Classic Poem

Scene . The Palace Court. The Queen speaking from the Battlements .

Cease — cease your torments! spare the sufferers
Scotchmen, not theirs the deed; — the crime was mine.
Mine is the glory.
Idle threats! I stand
Secure. All access to these battlements
Is barr'd beyond your sudden strength to force;
And lo! the dagger by which Fergus died!

Shame on ye, Scotchmen, that a woman's hand
Was left to do this deed! Shame on ye, Thanes,
Who with slave-patience have so long endured
The wrongs and insolence of tyranny!
Cowardly race! — that not a husband's sword
Smote that adulterous King! that not a wife
Revenged her own pollution; in his blood
Wash'd herself pure, and for the sin compell'd
Atoned by righteous murder! — O my God!
Of what beast-matter hast thou moulded them
To bear with wrongs like these? There was a time
When if the Bard had feign'd you such a tale,
Your eyes had throbb'd with anger, and your hand,
In honest instinct would have grasp'd the sword
O miserable men, who have disgraced
Your fathers, whom your sons must blush to name!

Ay, — ye can threaten me! ye can be brave
In anger to a woman! one whose virtue
Upbraids your coward vice; whose name will live
Honor'd and praised in song, when not a hand
Shall root from your forgotten monuments
The cankering moss. Fools! fools! to think that death
Is not a thing familiar to my mind;
As if I knew not what must consummate
My glory! as if aught that earth can give
Could tempt me to endure the load of life! —
Scotchmen! ye saw when Fergus to the altar
Led me, his maiden Queen. Ye blest me then,
I heard you bless me, — and I thought that Heaven
Had heard you also, and that I was blest;
For I loved Fergus. Bear me witness, God!
With what a heart and soul sincerity
My lips pronounced the unrecallable vow
That made me his, him mine; bear witness, Thou!
Before whose throne I this day must appear
Stain'd with his blood and mine! My heart was his, —
His in the strength of all its first affections.
In all obedience, in all love, I kept
Holy my marriage-vow. Behold me, Thanes!
Time hath not changed the face on which his eye
So often dwelt, when with assiduous care
He sought my love, with seeming truth, for one,
Sincere herself, impossible to doubt.
Time hath not changed that face! — I speak no now
With pride of beauties that will feed the worm
To-morrow; but with honest pride I say,
That if the truest and the purest love
Deserved requital, such was ever mine.
How often reeking from the adulterous bed
Have I received him! and with no complaint.
Neglect and insult, cruelty and scorn,
Long, long did I endure, and long curb down
The indignant nature.
Tell your countrymen,
Scotchmen, what I have spoken! Say to them
Ye saw the Queen of Scotland lift the dagger
Red from her husband's heart; that in her own
She plunged it.
Tell them also, that she felt
No guilty fear in death.