask
Again. Why wouldst thou send Sir Galahault
To bring me here?
LAUNCELOT.
or thy security.
Here we are free from Argus-eyed intrigue.
GUENEVERE.
I like it not-or rather would not like it,
Were I not too content to let my head
Lie on your shoulder here-so-while Time seems
To pause awhile and dream, beholding us.
It is too much as if we shrank some peril;
And I would shrink from nothing. Prithee, love,
Henceforward let us meet without these shifts.
LAUNCELOT.
O royal-hearted!
GUENEVERE.
Sweet, you hurt me.
LAUNCELOT.
Nay,
I would not hurt you. I would have my love
A furnace fiery as the orient king's,
But you should walk in it and be unharmed.
GUINEVERE.
Was ever woman loved as you love me?
LAUNCELOT.
I think there never was; 't is something new
Whereof I am discoverer.
(Exeunt among the trees.)
The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy (Act V, Scene 1) by Richard Hovey (1891)
GUENEVERE.
Oh, that I could weep
The copious blubber of a village maid,
Uncurbed by royal pride, or consciousness
That o'ermistrusts and will not slack the bit!
Oh, could I weep--and empty woe with weeping!
There is a swelling passion in my heart
Will split all yet. I cannot like a girl
Draw 't off in driblets. Oh, my blameless brother,
Undone for a guilty world! And that which led
To the discovery that was thy doom,
A plot born of a woman's hate for me
And of my reckless fate-contending love!
Oh, what a tangled anarchy is life!
If the rash Will strive in the helter-skelter
To weave for itself a little ordered space,
Its skilless touch pulls unexpected threads
That tighten to 'ts own strangling. Peredure
Is but the first. The implacable net is drawn
About the feet of all that love us. Bors--
Poor faithful, merry Dagonet--all who hold
To Launcelot's cause--must all these spend their hearts
That we may love? Do I love Launcelot?
Oh, if I loved him, could I draw him on
So to his own undoing? Shall his name
That even in the young April of his deeds
Greatens in splendor like the northering sun,
Be made a refuse for the ragman world
To fret and fumble with a prodding stick?
O God! Shall I uncage the captive wolves
Of war, to harry the whole land and rend
The offenceless kern, to give my sorrow ease?
It must not be. What right have I to love,
What right have I to joy, that should so play
The Tambourlaine and scourge so many woes
To drag its chariot like his captive kings?
It must not be. Oh, let me take an oath
Before high heaven! Launcelot, I must save thee!
Oh, heavy fate, to love and be a queen!
Ay, Peredure, I know it now--too late!
Had I but hearkened to your pleading foresight!
Oh, Peredure, my brother!
(Enter LAUNCELOT.)
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!
LAUNCELOT.
Dear heart!
GUENEVERE.
Whence come you?
LAUNCELOT.
Speakest thou so coldly?
I passed Sir Bors without and Dagonet;
They sent me hither, saying I should find
The Queen here. So, indeed, I do and not
The woman, not the eyes that met my eyes
With proud confession, not the lips that spoke
Quivering but dauntless, saying, "I love thee, Launcelot."
O Guenevere, hast thou forgot so soon
That thou canst speak with this mechanic voice
And look on me so vacantly?
GUENEVERE.
Forgot?
I never shall forget.
LAUNCELOT.
Then thou repentest.
Ay, now I see the longing in thy face
That thou hadst ne'er beheld me. Be it so.
I was a selfish monster when I thrust
My love into the forecourt of thy life. ...
And yet--you loved me once. And oh, those hours
When I could feel the warm breath from your lips
Creep o'er my cheek and mingle with my hair!
The sweet long hours whose lingering moments dripped
Like rhythmic water-drops into a pool
With silver parsimony of sweet sound
As if Time grudged each globule! Why, now I see
Tears in your eyes.
GUENEVERE.
O Launcelot, my king!
LAUNCELOT.
My own true wife!
GUENEVERE.
Do not call back that time
With any farewell cadence in your voice!
And oh, do not reproach yourself, my god,
For opening to me those golden doors!
We lived then.
LAUNCELOT.
There is honey on your lips
As on the Theban child's. I am the bees
That gather it--so.
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!--No, no!
I had forgot. Am I, then, like the rest?
Is there so much o' the woman in my veins
That resolution, buttressed in with vows,
Cannot endure the first assault of love?
We have had a radiant dream; we have beheld
The trellises and temples of the south
And wandered in the vineyards of the sun:--
'T is morning now; the vision fades away,
And we must face the barren norland hills.
LAUNCELOT.
And must this be?
GUENEVERE.
Nay, Launcelot, it is.
How shall we stand alone against the world?
LAUNCELOT.
More lonely in it than against it!
What's the world to us?
GUENEVERE.
The place in which we live.
We cannot slip it from us like a garment,
For it is like the air--if we should flee
To the remotest steppes of Tartary,
Arabia or the sources of the Nile,
Or that dim region lying in the west,
Where Brandan's holy ships found anchorage,
It still is there, nor can it be eluded
Save in the airless emptiness of death.
LAUNCELOT.
Say rather, like the miasmatic breath
Of swamps that swarm to rankness. In the clear
And unpolluted air of mountain-tops
Freedom and solitude companion. Oh,
Let the dense earth bring forth its venomous growths!
It cannot harm us on the heights.
GUENEVERE.
We must not
Attempt the ascent. The perils are too great
That ward the way.
LAUNCELOT.
What reck I of the perils
Between me and the graal of my desires?
GUENEVERE.
To plunge the land in war! To rend the kingdom!
LAUNCELOT.
You are worth all the kingdoms in the world.
GUENEVERE.
To drag our friends down with us in our fall!
LAUNCELOT.
We shall not fall. And what is friendship worth
That will not face adversity for us?
GUENEVERE.
We rend the holiest bond, the family.
LAUNCELOT.
We but destroy the false, build up the true.
GUENEVERE.
--Think of your childhood's home, your father's hearth,
Helen, your mother, at her household cares,
The sacred bond from which your life began,
Within whose circle boyhood grew to youth--
Knit by the gentle hand of ageless custom
And consecrate with immemorial rites.
LAUNCELOT.
I think of this; I, too, would have a home.
GUENEVERE.
You have the world; the family alone
Is woman's, it alone is her protection,
Her mission and her opportunity.
In it alone she lives, and she defends it,
Even when its knife is in her heart.
LAUNCELOT.
And I--
I, too, defend it, when it is a family,
As I would kneel before the sacred Host
When through the still aisles sounds the sacring-bell.
But if a jester strutted through the forms
And turned the holy Mass into a mock,
Would I still kneel, or would I rise in anger
And make an end of that foul mimicry?
GUENEVERE.
Believest thou, then, the power of the Church?
The Church would give our love an ugly name.
LAUNCELOT.
Faith, I believe and I do not believe.
The shocks of life oft startle us to thought,
Rouse us from acquiescence and reveal
That what we took for credence was but custom.
Though the priests be the channels of God's grace,
Yet otherwise they are but men; they err
As others, may mistake for falsehood truth,
And holiness for sin.--God help me, sweet,
I cannot reason it--I only know
I love you.
GUENEVERE.
You are Arthur's friend. Your love--
Stands this within the honor of your friendship?
LAUNCELOT.
Mother of God!--Have you no pity?
GUENEVERE.
I would I could be pitiful and yet do right.
Alas, how heavy--your tears move me more
Than all--(What am I saying? Dare I trust
So faint a heart? I must make turning back
Impossible.)--Best know the worst! I jested--
I--God!--I do not love you. Go! 'T was all
Mockery--wanton cruelty--what you will--lechery!--I--
(LAUNCELOT looks at her dumbly, then slowly turns to go. As he draws aside the curtains of the doorway:)
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!
LAUNCELOT.
What does the Queen desire?
GUENEVERE.
Oh, no, I am not the Queen--I am your wife!
Take me away with you! Let me not lie
To you, of all--My whole life is a lie.
To one, at least, let it be truth. I--I--
O Launcelot, do you not understand?--
I love you--oh, I cannot let you go.
LAUNCELOT.
I pray you do not jest a second time;
I scarce could bear it.--Yet your eyes speak true.
Tell me you speak the truth.
GUENEVERE.
I speak the truth!
Call me your wife!
LAUNCELOT.
My wife, my wife, my wife!
GUENEVERE.
Love, I will fly with thee where'er thou wilt.
LAUNCELOT.
Speak not of flight; I have played him false--the King,
My friend. I ne'er can wipe that smirch away
At least, I will not add a second shame
And blazon out the insult to the world.
GUENEVERE.
What I have given thee was ne'er another's.
How has another, then, been wronged?
LAUNCELOT.
What's done
Is done, nor right nor wrong, as help me heaven,
Would I undo it if I could. But more
I will not do. I will not be the Brutus
To stab with mine own hand my dearest friend.
It must suffice me that you love me, sweet,
And sometime, somewhere, somehow must be mine.
I know not--it may be some dim land
Beyond the shadows, where the King himself,
Still calling me his friend, shall place your hand
In my hand, saying--"She was always thine."
GUENEVERE.
I will do as thou wilt, in this and all things.
But oh, the weary days!
LAUNCELOT.
It is enough
To know thou lovest me--sometimes, perhaps--
Oh, I am but a man!--to feel as now
Thy cheek against my own.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, Launcelot,
Peredure is dead.
LAUNCELOT.
Thy brother?
GUENEVERE.
He is dead.
LAUNCELOT.
I do not wonder that you were distraught.
(Shouting, etc., without.)
GUENEVERE.
It is the silly rabble that toss up
Their caps for Arthur. He will soon be here,--
Though a king's progress is a tedious one.
I must go to get me ready for the pageant.
LAUNCELOT.
Be not afraid. The charge that's laid against us,
Cannot be certified by evidence.
GUENEVERE.
And if it were--why, then it were, and so
The burden of decision were removed.
Kiss me! Farewell, a little while, my love!
It is a woeful world, at best. Thank God
For love, even with its anguish!
LAUNCELOT.
Why, then it were!
Ay, even disgrace would be an ease of breath
After this tension of duplicity.
God help me, I am like a man aghast
Between a dragon and a basilisk,
Which one he fronts dilating as he stares
More horrid than the other. O mystery
Of Fate, that folds us with encircling gloom!
What issue sleeps for us in thy dark womb?
Oh, that I could weep
The copious blubber of a village maid,
Uncurbed by royal pride, or consciousness
That o'ermistrusts and will not slack the bit!
Oh, could I weep--and empty woe with weeping!
There is a swelling passion in my heart
Will split all yet. I cannot like a girl
Draw 't off in driblets. Oh, my blameless brother,
Undone for a guilty world! And that which led
To the discovery that was thy doom,
A plot born of a woman's hate for me
And of my reckless fate-contending love!
Oh, what a tangled anarchy is life!
If the rash Will strive in the helter-skelter
To weave for itself a little ordered space,
Its skilless touch pulls unexpected threads
That tighten to 'ts own strangling. Peredure
Is but the first. The implacable net is drawn
About the feet of all that love us. Bors--
Poor faithful, merry Dagonet--all who hold
To Launcelot's cause--must all these spend their hearts
That we may love? Do I love Launcelot?
Oh, if I loved him, could I draw him on
So to his own undoing? Shall his name
That even in the young April of his deeds
Greatens in splendor like the northering sun,
Be made a refuse for the ragman world
To fret and fumble with a prodding stick?
O God! Shall I uncage the captive wolves
Of war, to harry the whole land and rend
The offenceless kern, to give my sorrow ease?
It must not be. What right have I to love,
What right have I to joy, that should so play
The Tambourlaine and scourge so many woes
To drag its chariot like his captive kings?
It must not be. Oh, let me take an oath
Before high heaven! Launcelot, I must save thee!
Oh, heavy fate, to love and be a queen!
Ay, Peredure, I know it now--too late!
Had I but hearkened to your pleading foresight!
Oh, Peredure, my brother!
(Enter LAUNCELOT.)
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!
LAUNCELOT.
Dear heart!
GUENEVERE.
Whence come you?
LAUNCELOT.
Speakest thou so coldly?
I passed Sir Bors without and Dagonet;
They sent me hither, saying I should find
The Queen here. So, indeed, I do and not
The woman, not the eyes that met my eyes
With proud confession, not the lips that spoke
Quivering but dauntless, saying, "I love thee, Launcelot."
O Guenevere, hast thou forgot so soon
That thou canst speak with this mechanic voice
And look on me so vacantly?
GUENEVERE.
Forgot?
I never shall forget.
LAUNCELOT.
Then thou repentest.
Ay, now I see the longing in thy face
That thou hadst ne'er beheld me. Be it so.
I was a selfish monster when I thrust
My love into the forecourt of thy life. ...
And yet--you loved me once. And oh, those hours
When I could feel the warm breath from your lips
Creep o'er my cheek and mingle with my hair!
The sweet long hours whose lingering moments dripped
Like rhythmic water-drops into a pool
With silver parsimony of sweet sound
As if Time grudged each globule! Why, now I see
Tears in your eyes.
GUENEVERE.
O Launcelot, my king!
LAUNCELOT.
My own true wife!
GUENEVERE.
Do not call back that time
With any farewell cadence in your voice!
And oh, do not reproach yourself, my god,
For opening to me those golden doors!
We lived then.
LAUNCELOT.
There is honey on your lips
As on the Theban child's. I am the bees
That gather it--so.
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!--No, no!
I had forgot. Am I, then, like the rest?
Is there so much o' the woman in my veins
That resolution, buttressed in with vows,
Cannot endure the first assault of love?
We have had a radiant dream; we have beheld
The trellises and temples of the south
And wandered in the vineyards of the sun:--
'T is morning now; the vision fades away,
And we must face the barren norland hills.
LAUNCELOT.
And must this be?
GUENEVERE.
Nay, Launcelot, it is.
How shall we stand alone against the world?
LAUNCELOT.
More lonely in it than against it!
What's the world to us?
GUENEVERE.
The place in which we live.
We cannot slip it from us like a garment,
For it is like the air--if we should flee
To the remotest steppes of Tartary,
Arabia or the sources of the Nile,
Or that dim region lying in the west,
Where Brandan's holy ships found anchorage,
It still is there, nor can it be eluded
Save in the airless emptiness of death.
LAUNCELOT.
Say rather, like the miasmatic breath
Of swamps that swarm to rankness. In the clear
And unpolluted air of mountain-tops
Freedom and solitude companion. Oh,
Let the dense earth bring forth its venomous growths!
It cannot harm us on the heights.
GUENEVERE.
We must not
Attempt the ascent. The perils are too great
That ward the way.
LAUNCELOT.
What reck I of the perils
Between me and the graal of my desires?
GUENEVERE.
To plunge the land in war! To rend the kingdom!
LAUNCELOT.
You are worth all the kingdoms in the world.
GUENEVERE.
To drag our friends down with us in our fall!
LAUNCELOT.
We shall not fall. And what is friendship worth
That will not face adversity for us?
GUENEVERE.
We rend the holiest bond, the family.
LAUNCELOT.
We but destroy the false, build up the true.
GUENEVERE.
--Think of your childhood's home, your father's hearth,
Helen, your mother, at her household cares,
The sacred bond from which your life began,
Within whose circle boyhood grew to youth--
Knit by the gentle hand of ageless custom
And consecrate with immemorial rites.
LAUNCELOT.
I think of this; I, too, would have a home.
GUENEVERE.
You have the world; the family alone
Is woman's, it alone is her protection,
Her mission and her opportunity.
In it alone she lives, and she defends it,
Even when its knife is in her heart.
LAUNCELOT.
And I--
I, too, defend it, when it is a family,
As I would kneel before the sacred Host
When through the still aisles sounds the sacring-bell.
But if a jester strutted through the forms
And turned the holy Mass into a mock,
Would I still kneel, or would I rise in anger
And make an end of that foul mimicry?
GUENEVERE.
Believest thou, then, the power of the Church?
The Church would give our love an ugly name.
LAUNCELOT.
Faith, I believe and I do not believe.
The shocks of life oft startle us to thought,
Rouse us from acquiescence and reveal
That what we took for credence was but custom.
Though the priests be the channels of God's grace,
Yet otherwise they are but men; they err
As others, may mistake for falsehood truth,
And holiness for sin.--God help me, sweet,
I cannot reason it--I only know
I love you.
GUENEVERE.
You are Arthur's friend. Your love--
Stands this within the honor of your friendship?
LAUNCELOT.
Mother of God!--Have you no pity?
GUENEVERE.
I would I could be pitiful and yet do right.
Alas, how heavy--your tears move me more
Than all--(What am I saying? Dare I trust
So faint a heart? I must make turning back
Impossible.)--Best know the worst! I jested--
I--God!--I do not love you. Go! 'T was all
Mockery--wanton cruelty--what you will--lechery!--I--
(LAUNCELOT looks at her dumbly, then slowly turns to go. As he draws aside the curtains of the doorway:)
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!
LAUNCELOT.
What does the Queen desire?
GUENEVERE.
Oh, no, I am not the Queen--I am your wife!
Take me away with you! Let me not lie
To you, of all--My whole life is a lie.
To one, at least, let it be truth. I--I--
O Launcelot, do you not understand?--
I love you--oh, I cannot let you go.
LAUNCELOT.
I pray you do not jest a second time;
I scarce could bear it.--Yet your eyes speak true.
Tell me you speak the truth.
GUENEVERE.
I speak the truth!
Call me your wife!
LAUNCELOT.
My wife, my wife, my wife!
GUENEVERE.
Love, I will fly with thee where'er thou wilt.
LAUNCELOT.
Speak not of flight; I have played him false--the King,
My friend. I ne'er can wipe that smirch away
At least, I will not add a second shame
And blazon out the insult to the world.
GUENEVERE.
What I have given thee was ne'er another's.
How has another, then, been wronged?
LAUNCELOT.
What's done
Is done, nor right nor wrong, as help me heaven,
Would I undo it if I could. But more
I will not do. I will not be the Brutus
To stab with mine own hand my dearest friend.
It must suffice me that you love me, sweet,
And sometime, somewhere, somehow must be mine.
I know not--it may be some dim land
Beyond the shadows, where the King himself,
Still calling me his friend, shall place your hand
In my hand, saying--"She was always thine."
GUENEVERE.
I will do as thou wilt, in this and all things.
But oh, the weary days!
LAUNCELOT.
It is enough
To know thou lovest me--sometimes, perhaps--
Oh, I am but a man!--to feel as now
Thy cheek against my own.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, Launcelot,
Peredure is dead.
LAUNCELOT.
Thy brother?
GUENEVERE.
He is dead.
LAUNCELOT.
I do not wonder that you were distraught.
(Shouting, etc., without.)
GUENEVERE.
It is the silly rabble that toss up
Their caps for Arthur. He will soon be here,--
Though a king's progress is a tedious one.
I must go to get me ready for the pageant.
LAUNCELOT.
Be not afraid. The charge that's laid against us,
Cannot be certified by evidence.
GUENEVERE.
And if it were--why, then it were, and so
The burden of decision were removed.
Kiss me! Farewell, a little while, my love!
It is a woeful world, at best. Thank God
For love, even with its anguish!
LAUNCELOT.
Why, then it were!
Ay, even disgrace would be an ease of breath
After this tension of duplicity.
God help me, I am like a man aghast
Between a dragon and a basilisk,
Which one he fronts dilating as he stares
More horrid than the other. O mystery
Of Fate, that folds us with encircling gloom!
What issue sleeps for us in thy dark womb?
