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Read Ebook: Locrine: A Tragedy by Swinburne Algernon Charles
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Ebook has 581 lines and 10883 words, and 12 pages
MADAN.
Yea.
GUENDOLEN.
Yet--I may choose yet--nothing will I say More.
MADAN.
Choose, and have thy choice; it galls not me.
GUENDOLEN.
Son, son! thy speech is bitterer than the sea.
MADAN.
Yet, were the gulfs of hell not bitterer, thine Might match thy son's, who hast called my sire--Locrine - Thy lord, and lord of all this land--the king Whose name is bright and sweet as earth in spring, Whose love is mixed with Britain's very life As heaven with earth at sunrise--thou, his wife, Hast called him--and the poison of the word Set not thy tongue on fire--I lived and heard - Coward.
GUENDOLEN.
Thou liest.
MADAN.
If then thy speech rang true, Why, now it rings not false.
GUENDOLEN.
Thou art treacherous too - His heart, thy father's very heart is thine - O, well beseems it, meet it is, Locrine, That liar and traitor and changeling he should be Who, though I bare him, was begot by thee.
MADAN.
How have I lied, mother? Was this the lie, That thou didst call my father coward, and I Heard?
GUENDOLEN.
Nay--I did but liken him with one Not all unlike him; thou, my child, his son, Art more unlike thy father.
MADAN.
Was not then, Of all our fathers, all recorded men, The man whose name, thou sayest, is like his name - Paris--a sign in all men's mouths of shame?
GUENDOLEN.
Nay, save when heaven would cross him in the fight, He bare him, say the minstrels, as a knight - Yea, like thy father.
MADAN.
Shame then were it none Though men should liken me to him?
GUENDOLEN.
My son, I had rather see thee--see thy brave bright head, Strong limbs, clear eyes--drop here before me dead.
MADAN.
If he were true man, wherefore?
GUENDOLEN.
False was he; No coward indeed, but faithless, trothless--we Hold therefore, as thou sayest, his princely name Unprincely--dead in honour--quick in shame.
MADAN.
And his to mine thou likenest?
GUENDOLEN.
Thine? to thine? God rather strike thy life as dark as mine Than tarnish thus thine honour! For to me Shameful it seems--I know not if it be - For men to lie, and smile, and swear, and lie, And bear the gods of heaven false witness. I Can hold not this but shameful.
MADAN.
Thou dost well. I had liefer cast my soul alive to hell Than play a false man false. But were he true And I the traitor--then what heaven should do I wot not, but myself, being once awake Out of that treasonous trance, were fain to slake With all my blood the fire of shame wherein My soul should burn me living in my sin.
GUENDOLEN.
Thy soul? Yea, there--how knowest thou, boy, so well? - The fire is lit that feeds the fires of hell. Mine is aflame this long time now--but thine - O, how shall God forgive thee this, Locrine, That thou, for shame of these thy treasons done, Hast rent the soul in sunder of thy son?
MADAN.
My heart is whole yet, though thy speech be fire Whose flame lays hold upon it. Hath my sire Wronged thee?
GUENDOLEN.
Nay, child, I lied--I did but rave - I jested--was my face, then, sad and grave, When most I jested with thee? Child, my brain Is wearied, and my heart worn down with pain: I thought awhile, for very sorrow's sake, To play with sorrow--try thy spirit, and take Comfort--God knows I know not what I said, My father, whom I loved, being newly dead.
MADAN.
I pray thee that thou jest with me no more Thus.
GUENDOLEN.
Dost thou now believe me?
MADAN.
No.
GUENDOLEN.
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