King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve Part 1

King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve; Laodice and Danae.

by Gordon Bottomley.

KING LEAR'S WIFE

_TO T. STURGE MOORE_

_THE years come on, the years go by, And in my Northern valley I, Withdrawn from life, watch life go by.

But I have formed within my heart A state that does not thus depart, Richer than life, greater than being, Truer in feeling and in seeing Than outward turbulence can know; Where time is still, like a large, slow And lofty bird that moves her wings In far, invisible flutterings To gaze on every part of s.p.a.ce Yet poise for ever in one place; Where line and sound, colour and phrase Rebuild in clear, essential ways The powers behind the veil of sense; While tragic things are made intense By pa.s.sion brooding on old dread, Till a faint light of beauty shed From night-enfolded agony Shews in the ways men fail and die The deeps whose knowledge never cloys But, striking inward without voice, Stirs me to tremble and rejoice._

_For twenty years and more than twenty I have found my riches and my plenty In poets dead and poets living, Painters and music-men, all giving, By life shut in creative deeds, Live force and insight to my needs; And long before I came to stand And hear your voice and touch your hand In that great treasure-house new-known, Where in their tower above the Town The masters of _The Dial_ sit, I loved in every word of it Your finely tempered verse that told me Of patient power, and still can hold me By its authentic divination Of the right knowledge of creation, Its grave, still beauty brought to day Tissue by tissue in nature's way, Petal by petal sure to shew Imagination's quiet glow That burns intenseliest at the core.

And through that twenty years and more I have been envious of your reach In speaking form and plastic speech, Your double energy of hand That puts two arts at your command While I must be content with one And feel true life but half begun; So that by graver as by pen You can create earth, stars, and men, And prove yourself by more than rime A prince of poets in our time._

_For these delights, and the delight Of converse in a Surrey night After the deep sound had lapsed by Of ocean-haunted poetry, For counsel and another zest Added to beauty's life-long quest I, in acknowledgment, would bring The homage of an offering; And, being too poor to reach the height Of my conception or requite Your greater giving equally, I search in my capacity And, by my self-appointed trade, Find something I myself have made, That here I offer. Let it be A token betwixt you and me Of admiration and loyalty._

February 29th, 1916.

PERSONS:

LEAR, King of Britain.

HYGD, his Queen.

GONERIL, daughter to Lear and Hygd.

CORDEIL, daughter to Lear and Hygd.

GORMFLAITH, waiting-woman to Hygd.

MERRYN, waiting-woman to Hygd.

A PHYSICIAN.

TWO ELDERLY WOMEN.

KING LEAR'S WIFE

_The scene is a bedchamber in a one-storied house. The walls consist of a few courses of huge irregular boulders roughly squared and fitted together; a thatched roof rises steeply from the back wall. In the centre of the back wall is a doorway opening on a garden and covered by two leather curtains; the chamber is partially hung with similar hangings st.i.tched with bright wools. There is a small window on each side of this door._

_Toward the front a bed stands with its head against the right wall; it has thin leather curtains hung by thongs and drawn back. Farther forward a rich robe and a crown hang on a peg in the same wall. There is a second door beyond the bed, and between this and the bed's head stands a small table with a bronze lamp and a bronze cup on it. Queen HYGD, an emaciated woman, is asleep in the bed; her plenteous black hair, veined with silver, spreads over the pillow. Her waiting-woman, MERRYN, middle-aged and hard-featured, sits watching her in a chair on the farther side of the bed. The light of early morning fills the room._

MERRYN.

MANY, many must die who long to live, Yet this one cannot die who longs to die: Even her sleep, come now at last, thwarts death, Although sleep lures us all half way to death....

I could not sit beside her every night If I believed that I might suffer so: I am sure I am not made to be diseased, I feel there is no malady can touch me-- Save the red cancer, growing where it will.

_Taking her beads from her girdle, she kneels at the foot of the bed._

O sweet Saint Cleer, and sweet Saint Elid too, s.h.i.+eld me from rooting cancers and from madness: s.h.i.+eld me from sudden death, worse than two death-beds; Let me not lie like this unwanted queen, Yet let my time come not ere I am ready-- Grant s.p.a.ce enow to relish the watchers' tears And give my clothes away and calm my features And streek my limbs according to my will, Not the hard will of fumbling corpse-washers.

_She prays silently._

_KING LEAR, a great, golden-bearded man in the full maturity of life, enters abruptly by the door beyond the bed, followed by the PHYSICIAN._

LEAR.

Why are you here? Are you here for ever?

Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is she?

MERRYN.

O, Sire, move softly; the Queen sleeps at last.

LEAR, _continuing in an undertone._ Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is Gormflaith?

It is her watch.... I know; I have marked your hours.

Did the Queen send her away? Did the Queen Bid you stay near her in her hate of Gormflaith?

You work upon her yeasting brain to think That she's not safe except when you crouch near her To spy with your dropt eyes and soundless presence.

MERRYN.

Sire, midnight should have ended Gormflaith's watch, But Gormflaith had another kind of will And ended at a G.o.dlier hour by slumber, A letter in her hand, the night-lamp out.

She loitered in the hall when she should sleep.

My duty has two hours ere she returns.

LEAR.

The Queen should have young women about her bed, Fresh cool-breathed women to lie down at her side And plenish her with vigour; for sick or wasted women Can draw a virtue from such abounding presence, When night makes life unwary and looses the strings of being, Even by the breath, and most of all by sleep.

Her slumber was then no fault: go you and find her.

PHYSICIAN.

It is not strange that a bought watcher drowses; What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep In the last days. When did this change appear?

MERRYN.

We shall not know--it came while Gormflaith nodded.

When I awoke her and she saw the Queen She could not speak for fear: When the rekindling lamp showed certainly The bed-clothes stirring about our lady's neck, She knew there was no death, she breathed, she said She had not slept until her mistress slept And lulled her; but I asked her how her mistress Slept, and her utterance faded.

She should be blamed with rods, as I was blamed For slumber, after a day and a night of watching, By the Queen's child-bed, twenty years ago.

LEAR.

She does what she must do: let her alone.

I know her watch is now: get gone and send her.

_MERRYN goes out by the door beyond the bed._

Is it a portent now to sleep at night?

What change is here? What see you in the Queen?

Can you discern how this disease will end?

PHYSICIAN.

Surmise might spring and healing follow yet, If I could find a trouble that could heal; But these strong inward pains that keep her ebbing Have not their source in peris.h.i.+ng flesh.

I have seen women creep into their beds And sink with this blind pain because they nursed Some bitterness or burden in the mind That drew the life, sucklings too long at breast.