Till Scotland bend or break. King. bishop, Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends My Lord Arch- For the worshipped father of our com mon country, Do what thou wilt and what thou canst With contributions from the catholics, Upon the land, they stand us in small Methinks they scarcely can deserve our [Aside to COTTINGTON. It is enough to expect from these lean imposts That they perform the office of a Scourge, Without more profit. (Aloud.) Fines and confiscations, And a forced loan from the refractory city, fear. Strafford. Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest: With that, take all I held, but as in trust For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but This unprovided body for thy service, like me, Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before King. No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas! We should be too much out of love with Heaven, Did this vile world show many such as thee, Thou perfect, just, and honourable man' Will fill our coffers: and the golden Never shall it be said that Charles of Stripped those he loved for fear of those We must begin first where your Grace he scorns; leaves off. Nor will he so much misbecome his Gold must give power, or throne As to impoverish those who most adorn And best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford, Inclines me rather- Queen. ment ? Laud. The lesson to obey. And are they not mouth, Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt pre- The birth of one light breath? If they presenting them bitter physic the last Lucifer was the first republican. three posts "In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full, Shall sail round the world, and come back again: Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull, Queen. Is the rain over, sirrah? And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to morrow: And therefore never smile till you've done crying. Archy. But 'tis all over now: like And come back again when the moon the April anger of woman, the gentle is at full:" When, in spite of the Church, They will hear homilies of whatever length Or form they please. sky has wept itself serene. Queen. What news abroad? how looks the world this morning? Archy. Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow Cottington. So please your Majesty in the sky. Let your Majesty look at to sign this order For their detention. it, for "A rainbow in the morning Is the shepherd's warning;" and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast. King. The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy: and the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs. Queen. But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more. Archy. Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.-The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops, . . . and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven-like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet. Archy. Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty with out waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfthnight Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud-who would reduce a verdict of "guilty, death," by famine, Queen. if it were impregnable by composition— | sirrah? all impannelled against poor Archy for Archy. Who taught you this trash, A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.-But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and... until the top of the Tower. . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard trea sures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered. King. Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. Archy. Then conscience is a fool. I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death. Queen. Archy is shrewd and bitter. Archy. Like the season, so blow the winds.-But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre ? King. Vane's wits perhaps. Archy. Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes-the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass. Queen. Enough, enough! Go desire She place my lute, together with the Queen. My beloved lord, Have you not noted that the Fool of late Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears? What can it mean? I should be loth to think Some factious slave had tutored him. As in the imagery of summer clouds, And partly, that the terrors of the time Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits; And in the lightest and the least, may Would make it light and glorious as a Or I think worth acceptance at your Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded With red-hot iron on the cheek and And be imprisoned within Lancaster During the pleasure of the Court." Prisoner, Laud. sentence Should not be put into effect, now speak. Juxon. If you have aught to plead in mitigation, Speak. hands, Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment. Or earth be like a shadow in the light Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes His will whose will is power. Laud. Officer, take the prisoner from the bar, And be his tongue slit for his insolence. Bastwick. While this hand holds a pen Laud. Be his hands Stop! Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak No terror, would interpret, being dumb, With bleeding stumps might sign our Laud. Much more such " "mercy" among men would be, Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge Thus, my lords. If, Could suffer what I would inflict. like the prelates, I Were an invader of the royal power, Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, To cowls and robes of everlasting fire. I |