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GRUACH AND BRITAIN'S 
 DAUGHTER 
 
POEMS AND PLAYS 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE GATE OF SMARAGDUS. 1904. 
 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. First Series. 1907. 
 CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY. Second Series. 1912. 
 A VISION OF GIORGIONE. 1910. 
 CONTRIBUTION'S TO AN ANNUAL OF NEW 
 
 POETRY. 1917. 
 KING LEAR'S WIFE AND OTHER PLAYS. 1920. 
 
GRUACH • AND • BRITAIN'S 
 DAUGHTER *V TWO PLAYS 
 BY • GORDON • BOTTOMLEY 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
THE BINDING OF THIS VOLUME IS FROM 
 A DESIGN BY MR. CHARLES RICKETTS 
 
 
 Copyrighted in U.S.A. 192 1 by Cordon BoltomUy. 
 
GRUACH 
 
 PLAY IN TWO SCENES 
 
TO C. H. S. AND C. S. R. 
 
 ]\T OW, when my life is more than half consumed, 
 J- V And my yet steady flame gathers its force 
 More to aspire before the vague, last flare 
 {That lightens nothing) gutters in the night-wind, 
 Upon the midway ridge of my short days 
 I turn; I would not ktimu what is to come, 
 Down the far slope of the withdrawing wave; 
 I would remain at this conspiring height, 
 Whose ujnuard motion seemed my own, and keep, 
 Keep mine the swift discoveries of life, 
 The passionate, the unexpected moments 
 That now, as I look back, are all I have, 
 All I have longed for, all I have to lose, 
 All, all I shall regret when I must leave them. 
 
 And first, after the daily use of love 
 That is not to be told, the common joy 
 Of life shared with the natural, earth-born forces, 
 I think of him who from Italian seed 
 Was born an English matt, him who renewed 
 By moody English ways, at English tension, 
 For English uuillumined hearts like mine, 
 The lost Italian vision, the passionate 
 Vitality of art more rich than life, 
 More real than the day's reality. 
 Before I knew his name and his great acts 
 Of true creation done on God's behalf, 
 Within himself the assurance of a God, 
 I lived in the stale darkness of my kind; 
 And it was his sole deed that I have known 
 The power of loveliness, the power of truth, 
 And of imagination that concentres 
 Life into more than one life ever gave. 
 By nameless lovers, lovers with great names, 
 By fabulous ladies dreamed and almost seen, 
 By Dante's lost love Beatrice and his own 
 2 
 
More wonderful and more desireable 
 Lost love Elizabeth, created once 
 For him, and once by him in recollection; 
 And by his rarer light; I learned to live. 
 
 The first amazement as of a spirit seen, 
 When in the arts that man has perfected 
 Beauty is known, is not maintained. The past 
 Must be resumed in each of us, to each 
 Deliver its attainment and its hope; 
 But every man to his own generation 
 Nearer approaches than to father or child, 
 And apprehends more intimately by it 
 The reality of vision and life; and it 
 More certainly divines the truth of him: 
 And so, when I had turned the last bright page 
 Of that dead painter of a keener life, 
 And felt that the dark mirror of his vision 
 Was broken, and knew I should not see again 
 Any new shape of that mysterious beauty 
 ( Which by a heart-ache still brings back my youth), 
 I kindled with more life because I came 
 On the same miracle of enhanced life 
 Continued and renewed in acts of yours. 
 
 Upon the Dial of the vanished Vale 
 
 Were counted chosen fortunate hours alone; 
 
 A nd there began the invention and the mood 
 
 That by the shapes of colour and air and light 
 
 Has made a life men might begin to-day, 
 
 Yet fit for a lovelier earth that is to be, 
 
 Out of the England that is here and now — 
 
 A region better than dreams, a dawn-lit state, 
 
 Wherein the daily Greece Theocritus 
 
 Through his half-open door in the same way 
 
 Shews us is mingled with succeeding life, 
 
 Siena, Avalon, and the Western place 
 
 Where Deirdre learned to move and look at men, 
 
And with the garden of living ladies where 
 
 A silvery bearer of a cyclamen 
 
 Looked at her painter and shall be remembered 
 
 With the Gioconda; and in this state I found 
 
 Assurance that romance is wisdom and truth. 
 
 And in those vanished hours of the rich Vale 
 
 One in whose birth England and Italy 
 
 A second time had kissed was also known; 
 
 One who received my first enchanter 's force 
 
 Of vision to create a keener life; 
 
 In whom the knowledge of materials 
 
 Leads to design as form leads into colour. 
 
 Wherever human days and acts have burned 
 
 By breeding and great race to salient height 
 
 Of suffering or rapture or quivering 
 
 Domination they are subject to his mitid: 
 
 He has made manifest the shape of Silence: 
 
 By beings that never were, centaur and sphinx-, 
 
 He has made clear the composition of life, 
 
 The nature of vitality : and by him 
 
 I have understood that I desire from art 
 
 And from creation not repeated things 
 
 Of every day, not the mean content 
 
 Or discontent of average helpless souls, 
 
 Not passionate abstraction of loveliness, 
 
 But unmatched moments and exceptional deeds 
 
 And all that cannot happen every day 
 
 And rare experience of earth's chosen men 
 
 In which I cannot, by my intermitting 
 
 And narrow powers, share unless they are held 
 
 Sublimated and embodied in beauty. 
 
 Dear Masters, in the acknowledgement of debt 
 There may be grace; but not enough for payment. 
 I write your names before this meditation 
 On an old theme, a birthright of our race, 
 Because I have put therein all that is mine; 
 And so I give it to you, as I would give 
 4 
 
All that is mine to you, recognisance 
 Of what I owe and have no means to pay. 
 Yon love the arts so well that yoit preserve, 
 Within your treasure-house that seems to rise 
 In clarity and in tranquillity 
 Above the impermanence of time, true works 
 That still are less than those you do yourselves . 
 Content me by receiving this among them 
 For your own sake and that of certain dead — 
 And, most, for the two friends of Pay-agon 
 Who sought perfection and achieved far more; 
 And by my poem's admittance recognise 
 The duty that I offer, I too your friend. 
 
 August 1 6th, 19 1 9. 
 
PERSONS: 
 
 Conan, Thane of Fortingall. 
 
 An Envoy of the King of Scotland. 
 
 Domhnal, a steward. 
 
 Two Serving-Men. 
 
 A Boy. 
 
 Morag, The Lady of Fortingall, Conan's mother. 
 
 Fern, her daughter. 
 
 Gruach, her niece. 
 
 Marget. 
 
 Two Young Serving-Women. 
 
 A Kitchen-Girl. 
 
 The scene is laid in Scotland in the early Middle- 
 Ages. 
 
GRUACH 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 The scene is the hall of a small black stone castle 
 in the North of Scotland. In the back wall are 
 round-arched folding doors to the right, above 
 which a large bell hangs; to the left is a narrow, 
 tall, round-topped doorway of a staircase that 
 curves upward out of sight. High above these 
 doors an arcade of short thin pillars and smalt, 
 round-topped arches runs from left to right. 
 In the right wall, toward the back, is a low 
 doorway of a descending stair; along this wall, 
 from front to back, stands a heavy table with 
 accompanying benches. In the left wall is a 
 stone fireplace with pillared cowl; a log fire 
 burns on the hearth, and two lighted torches 
 are set in rings that project from the wall 
 above; there is a curtained recess between the 
 fireplace and the back wall. 
 
 Morag, the Lady of Fortingall, a gaunt 
 old woman, sits in a great chair at the far side 
 of the hearth, warming her hands and listening 
 to Domhnal, her steward, an old man who 
 stands near. Conan, her son, the Thane of 
 Fortingall, sits at the near side of the hearth 
 in another chair, averted from her, whetting a 
 hunting spear with a small stone. In front of 
 the fire, but at some little distance from it, 
 Fern, her daughter, sits on a stool, stitching 
 7 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 at a heavy -white robe covered with a meander- 
 ing, close pattern in gold: the robe is long and 
 ample and spreads over an empty stool that 
 stands still further from the fire. 
 
 DOMHNAL. 
 
 THE meat is killed: the veal is blooded: the 
 trout are caught. 
 Lambs are too young to kill, so four were needed. 
 The mead-vats are well filled. 
 And now the women make ready to bake all 
 night. . . . 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Then stop such waste of fire : send to the village 
 
 And tell the bonders' wives that every house 
 
 Must send a basketful of loaves at dawn 
 
 For their lord's wedding-feast. What else is to do? 
 
 DOMHNAL. 
 
 Before we sleep the stables should be garnished 
 For the guests' horses: some ride early, and some 
 Ride earlier : to-morrow will be too late, 
 And we must work with torches. . . . 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Waste, waste, and never any forethought is here. 
 Let one sit up till midnight: then the moon 
 Will join him and work with him, and save the 
 torch. 
 
 DOMHNAL. 
 
 The bridal chamber is arrayed and ready ; 
 New rushes mixed with lavender are strewn there ; 
 But Marget bids me say she waits to know 
 How many chambers for the morrow's guests 
 8 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 She must prepare, and when you will give out 
 The linen for the beds. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 When there is April weather and a moon 
 
 Our neighbours will not think of sleeping here. 
 
 They will ride home. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 Mother, we shall be scorned in all the glens 
 If high-born women are sent out from our gate 
 To ride in festal clothes put on to grace us 
 Across Sithchallion on a frosty night, 
 Or the Black Mountain. 
 
 Morag, to Domhnal. 
 Our guests will all ride home. 
 Bar the great door for the night when you go 
 down. 
 
 Domhnal, hesitantly. 
 The Lady Gruach . . . 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Is she still out? Then leave it. 
 Domhnal makes an obeisance and goes 
 out by the low doorway in the right 
 wall. 
 What kind of half man have I borne and suckled 
 Who lets his bride upon his wedding-eve 
 Go out alone and loiter in secret glades 
 And lonely uplands? Son, will you let your wife 
 Run wild before the wind of her will like this? 
 
 Conan. 
 
 My cousin Gruach, when she first grew tall, 
 Forbade that I should follow her, or watch 
 9 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Toward what refuges of forest and sky 
 Unbearable moods might take her; and she said 
 She needed that escape from kinsfolk's minds. 
 So why should I haunt her last free maiden night 
 More than a hundred nights of other Springs? 
 When a most beautiful woman can be wearied 
 And burdened by a girl's dearest delight 
 Of stitching herwedding-kirtle and with spun gold 
 Adding glory to glory for her own shoulders, 
 Will sight of a patient bridegroom bring her ease? 
 
 Fern. 
 
 She wrought all day, till, when the evening sun 
 Was in the elder-tree and a thrush sang there, 
 She asked me if I could sit still for ever, 
 And said that she must go. 
 You are not wise, Mother, to marry her now: 
 Her thoughts are not with us, she is not ours. 
 Last night, soon after midnight, I awoke 
 To a sense of light, to a light held in the air: 
 She stood above me like a chill, pale pillar. 
 I sat up, but she did not notice me: 
 Her eyes were fixed on something above my brow. 
 " Will you not let me alone?" she said so softly 
 It drew my tears: " I am not yours" she said. 
 " I shall be taken from you if you persist; 
 I cannot think myself into your lives 
 For ever; I cannot breathe your little air. 
 Where is the door? There must be a way out : 
 Will you not shew it to me? " 
 That pitiful, unnatural gentleness 
 Changed her to something so unlike herself 
 I shivered and could not stop: and when she left me 
 I dared not follow or move, for I had heard 
 That if sleep-walkers are wakened they may die. 
 10 
 
GRUACH 
 
 I found her lying uncovered on her bed 
 
 In the early morning ; she knew not why, she said, 
 
 For she had never left it in the night. 
 
 Disquiet that thus lights up dark places of being 
 
 And parts the uneasy body from the mind 
 
 Is surely a dreadful force best left unstirred : 
 
 Is it not then a cause 
 
 That you should more examine what you are 
 
 doing? 
 She never wandered in the night before. 
 
 Morag, who has been counting intently on her 
 
 fingers and gazing before her. 
 Can two young women of blood be afraid of 
 
 marriage? 
 Her brooding and your shyness are too much nxed 
 On the occurrences of a single day. 
 Whatever joy or sorrow the morrow stirs, 
 The day after to-morrow there will return 
 This old still life of duty, and Gruach next 
 Will weep that nothing is changed. Her mother s 
 
 lands . . 
 
 March with your father's: they must be joined 
 
 again. 
 Her father was of dead King Kenneth s breed, 
 And though her line is dispossessed, she is yet 
 Royal in some men's minds, heiress of peril 
 But also of great chance ; and this my son 
 Shall take and make his own. 
 
 Conax. . 
 
 Yes, mother. My cousin Gruach is my friend: 
 She knows I shall not be too stern or strict, 
 And that I understand her uneasy ways 
 And how to let her alone when she's unhappy. 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Since all her hunted kindred were put down 
 And we have sheltered her, her fief and ours 
 Have been so fortunately governed as one 
 That this must be continued. And, sister Fern, 
 If her fair virginal life is in some danger 
 From men of the new king's house, is it not wise 
 She should be covered by our quieter name, 
 Disguised in our reputed loyalty? 
 You are too eager in your sympathy 
 To see my mother's wisdom. . . . 
 
 The great door opens from without. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Hush, Conan; she is here. Be short with her. 
 
 Gruach enters and closes the door behind 
 her. She is tall and large-framed, 
 with firm, soft contours and features 
 and a calm expression: she moves 
 and speaks with unconscious deliber- 
 ateness: her thick sleek yellow hair 
 falls on each side of her face and is 
 bunched at intervals with knots of 
 green ribbon: she carries a great 
 tangle of Spring wild flowers in the 
 lap of her green gown caught up with 
 one hand. Morag continues. 
 
 Girl, you are out too late: look better to it. 
 
 Y«our kirtle is wet:- yettr shoes- are dean: you 
 have been barefoot. 
 
 A barefoot bride is our shame. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Will you still chide me? It is my last night. 
 
 Yes, yes, chide me once more, tell me my faults, 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 And satisfy your instinct; for to-morrow 
 I shall become a wedded woman like you, 
 And wedded women take each other's part. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 Supper-time is long past: we did not wait. 
 Tell Ferdan he may set your supper now. 
 Where have you been so long? 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I cannot eat to-night: let that pass too. 
 I went to lose myself; I found the Spring. 
 See, how a little sweetness has beguiled me: 
 These foolish things looked up at me. . . . 
 
 She spills her lap-full of flowers over 
 Fern's embroidery. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 O, cousin, you hurt — your carelessness will not 
 
 count 
 How much still love I have put into your gown. 
 Green sap and petal dust will stain it for ever. 
 The tissue was pure; look here, and here, and be 
 
 sorry. 
 
 Gruach, bitterly. 
 
 Ah, nothing can mar the gown of a happy bride. 
 I can only wear it once ; it is fresh enough for that ; 
 And yellow and yellow on gold will never show. 
 I hate all yellow things, 
 
 And most the yellowness of Springtide life — 
 Yellow and yellow, cowslip, crocus and primrose ; 
 Daffodil and jasmine, yellow and yellow. 
 These commoners of Spring put me in mind 
 13 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 That now the darker flower which matches me 
 In loneliness, a purple hellebore, 
 Should also have returned to Glen of Shadows. 
 I came through Kestrel Wood and over the ridge, 
 Longing for it as I have longed for a friend; 
 But, though I have fostered it year after year, 
 At last it has not come to me with Spring. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 Will you never, never forget the dreadful flower 
 Which in our childhood made me sick with fear? 
 You loved it for that fear. 
 It is the very colour of poison and sin, 
 Of bruises and dead men's lips. Why will you 
 seek it? 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 For its sullen, angry beauty and evil intent. 
 
 I love to feel it would kill me if it could, 
 
 And that I need not let it unless I wish. 
 
 When a fierce bird is beautiful it is then 
 
 More beautiful by its fierceness; and that rare 
 
 flower 
 Is thus more beautiful by its wickedness. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Come, bride in the bud, you are in my care to- 
 night; 
 
 You must hasten to your chamber and change 
 your skirts, 
 
 That are wet half way to the knee, or the wife's 
 new wisdom 
 
 Will not preserve you from too much fever to- 
 morrow. 
 
 14 
 
GRUACH 
 
 Fern, breaking the thread with which she has been 
 
 stitching. 
 Stay, cousin. Your gown is finished; take it with 
 
 you. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Sweet cousin, I have been wayward and unkind 
 To leave you alone to labour on this monotony; 
 Let it remain a moment until I have changed, 
 I will finish my side as well. 
 
 Fern. It is finished. 
 
 Gruach, kneeling by Fern impulsively. 
 
 You darling workfellow and playfellow, 
 
 And motherkin and rosy bedfellow 
 
 Of long ago, pardon my little hard heart. 
 
 You take our frets and burdens on yourself, 
 
 And never tell us until we are too late 
 
 For everything except to be forgiven. 
 
 I wish you could so lighten all my task: 
 
 Your love brings strength, and it will be your 
 
 love 
 That presses and nestles about me when I wear it. 
 When I have stript myself to-morrow night 
 It shall be cherished unblemished for your bridal. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 To-morrow I follow a bride for the third time; 
 And " Thrice a bridesmaid and never a bride " 
 say gossips. 
 
 Gruach starts abruptly to her feet, and, 
 stuffing the golden gown into a tight 
 bundle under her arm, goes to the 
 staircase. 
 
 15 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Wild thing, what have I said to grieve you now? 
 You are crushing it; you are cruel to crush it; 
 
 cruel. 
 It will only look like dirty linen now. 
 
 Gruach, turning at the foot of the stair. 
 It is too heavy: it is as heavy as fetters: 
 Its weight will sleek it when I put it on. 
 And none will want to wear it after me. 
 
 She disappears at the turn of the stair: 
 
 presently she passes from left to right 
 
 within the arcade above. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 I had better leave my door ajar to-night. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 She will lie still to-night: she has tired herself. 
 
 It is over: she is spent: she will submit. 
 
 She can do nothing more before to-morrow; 
 
 And when to-morrow is here she must go forward 
 
 From station to station of hallowing and lost 
 
 hopes, 
 Checked by the guests' cold eyes if she would 
 
 double. 
 And no one will come here who would listen to 
 
 her. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 She could only tell of me that I would love her 
 And be her very sister. But no one will come. 
 The bell over the door sounds once, a deep 
 sonorous note. The women look at 
 each other. Again it sounds once. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Who rides so late? 
 
 16 
 
GRUACH 
 Fern. Surely wedding guests. 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 Nay, there is but one horse: I heard its feet 
 While Gruach was saying something just now. 
 Domhnal enters by the door on the right 
 and opens the great door. 
 
 "The King's Envoy, outside. 
 I ride in the King's name: in the King's name 
 I require men's service. Whose is this strong 
 house? 
 
 BUJMHNAL. 
 
 This is the house of the Thane of Fortingall. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I ride in the King's name on an errand of weight : 
 
 I ask the Thane of Fortingall for a man 
 
 To find me the speediest road to Inverness. 
 
 DOMHNAL. 
 
 You are far from any road to Inverness. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Then bring me to your lord. 
 
 Domhnal opens the door wider. There 
 enters a handsome hawk-faced young 
 man zvith a fighter's month and jaw. 
 He wears a leathern riding-dress : in 
 the front of his cap a purple fiozver is 
 fastened. 
 
 Domhnal, approaching Conan. 
 Sir, a man of the King's asks speech with you. 
 He goes out to the right as Conan comes 
 forward to meet the Envoy. 
 
 17 c 
 
GRUACH 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 You are belated, Sir: 
 
 Your horse has foundered, or you have missed 
 your way? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I am an Envoy, Thane, of my great kinsman 
 Duncan, the King of Scotland, of all Scotland, 
 To Thorfinn, the Jarl of Caithness, a threatening 
 
 man. 
 I ought to be in Inverness with dawn, 
 But twilight overtook me in strange country. 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 You have ridden a county wide of your straight 
 
 way; 
 But every Northerly track will take you there, 
 And the full moon will serve you many hours 
 If you push on at once. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 The wind has veered, good Thane, to the North 
 
 again ; 
 The mounting snow-packs clot in the steely sky; 
 Your moon is buried; young Spring will die of 
 
 exposure. 
 This is no night to ride in, no light to ride in, 
 When the rider is lost already. 
 I must desire your courtesy and duty 
 To lodge my horse and me till morning comes. 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 I could have wished it so ... . Yet on this eve .... 
 Our attention lies elsewhere .... There are other 
 
 guests .... 
 The occasion is not common .... 
 1 8 
 

 G R U A C H 
 
 Morag, who has been watching the Envoy anx- 
 iously. 
 
 My son forgets : 
 
 When the King asks, it is our right to give. 
 
 'You come, young sir, on the edge of a bustling 
 hour 
 
 Of some festivity, that already checks 
 
 Our poor ability and exercise 
 
 Of hospitality: at dawn more guests 
 
 Need undivided honour, but until" tken 
 
 What we can give is yours. 
 
 Is great news in the bud that you ride so hard? 
 
 Such urgency might mean some vile revolt 
 
 Threatens King Duncan's blessed, heart-easing 
 peace? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I go to tell Caithness that the~Kmg's wife 
 Has borne a son, and to require of him 
 An oath of loyalty to the child Malcolm. 
 His disaffection has not prospered lately, 
 He is bruised and in recoil, and it is thought 
 That if he is confirmed in what he holds 
 He will consent to grant to a helpless child 
 A word he is too sore to speak for a king. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 Do you believe he will? 
 
 Envoy. Not I. 
 
 Morag. Nor I. 
 
 Yet this child's weight may hold the King's 
 
 throne firm. 
 I trust our lady, the Queen, is well recovered. 
 ~ i9 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 It is all men's grief that she is not recovered. 
 
 She lies most piteously indifferent 
 
 To life and child : she wastes, she is almost white : 
 
 She cannot mount the throne-steps. Her leech 
 
 says 
 She cannot safely bear another child. 
 
 Con an, softly to Fern, as she gathers together her 
 
 embroidery implements. 
 Tell Gruach there 's a King's man in the house : 
 Bid her keep to her chamber until he is gone. 
 
 Morag. 
 
 I never saw her: she is not one of us. 
 
 Her foreign breed is plainly too light and poor 
 
 To make a Scotish mother: a Scotish King 
 
 Should wed in his own mountains, where the 
 
 women 
 Are prideful and hard and quickened. I have 
 
 heard 
 She has some beauty and birth ; but can a stranger 
 Bear a right king for us? 
 
 Envoy. She is a most sweet lady, 
 
 So excellent in steadfastness and grace 
 That she is fit to be a Scotish woman 
 And Queen of Scotish men. 
 
 Conan, softly to Fern. Go: go. 
 
 Envoy, continuing. She is tall, 
 
 And moves as if she walked in her own mountains ; 
 
 20 
 
GRUACH 
 
 She is gleaming pale, a daughterof snow-lipt seas, 
 
 A golden lady .... 
 
 He falters and pauses, his eyes fixed on 
 the staircase arch, 7vhereGRVACH has 
 appeared. She is zvearing the zvhite 
 and gold gown; her hair is knotted 
 up about her ears and covered with a 
 narrow, white-flowered veil of gold 
 tissue held in place by a flashing 
 circlet and falling among the folds of 
 her train. As she stands on the first 
 step, her eyes fixed on the Envoy, the 
 gold of her gown flickers in the waver- 
 ing torchlight, so that she seems to hover 
 in a light of her own by contrast zvith 
 the moving shadows of the gloomy hall 
 and the sombre apparel of the others. 
 Fern, who has started to her feet at 
 Conan's second bidding, meets her at 
 the foot of the stair. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 Cousin, what have you done — 
 
 You have worn it too soon, you are fey; 
 
 You will bring ill-fortune on us. . . . 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Lady, I see that I must be unwelcome, 
 
 And that you are ready for friends, not strangers, 
 
 now. 
 I am urged to this intrusion by my service, 
 Which is the King's, and the strict terms of it. 
 Your house-folk have received me ; do not rebuke 
 
 them — 
 I have laid the King's will heavily on them— 
 21 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 B ut add your kindness to their tolerance 
 O f my unpardoned coming. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 My lord, in that you are come, you are well come. 
 
 I am not mistress here until to-morrow; 
 
 Yet, if I may, I will add my share of grace 
 
 To greet you earnestly, as I should for a king. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Lady, I thank you. I. . . . 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I am unfortunate to have missed your entrance: 
 
 I have not heard your name. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I am nephew and next of kin to the Thane of 
 
 Glamis, 
 Old Sinel, the King's cousin: Macbeth is my 
 
 name. 
 
 Gruach, to Morag. 
 
 I knew there was a quality in this knight: 
 
 We are required to lodge it suitably. 
 
 The chamber-woman is idle and sluggish again ; 
 
 There is not one guest-room swept or curtained 
 
 >' et ' 
 Although my meinie of maidens should come soon 
 
 To change their gowns there. Would it not be 
 
 well 
 
 To put him into the bridal-chamber to-night? 
 
 None other is ready, none is fragrant enough: 
 
 I have looked at it but now, it is strange and fair. 
 
 Marget shall deck it anew ere the feast is over; 
 
 And I'll array for church in my old cell. 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Morag, dryly, and bowing curtly to the Envoy. 
 A bride must have her way. 
 
 Conan, to the Envoy. 
 
 What have you done with your horse? Where is 
 it now? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 At the ring in your outer gate. 
 
 Conan. 
 
 I will send a man to stable it. 
 
 Envoy. , . . 
 
 Your pardon: I must go down to my patient 
 
 friend ; 
 
 Or his nut-brown eyes will not meet mine to- 
 morrow, 
 
 Our journey will be longer. 
 
 Conan. . , 
 
 I'll go with you: you do not know the stable. 
 Mother, shall I unlock the oat-bin for him? 
 
 He takes the torch from one of the rings 
 in the left wall. 
 
 I will go before you. 
 
 s He opens the door. 
 
 Will you come with me now? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I thank you, Thane, and follow. 
 
 J They go out. 
 
 Conan, outside. 
 A sudden frost and a hard. 
 23 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 The sweat in your horse's coat will be like chain- 
 mail. 
 What kind of man are you, 
 To leave a good horse out in a night like this, 
 And call yourself his friend? 
 
 The great door closes behind them. 
 Gruach lias remained standing motion- 
 lessly, facing the place whence the 
 Envoy spoke to her, her eyes dmvn- 
 cast, her face tranquil as if she is 
 inwardly absorbed in an entrancing 
 thought. 
 Morag approaches her. 
 
 MORAG. 
 
 The wife of Fortingall will take her place, 
 Will she? But when she does she shall feel sharply 
 The wife of Fortingall must keep her place, 
 And leaveher lord to welcomehandsome strangers 
 And dangerous unknown farers in the dark. 
 A woman wears her wedding-gown but once, 
 And there 's a fate in airing it too soon ; 
 The mocking mischief of your changeling's heart 
 May well have wrought that when you strip to- 
 night 
 You stripthepride of being the Lady of Fortingall. 
 Yet you must doff it now, on the instant: go: 
 Get you to bed and hide: 
 The stranger must not see those eyes again. 
 He does not hunt you, or suspect your birth ; 
 But if he remembers you by seeing too long 
 Your noticeable clothing and keen gaze 
 He may ask questions about you. Go, I say. 
 
 Turning to Fern. 
 Daughter, tell Ferdan to bring food and mead — 
 2 4 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Not the old mead — for the young knight's even- 
 ing meal. 
 But, no; I must go myself or the kitchen-wenches 
 Will send up wedding-meats to save themselves 
 The grievance of late work. 
 
 She goes out by the lozv door to the right. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 Dear cousin, will you not retire 
 
 Before she can return? 
 
 Gruach, quietly and unmoving. 
 Did you speak to me? 
 
 Fern. 
 
 My mother wishes us to go : 
 We are up too late even now. 
 Think of what the dawn will bring. 
 
 Gruach, still quietly. 
 
 He is the most beautiful man I have seen in all 
 my life. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 How can you say such a thing? 
 How wicked you must be: I am afraid of you. 
 Think what you owe to Conan: if Conan heard 
 He might forget the knight is his first guest. 
 
 Gruach, raising her eyes, but still quietly. 
 Conan could not get near him: he would kill 
 Conan. 
 
 Fern. , 
 
 He is a noble man, and very fair. 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 I wish he would not go away so soon : 
 Something rejoices in me while I watch him. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Well, then, grave gentle Fern, he shall not go. 
 
 I'll bid him to my marriage, and maybe 
 
 He shall hand you to church. 
 
 Fern, stooping. 
 
 Look, look; this little flower was in his cap 
 When he came in ; he doffed it to you alone, 
 It must have fallen then : you never saw it. 
 
 Gruach, suddenly alert. 
 
 His flower? It is my colour : give it to me. 
 
 Fern, kissing the flower she has picked up. 
 
 No. 
 
 I do what is asked of me each hour of life, 
 
 And you all take all I give, and never notice 
 
 That I am ever the one who must stand aside ; 
 
 And in their turn your children will assume 
 
 I am the one who foregoes, who does not count: 
 
 I shall have nought of my own when I am old. 
 
 But I'll not give you this. 
 
 Gruach, seizing Fern's wrist and twisting it. 
 
 But I will have it. 
 
 Fern. O, you hurt, you hurt: 
 
 Let me alone. 
 
 Gruach. Not till you throw it away. 
 
 26 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Fern. 
 
 O! O! Oh! Oh . . . h! Soul of a wolf, take it. 
 She drops the flower: Gruach releases 
 her and stoops to it. Fern returns 
 to her stool by the fire and seats her- 
 self with her back to Gruach, chafing 
 her injured -wrist and pressing it to 
 her, her shoulders twitching as if 
 with insupportable pain. 
 
 Gruach, k is sing the flower. 
 
 Thou thing of tender substance and silent life, 
 
 The spirit of thy softness enters me 
 
 When surfaces of lips and fingers meet 
 
 Thy filmy stillnesses; I fear to press 
 
 My longing to thee lest I interrupt 
 
 The life I'ld fix for ever with my touch. 
 
 She fastens the flower in the lacing of her 
 bodice below her throat. 
 Lie there ; move with my life-breath ; ah, look up 
 And breathe again to me his earlier warmth, 
 As if the vital tremor of his person 
 Mixed with my heat that veins thy texture now. 
 Thou hast been set above his brow; sink down, 
 Bring down to me his head in here, in here. 
 
 She presses her hands to her bosom. 
 
 The great door opens. Conan enters with 
 the torch and, crossing the hall, re- 
 places it in its ring. 
 
 j Conan. 
 
 The stable-knaves have waited for no moon : 
 The stalls are trimmed, the bracken is changed 
 
 \ already. 
 
 27 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Fern, recovering herself 'with difficulty. 
 Where is our guest/ 
 
 Conan. He may come whenever he chooses. 
 
 The Envoy enters by the great door and 
 closes it behind him. 
 
 ; Gruach. 
 My lord Macbeth, I trust my cousin has found 
 A lodging for your horse that is to your mind — 
 One worthy of a life that has your love 
 And bears a precious burden, a king's message. 
 Why do you gaze on me so steadfastly, 
 As if I am not here? 
 
 Envoy. It is your flower: 
 
 A spae-wife under a riven, star-lit fir 
 
 Gave one to me as I rode out from Scone: 
 
 She said it opened from a root of death, 
 
 And that it should bring to me some kind of 
 
 fortune. 
 1 flew it in my cap for death to see 
 And take a challenge from; and then forgot it 
 Somewhere upon my way. . . . 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I found it in the rushes on the floor. 
 Its colour spoke to my heart, I put it on : 
 But let me be your spae-wifeandbringyou fortune. 
 She loosens the flower. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 My flower has found its fortune: let it remain. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I have no fortune; I come of a root of death, 
 
 2S 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Like would kill like; you must take your fortune 
 from me. 
 
 Con an has been watching uneasily for an 
 opportunity to intervene. Gruach 
 holds out the flower to the Envoy : 
 as their hands meet and linger on it 
 Morag enters from the right, followed 
 by a serving-man bearing a plate of 
 food, utensils, a cup and a flagon. 
 
 Morag, pointing to the table. 
 
 Put- it -down there: hasten your fellows to bed. 
 
 He obeys and goes out to the right. Morag 
 turns to the Envoy. 
 It is late, young lord ; my house and I are ashamed 
 You have stood so long in our gates without rest 
 
 or food : 
 If you will partake such food as the hour affords, 
 It is set here for you to honour us. 
 You must pardon us that we do not sit with you; 
 A long and toilsome day of happiness 
 Begins for us ere daylight; and my slow hands 
 Must minister to the bride before she sleeps. 
 A bride who overslept would be a jest, 
 When more new things than a girl has had in a 
 
 lifetime 
 Are there, to be had for the putting on; so now 
 We must withdraw too soon for courtesy. 
 Dear niece, go you before, and -I will bring 
 My neck-chains, brooches and pins, the linen, 
 
 the shoes, 
 And a cloak to outshine your gown. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I give you good night, my lord. 
 29 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 I am to be made a bride to-morrow, my lord : 
 
 A bride claims happiness from every quarter, 
 
 And I shall be the happier 
 
 If you will tarry among my bridal guests, 
 
 And follow me to church, and return here. 
 
 My husband will go hunting after the service. . . . 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 Nay, cousin, the day after. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I ask your pardon, my lord, the day after; 
 
 That is a day the better 
 
 If you abide with us and ride with him. 
 
 He has whetted his spears and paunchers all this 
 
 day, 
 AndofTersthemforthecourtesy of your usage. . . . 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 Cousin, not the old spear with the bronze blade. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 If you can well endure our wilding pleasures. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I could not slight the hospitality 
 
 Of such a day 1 : I thank you for your leave 
 
 To ride with you to church. 
 
 I shall delay so far. . . . 
 
 A slight pause. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 You are good, my lord. Good-night. 
 SO 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 God find you a fair awakening. 
 
 Gruach passes out of sight up the stair. 
 Domhnal enters from the right, fastens 
 the great door, crosses at the back to 
 the foot of the stair, and stands at the 
 far side of it. He is followed by two 
 serving-men, a boy, an old zvoman 
 (Marget), and two sturdy young 
 women; they move quickly and ascend 
 the stair in turn. When the last has 
 disappeared a lanky girl enters in the 
 wake of the others, moving awkwardly 
 in slatternly outgrown clothes, rubbing 
 her eyes, and snivelling. Domhnal 
 motions to her to hasten : she stumbles 
 up the stair. The whole train is seen 
 to pass behind the high arcade from 
 left to right. Domhnal turns to 
 follow. 
 
 MORAG. 
 
 Steward, two hours before the first false light 
 
 The men must set the long hall-tables up, 
 
 The women must have the seething-pots in steam. 
 
 DOxMHNAL, making a reverence. 
 Our lady's will shall be done. 
 
 He passes out of sight up the stair. 
 
 Morag, to the Envoy. 
 A bride has privileges, lord Macbeth, 
 To be much considered, and even more indulged: 
 We should accept her wishes at this time, 
 And I am grieved there is no chamber arrayed 
 3i 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 For any guest yet, and that there is no place 
 Unspoken for at the bride's board to-morrow. 
 We must, with true unwillingness, leave you here 
 Until the time for your going ; the house is yours 
 In our intention; let not our imperfection— 
 That is of the hour, not of our hearts— obscure 
 Our watchful duty done to our King. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I thank the Lady of Fortingall for much. 
 
 A chair by her hearth and my cloak about me will 
 
 serve 
 Until I can take the road. If I have your leave 
 I will open both hall-door and stable-door, 
 Let down the drawbridge and ride out and away 
 Into the North by the moon, nor call your house- 
 folk 
 Still earlier than your needs. 
 
 Morag, at the stair-foot. 
 
 If your high duty sends you to horse so soon 
 We shall not see you again : 
 I trust your journey will prosper and be speedy. 
 She passes out of sight up the stair. 
 
 Fern. 
 
 The hall grows colder after the turn of midnight; 
 There are logs in the corner, and, if the frost 
 
 should deepen, 
 You will find furs behind the curtain there. 
 May you rest well. 
 
 Envoy. I thank your gentle thought. 
 
 Fern passes out of sight up the stair. 
 32 
 

 G R U A C H 
 
 CONAN. , 
 
 Have you saddled a horse before in the King s 
 
 yard? 
 Do you know the way of the bit? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 A noble woman is handed to you to-morrow: 
 No one need wish you joy, you receive its cause. 
 Such breeding as hers should never be shut up 
 In these harsh walls and mountains and hard cold 
 
 minds; 
 If you will ride with your matchless wife to Scone 
 When I return, the King shall hear of you 
 And take you into his house; 
 There you shall savour unguessed wonders in life 
 And come to advancement too. 
 
 Conan. 
 
 Will you return this way? 
 
 I cannot leave the justicing of my fiefs 
 
 That has lately come upon me: 
 
 The wolves beyond Sithchallion would increase 
 
 If they were left one season. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Would you hunt wolves when you can hunt men, 
 fierce men? 
 
 Conan. 
 
 I thought that courtiers only hunted women. 
 
 Envoy. . 
 
 L am your guest, Thane, and would be your friend. 
 Have you no home to give a shrinking woman 
 Beside this threatening prison? 
 
 33 D 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 I have a hunting-lodge on the Black Mountain. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Carry her thither from church, alone and free: 
 A woman does not wed to gain a mother, 
 Nor does a man to acquire another sister. 
 
 CONAN. 
 
 Are you a wedded man? 
 
 Envoy. No. 
 
 Conan. Then come to me 
 
 For good advice upon your wedding-eve, 
 And I will talk of what I know. Good-night. 
 
 He passes up the stair out of sight: when 
 he reaches the arcade he puts out his 
 head between two pillars, and watches 
 the Envoy a moment with a face of 
 mistrust and dislike; then he with- 
 draws and disappears. 
 The Envoy goes to Conan's chair after 
 watching him mount the stair, turns 
 it away from the fire so that it com- 
 mands doojway and staircase, and 
 seats himself. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Shall I return this way? I shall return, 
 As a ghost walks who has left a thing undone. 
 I shall eat this green oaf's salt and be his guest, 
 His comrade, his sworn friend, his counsellor, 
 And sack his bed for him. 
 
 The mother bee, that shall out-top her fellows, 
 34 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Is straitened in a blind and deepy cell 
 As in this tower of darkness is this woman. 
 A spirit of power that shakes my mind is here 
 In this resourceful woman : she is as still 
 As the white heat of a straight, half wrought sword 
 That does not palpitate yet along its edge 
 Lives quiveringly; she can indeed conceive 
 Its sudden and brief concentration of anger 
 In icy tempering, by her sharp life here; 
 J^trt-stfHttess ts her operative condition. 
 Nothing falters in her; nothing shrinks. 
 She came to me with her eyes as if she made 
 Decision, and her nearness of approach 
 Was more immediate than tenderness: 
 She came as close to me with her intention 
 As an unexpected and convincing thought. 
 If I could add her even force to mine 
 We could increase life's grasp. 
 
 He takes the flozver from his jerkin. 
 Dark, unregarded bud of opening fate, 
 What is there now to do? 
 Bring to me no more fortune: all is here. 
 Deliver me from continuing chance: stand still 
 In thy unfolding. 
 
 Now is my fortune manifested; dissolve, 
 Turn thou to fire and spirit and permeation, 
 And fix it here for ever. 
 
 He kisses the flower, then drops it deliber- 
 ately into the fire. 
 
 Dark tableau curtains fall, but remain 
 closed only long enough for a brief 
 orchestral nocturne to be played. 
 
 35 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 The same. The torches have burnt out: the glow of 
 the fire is still great enough to illumine the 
 lower part of the hall, but the upper part and 
 the arcade are lost in darkness. The Envoy 
 is asleep in the chair by the fire, his head on 
 his hand. 
 
 Envoy, awakening and sitting up. 
 
 Yes. Who is that? . . . 
 
 Disquiet that is not sound wakes me again. 
 
 I watch becalmed on a dark tide of sleep 
 
 That has no murmurs; yet when its small motion 
 
 Withdraws me from myself I hear each time 
 
 A voice that has no substance. 
 
 Too many men have died in this old fastness; 
 
 Or else the spirits of its living cannot 
 
 Suspend their eager operation and sleep, 
 
 As bodies that waste must sleep. 
 
 I would pray to sleep if I could dream of her, 
 
 And to sleep long. 
 
 I lose myself in her with every thought; 
 
 Yet when I lose myself in drifts of sleep 
 
 She never comes as I could come to her; 
 
 I only hear behind a shaking curtain 
 
 An unknown presence wrapt with rumourings 
 
 Of urgency, quick flame and wilful wreck. 
 
 It seems she does not turn to me in sleep; 
 
 So I'll not sleep again. 
 
 .16 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 A small light passes slowly from right to 
 
 left along the high arcade. 
 The Envoy shifts in 'his chair and handles 
 his dagger. 
 A light? A light? Though light is honesty, 
 Yet light at midnight oftenest shines on knaves, 
 And deeds of darkness sometimes seek a glimmer 
 To bud and open in. 
 Is this the oaf that comes to spy or stab? 
 
 Gruach descends the stair, walking in 
 her sleep and bearing a small and 
 lighted night-lamp; she is in her 
 night-clothes, and tumbled, tangled 
 masses of hair that escape from her 
 night-cap fall about her like a golden 
 shawl. 
 
 Envoy, half rising and huskily. 
 
 Lady, how did you know? 
 
 She is unconscious of him, and, as she 
 emerges from the arch, turns from 
 him toward the place where he stood 
 at their first meeting: she moves slowly 
 and uncertainly, and in bearing and 
 demeanour reproduces Fern's de- 
 scription of her appearance on the 
 previous night. 
 
 Gruach, speaking always in a veiled hesitating 
 
 tone. 
 Beautiful stranger, why are you here? 
 I did but change my gown, 
 And in a moment you come 
 From empty valleys. 
 O me, if I had missed you, my lord. 
 37 
 
GRUACH 
 
 You are so kingly made, 
 
 Fair and desireable, 
 
 I am drowned in flushes of gladness. 
 
 I would cover you with my being like a veil 
 
 To hide you from women ; 
 
 I would pour out my being over you 
 
 Like faint moonlight that is yet universal 
 
 And enfolds kings and their kingdoms. 
 
 Will you take me? Will you not? 
 
 Envoy, simulating her tone, but with repressed 
 eagerness. 
 
 Ay. 
 
 Gruach, as before. 
 
 The light is going fast. 
 
 I cannot see you plainly now. 
 
 O, where, where are you ? 
 
 Envoy. Here. 
 
 Gruach. . . 
 
 Say it again. Tell me once more, blest spirit. 
 Repeat thyself: be thine own mirror 
 And shew me twice thy heart. 
 When wilt thou take me? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Now. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 You have gone farther off. W ill you leave mer 
 
 Whence do you speak to me? 
 
 Envoy. ° ut of the darkness, 
 
 I shall not leave you until you bid me go. 
 Am I a stranger now? 
 
GRUACH 
 
 I to myself am strange ; I do not know 
 My voice, my stumbling senses, or my will. 
 But there is nothing strange in you, white lady; 
 As in a welcome dream nothing is strange 
 When newly come delight seems in a moment 
 To have been ours for life. 
 'I have believed that you were on the earth, 
 As some believe in gods they cannot see. 
 In this first hour love is not born in me : 
 I recognize ; I remember ; I possess : 
 I am here to take my own. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Yes ; yes. O, do not cease. 
 You utter many words ; I am tired, 
 n catch in vain at them as they gleam past ; 
 But in your voice is truth, _ 
 
 And truth, that oftenest means unkindness, 
 This once is joy. 
 
 Men°have too many words: but there's a word 
 That holds all others, as you hold for me 
 The provocation of all disquieting women : 
 This love is to strike deep, and when you awake 
 You shall be sure of me, you shall devote 
 Fire of your brain, fire of your heart, to me. 
 
 Where? Where ? Your voice sounds close below 
 
 me. 
 You must not kneel to me. 
 Come, come to me : I would bend down 
 And clasp you into my breath, 
 But creeping palsies hold me; 
 39 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 My arms and thighs are heavy things 
 
 That will not move for me. 
 
 You know she binds me: 
 
 You can loose me: you dare not act. 
 
 Envoy, in a clear, natural voice as he starts to his 
 
 feet and approaches Gruach. 
 Falter no more in the dim passages. 
 That in the outer walls of life's house burrow 
 And endlessly return upon themselves. 
 Awake and with me dare. Awake! Awake! 
 
 Gruach, awaking, loosens her hold of her 
 lamp, which goes out in falling: she 
 stares, startled; then, -with a plain- 
 tive, long sigh, reels and sinks: the 
 Envoy reaches her barely in time to 
 receive her in his arms. 
 Have I broken the bird's wings to catch the bird? 
 Have I shattered the door of her mind to enter 
 
 there? 
 This ruin is done in me; I have unbuilt 
 The only hallowed place where I can worship. 
 
 A slight pause. 
 Her heart begins anew; 
 And nascent life is trembling everywhere. 
 
 He kisses her. 
 Not any words shall peril her again 
 By sudden occurrence ; I'll use a quieter means, 
 And through a more unwary sense infuse 
 My life into her sources, into her thought. 
 
 He kisses her repeatedly. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Where am I ? What have I done? 
 Some distillation lately touched my lips: 
 40 
 
GRUACH 
 
 A freshness that awoke me lingers there. 
 
 What will you do with me, beautiful stranger t 
 
 Why are you here? Who are you? Go from my 
 chamber. 
 
 Loose me. Leave me. Loose me. Let me go. 
 
 She first seizes his shoulders to push htm 
 from her, then slips her arms about 
 his waist and -wrestles with him. Her 
 onset almost overthrows him, and he 
 only continues with difficulty to hold 
 his own. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Listen. ... I am the same Macbeth. . . . 
 
 It was the distillation of my soul. . . . 
 
 Gruach, unheedingly. 
 
 Thieves are men of the night: murderers 
 
 Are men of the night. You have the stoats and 
 
 foumart's 
 Passion for throats in the dark: you are not one 
 Who kills in the open, you would kill in sleep and 
 In the vile safety of a private room. 
 Faugh, you foul treacherous beast. . . . Aha, aha, 
 My hand is on your dagger: let go your hold, 
 Or I'll drive it down the side of your neck. 
 
 Envoy. , . „ Strike, 
 
 Her bare arm shoots up to bring the dagger 
 down with force: he catches her wrist 
 in the air. 
 Lately I heard your spirit take a voice 
 And from outside our earth-taught reticence 
 Speak : sure and clear and deathless and afar, 
 4i 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Like the first half-waked bird in Spring's first 
 
 dawn, 
 Its darkling dewy murmurs then gave up 
 Your mind to me, your being to me. 
 Would you undo it in a waking dream? 
 
 Gruacii. 
 
 You! You! O, dangerous knife. 
 
 What thoughts have you pressed into its haft of 
 
 old? 
 Not many breaths ago its touch lit in me 
 Conceptions of destroying unknown to me : 
 My mind was ready, and I did intend 
 To strike you down and desolate my years. 
 
 The dagger falls from her hand. 
 Speak softly, my lord ; but speak. 
 How have you found my chamber? 
 
 Envoy. Look about you. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Why have you brought me here? 
 
 Envoy. You came alone. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Were you here before me? 
 
 Envoy. Surely. 
 
 Gruach. But why? But why? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I have slept here. 
 
 42 
 
GRUACH 
 Gruach. Had you, then, thought to meet me? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 We might have met no more. 
 
 Gruach. Did you not care? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I cared to do your wish more than my duty: 
 
 I was cheated of choice. Your elder kinswoman 
 
 Denied to me your offered bridal bed 
 
 (I would have lain beside it on the floor), 
 
 Deprived me of the kneeling room you gave 
 
 Near to your feet at the altar, and of the seat 
 
 Upon your bench at the board; and left me 
 
 nothing 
 But leave to ride away before you rose. 
 
 Gruach. . 
 
 I am sick in my limbs and my mind to learn so 
 
 late 
 I might have lost you while I dreamed of you— 
 For I have dreamed of you to-night, my lord, 
 In the security of a sweet to-morrow: 
 I am sick in my reins and my compassionate body 
 To feel each time you speak that I have meant 
 To tear your flesh with a sharpened piece of iron. 
 You know what it means to me, do you not? 
 And yet I do not know why I am here. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 You sought in sleep the stations of our meeting, 
 As holy women the stations of the Cross 
 To act again life's chosen, passionate hour. 
 43 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I am not a sapless girl to walk in sleep: 
 I can control my force. 
 
 Envoy. You came to me: 
 
 You told me all I know. 
 
 Gruach. I did not speak: 
 
 I dreamed I heard your voice, but not my own. 
 
 A slight pause. 
 If women spoke in sleep they would awake, 
 They have suspicious ears. 
 
 A slight pause. 
 What have I said? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 The things you felt last night, heart-shaking 
 
 things 
 That timid men teach women to wait to hear; 
 The truth of your live spirit loosed unaware, 
 That, rising suddenly from ancient darkness, 
 Took on its wings the light of the next dawn 
 Before the lonely night below was past. 
 The rapture of presence ; the offering of love; 
 The radiance of surrender: of these you spoke. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 All, all is true. What more have I said? What 
 else? 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 You uttered no more but love. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 It was well said. I could not say it now, 
 44 
 
GRUACH 
 
 Conscious that you would hear. I am glad it is 
 
 done. 
 And you? I dreamed your voice, but not your 
 
 words. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 The rapture of presence; the offering of love; 
 
 A sense of strange remembrance : I told of these. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I knew it all last night: what will you do:' 
 
 Time and men's rules will part us quickly now, 
 
 And nothing will be left. 
 
 My father's race is ruined, my mother's kin 
 
 Hems me in here in grim solicitude; 
 
 My cousin and his mother demand my hand; 
 
 They mean my land. I cannot stand alone : 
 
 Even the trees and mountains in this wildness 
 
 Huddle together against the blasts of time 
 
 And planetary tempests: what should I do? 
 
 This is my hour of fate, this is the time 
 
 When I must break the blind restricted seed 
 
 That I am now, move with the winds of life 
 
 And yield my mental issue to them again, 
 
 Or in this present burial rot and change. 
 
 Is your love strength or weakness? What will 
 
 you do? 
 Help me, and now. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I shall not ride away as I was bidden ; 
 I shall remain. 
 
 When Fortingall has all his guests about him 
 I will declare our love a«d, by the weight 
 Of Duncan's kinship insisting on obedience, 
 45 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Forbid your marriage until I come again, 
 
 My errand toCaithnessdone, and claim your troth; 
 
 Marry you here and carry you to Scone. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 You will not get away from them alive: 
 
 There are no King's men here. 
 
 And if the King sends men to look for you 
 
 They will not know which rock in this rough 
 
 valley 
 Was chosen for your grave-stone. 
 You must ride now as you were bidden. And yet 
 You must not ride from me : take me to Scone : 
 I should be here no more if you returned. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 That will not much commend us to the King. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Then I'll to Caithness too; but now, now, now. 
 
 You must ride now; and I must go with you. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 But shall we not be followed? 
 
 Gruach. To the death. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Why must I risk your life? 
 
 Gruach. The chance is good. 
 
 Conan can only think one thought at once: 
 His hunt will storm to Inverness, while we 
 Ride North by East until we are far from here. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 And wed in Caithness' church? 
 46 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Gruach. And swiftlier wed 
 
 In the first church we come to when we are clear. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Ride with me: let us go. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Sir, are you sure of me? Before you take me 
 
 You should be told I was born your enemy: 
 
 I am of a more ancient house of kings 
 
 Than you : King Kenneth was among my fathers. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Then with your love 
 
 You bring a power over many minds 
 
 That, if we are added truly to each other, 
 
 Can set us higher than either house has stood. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 You can be great if you are so great-hearted. 
 
 You are my redeemer, you shall have my faith ; 
 
 Service, and I can serve you with men's truth; 
 
 Devotion, and I could wreck myself, my world, 
 
 To reach its end, your good. 
 
 One thing is mordant in me at thought of you ; 
 
 When we fought body to body you overcame. 
 
 I must undo it; let us strive again. 
 
 Come, let me grasp you. 
 
 She holds out her arms to him. 
 He takes her hands and draws her to- 
 ward him; with a low cry she feigns 
 to faint, and he catches her to him; 
 she lays her head on his shoulder, and 
 laughs lightly and gently. 
 47" 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Circling each other so in soft enclosure, 
 
 Loosening our folds with mutual-moving breath, 
 
 Our wreathing seems to rustle and expand, 
 
 As crushed, unwrinkling petals in a bud 
 
 Widen together in unbroken touch, 
 
 Begin a blossom's effluence, concede 
 
 A blossom's trembling welcome to the night 
 
 That fills it, and that it believes it fills. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Beloved, we are foolish: we should ride. 
 
 Envoy, loosening her. 
 
 Put on your clothes: I go to saddle horses. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 I have no clothes: all that I ever had 
 
 Are in my chamber under the tower roof: 
 
 I dare not fetch them, I mightrouse many sleepers. 
 
 Everything I have worn since my hair grew long 
 
 Was spun and woven and stitched in Fortingall: 
 
 My kin shall feel my clouts flung back at them 
 
 If I go out with nothing. I can endure it: 
 
 I have gone barefoot in snow before to-night, 
 
 And there is now no snow. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 You cannot live against the rushing sharpness 
 
 If we push North to-night. 
 
 Going to the curtained recess. 
 
 There are furs here; 
 You shall be wrapt in them. 
 
 He brings furs piled on his arm, and 
 throws them do7im before her. 
 48 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Gruach. No, not the white one : 
 
 The white bear-skin is Fern's from Norroway; 
 She was born cold and bloodless ; she is soon 
 
 chilled, 
 | She needs it. Bring the wolf-cloak. Put it round 
 
 me. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Your thin white feet are far too cold already 
 
 To start on such a journey. Are there no shoes? 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Ay, in the tower: but shoes in the air are useless. 
 
 We shall find old brogues in the stable. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 What horse shall I saddle for you? 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Saddle no horse for me: I must ride with you: 
 
 Two tracks would tell our tale more certainly. 
 
 Envoy, unbarring the door. 
 
 Will you mount black Fingal here? 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 His hoofs would sound on the stones. 
 Halter him to the ring at the outer gate : 
 I will shortly join you there. 
 
 Envoy, having opened the door. 
 
 Snow: there is snow. 
 
 O, tranquil, dreadful calm : O, deadly peace. 
 
 We are shut back iftte-the-ea-st-on Hfe- 
 
 By pale, relentless, softly closing gates 
 
 49 e 
 

 G R U A C H 
 
 That no man ever opened. 
 
 We may not ride to-night: your fate has fallen. 
 
 Or is it mine that hurts you? 
 
 He throws open both doors: the ground is 
 seen to sink sharply away from the 
 threshold to a narrow white valley 
 among white mountains. Afaintness 
 in the sky permeates a dense mist of 
 lightly falling snow. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 O, joyful silence; soundlessly dropping curtains 
 
 About the secret chamber of the earth 
 
 That shall contain our bridal bed. O, sleep, 
 
 The bride's white hush is in me; I will part 
 
 The soundless curtains, and meet what is within — 
 
 Either continuing sleep, that can withdraw me 
 
 From this dead life with love my latest hope, 
 
 Or delicate, wildering waking in some pale room 
 
 To find my love with me. 
 
 Will you not come, my lord? 
 
 The snow is but a salting yet: I go } 
 
 For in an hour the breeding, feeding storm 
 
 Will cover our foot-prints, stifle all pursuit. 
 
 We can point straight for Inverness untracked, 
 
 And thread the perilous pass ere drifts are deep. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Know you the roads? 
 
 Gruach. I know them. 
 
 Envoy. I am ready. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 If the storm clears, our dark shapes will be seen 
 5o 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Afar in the sharp air. 
 
 She steps to the pile of furs •, throwing ofj 
 her cloak as she goes. 
 Wear Conan's sheepskin coat. Help me to don 
 j Fern's bear-skin cloak; lift up the hood . . . Stay, 
 stay ; 
 I must put my hair up first. 
 
 She tears off her nightcap and throws it 
 into the sinking fire. 
 
 I have no pins. 
 Where is your little dagger? 
 
 Envoy, stooping where the dagger lies. 
 
 It fell in the rushes. 
 
 Gruach, holding her upcoiled hair with one hand. 
 Give it to me. 
 
 She thrusts it through the coil of hair. 
 Cover my head with the hood. 
 ^Is your horse dark like you? 
 
 Envoy. He is black as smoke. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 You can abandon him. 
 
 Conan's white battle-horse will serve us better: 
 
 Few men can see him moving against new snow. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 He saved me in a clenched, stark river-fight, 
 When armoured men went down a falling spate 
 And heavier horses under them: again 
 He saved me from a murderer in the night 
 By crying out in his stall across a garth: 
 When I shall enter the stable presently 
 5i 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 He will speak to me before I am in his sight, 
 He will stamp until I speak to him, and touch. 
 I cannot leave him here. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 You set me in more danger. 
 
 Although you should devote your life to him 
 
 You cannot keep him more than a dozen years. 
 
 Do you put a horse before me? Speak. Be sure. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 The King could send a rout of men-at-arms 
 
 To claim him later — soon— in his own name. 
 
 Turning to the door. 
 Which is the horse? 
 
 Gruach. White Uthal is near the door. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Shall I return for you? 
 
 Gruach. I would first write 
 
 This life's last things: I cannot forego it now. 
 Give me some leaf to write on, I have nothing; 
 Her scrivening-skins are locked away. 
 
 Envoy. I have nothing. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 What is there in your wallet? 
 
 Envoy. Nothing is there, 
 
 Save my King's letter to the Caithness Jarl. 
 52 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 The margin of that will serve. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 We must not touch it, lady. The King's hand 
 Is hallowed, the King's seal is inviolable: 
 With it I lose my life. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Your life is not your own: it is now mine. 
 
 Shew me the letter. 
 
 Envoy. Beloved, it must not be. 
 
 Gruach, laying one hand on his shoulder, and 
 taking the letter from his -wallet -with the other. 
 It must; it is my pride that it shall be. 
 
 She breaks the seal and opens the letter. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Your dear hands are soon cruel. 
 
 Gruach. Look, it is well ; 
 
 This piece is bare save for a superscription. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 And half of the King's name within the fold. . . . 
 
 It is too thick to tear. 
 
 Gruach. Not for the teeth. 
 
 She bites the edge, then tears off one 
 portion of the letter. 
 Keep this. It is enough. I have not hurt you. 
 There is still more left than the Jarl will care 
 to read. 
 
 53 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I must blame some serving-man for this. 
 It is not wise for a well-born man to say 
 He has been so familiar with a menial 
 That such a letter could come into base hands. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Dearest and dearer, pardon me for the sake 
 
 Of the true words I shall write on it to my kin. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 You have no pen. 
 
 Gruach, searching among the ashes on the hearth. 
 
 A wood-coal twig writes well. 
 
 Beloved, you loiter long: hasten, and ever more 
 
 hasten : 
 The bridal dawn is near, my enemies awake. 
 
 Envoy, as he goes out by the great door. 
 I serve you for ever, white spouse. 
 
 Gruach. I shall be ready ere you. 
 
 He disappears downward to the right. 
 Gruach lays the fragment of the 
 letter on the table to the right and 
 stoops over it to write. 
 Is it so soon? What, shall I suddenly 
 Believe this life is done and I can go? 
 I am not foolish yet: in my deep places 
 I know it is not so. I know the way 
 In which hope gutters out in a cold draught, 
 And life is seen to be a habit, heavy 
 To put down courage, vision and eagerness. 
 The marvel of this night being perfect now, 
 54 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Some meagre unexpected chance can soon 
 Flaw and disperse it in a long, sick moment, 
 Perfection being momentary of nature; 
 And when, the kind, deceitful darkness over, 
 Impoverishing daylight shews to me 
 The dead life here, I shall be here alone. 
 O, let me dream anew, and in a dream 
 Of uttered scorn sting vivid life to spring 
 Back to my sinking heart. 
 
 She writes. 
 ^ To The Lady of Fortingall. 
 
 I am not of your blood to obey you ; I will not 
 mother your blood. I would live, so I leave you. 
 For your lodging and nurture take the Bride of 
 Fortingall's clothes in payment; you will find a 
 doll to fit them who will sit where you put her. 
 I have given away my lands; keep your hands 
 and feet from them. 
 
 She writes. 
 To The Heir of Fortingall. 
 If you would be married, choose your wife for 
 yourself. I have gone away with a man, and you 
 will not see me again. 
 
 She writes. 
 To Fern. 
 I leave you my love with my wisdom. When 
 you meet a proper man, take him before another 
 woman can. You will not come to life until you 
 cross your own threshold and sit by your own 
 hearth. 
 
 Gruach. 
 It is an aged woman's hand. 
 I cannot write to-night. 
 
 /The hand may waver, the flanks shake, the limbs 
 ^Tremble, as mine do now, and yet the heart 
 55 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 May hold its firm and steadfast course untouched, 
 
 Being nearer to the mind ; 
 
 But here the immediate substance of my heart 
 
 Slackens and shivers, my mental force withdrawn; 
 
 I have no strength to continue this delay. 
 
 He is too long. 
 
 Why should a fair, strange man regard my lot, 
 
 Or reverence my will? He need not do it. 
 
 He will not come again; and this is all. 
 
 I'll go to him. 
 
 Is that a sound? A door upstairs; a footfall? 
 
 She runs to the stair-foot and listens. 
 Nothing. A gown trailing? Nothing. Nothing. 
 
 Envoy, as he approaches the doorway from the right. 
 The outer gate is locked. 
 
 Gruach. The key is here. 
 
 She disappears through the low doorway 
 to the right and returns instafttly 
 with a large, long key. 
 We can lock the dooroutside and ride away with it. 
 
 She laughs softly. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 As we go down and pass the stable-door, 
 
 Do not ask me to speak. Fingal would hear. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Let me go first; step then upon my footprints 
 
 And wipe them off my kindred's soil for ever. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Before our life begins, 
 Before we go, tell in this hallowed place 
 The name I have not heard ; whose sound I await 
 56 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 As waking, eager birds await the light : 
 Your name, my light, your name. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Within the dark immuring womb a blind 
 And unseen child is nameless, and I too, 
 Unliving and immured, will have no name 
 In my subjection; this white waif of night 
 Shall have no name for you. 
 The altar-priest shall speak it first to you. 
 Before we leave this iron-coloured prison, 
 Vow you to me that, when you have the weight 
 In the King's mind to do a lawless thing, 
 You will return and tumble down these walls 
 Into a cairn of stones, and burn the stones 
 To ashen dust wherein no weed will strike. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 This is a holy house for me; the hands 
 I lay on it would turn to hands of blessing. 
 The husk that has shed you is still a shrine 
 Which in my old age I shall seek again. 
 "^We cannot burn the past ; it would stand yet 
 In you, in me. Then let it stand for me. 
 
 Gruach. 
 
 Lift up your hand and vow, for love of me. 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 I will do all that any man can do, 
 
 For love of you. 
 
 Gruach, going to the hearth, and gathering a 
 
 handful of wood-ash. 
 It shall go down, or like a broken tree 
 Whiten and crumble to a hollow bone; 
 
 57 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 The moon shall soften it to a cowering - dread, 
 And shapeless noises shall inhabit it. 
 
 She moves slowly from the hearth to the 
 great door, scattering the ash with a 
 sower's motion as she goes. 
 I sow and I sow the chaff of the seed of fire : 
 The waving, barren harvest of wilding flame 
 Shall here spring up, nourished by stormy air. 
 "Come ruin, ruin and grief upon this old 
 Dwelling of sorrow and my captivity. 
 My mother died of grief; it is not ill 
 Her hard, unfaithful race should die of grief. 
 Come, ruin, down upon their greedy life, 
 Destruction and unseating of the mind; 
 Woe, be embodied to their unclosing eyes 
 While brackish tears run down and lodge in their 
 
 lips, 
 And all they have flj^s up in flakes of flame, 
 To fall as now these ashes. 
 
 With the last words she reaches the 
 threshold, where she turns to the 
 Envoy. 
 
 Come, Macbeth. 
 She goes out by the great door and, descend- 
 ing to the right, quickly disappears. 
 The Envoy follows her. 
 After a short pause an owl cries twice with 
 a long retreating sound, as if dis- 
 turbed and flying away. 
 A light passes from right to left of the high 
 arcade: Domhnal descends the stair, 
 a lamp in his hand. 
 
 Domhnal. 
 
 The stranger is not here. He has gone, maybe. 
 58 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 That would be well ; we want no King's men here 
 Among the annoyances of a day of rejoicing. 
 How cold the house has grown. 
 Both doors left open? He has certainly gone. 
 He must be highly born to be so careless. 
 Snow, snow, snow. 
 
 It is the last injustice of the order of things 
 For snow to be added to the burdens of a feast- 
 day. 
 Men will tread it in, and cut, and in again ; 
 Fine ladies will tread it upstairs and downstairs, 
 And spread it with their skirts until the bride's 
 
 chamber 
 Is like the track to the cowsheds in a wet Autumn. 
 I can but shut it out awhile. 
 
 He turns to go out by the low door, then 
 he sees Gruach's letter on the table. 
 A letter? This is the stranger's courtesies: 
 He is not graceless, though an upstart's man. 
 "Gruach." What have I here? 
 The young man has truly gone, and with what he 
 
 could carry. 
 The new King's men are all reivers and robbers. 
 " I will not mother your blood ... I have given 
 
 away my lands . . . 
 I have gone away with a man . . . You will not 
 
 see me again ..." 
 Oho, Oho; here are great things to do. 
 But which is first? 
 
 He stands in deep consideration, the letter 
 
 in his hand. 
 A sound of scuffling and women* s voices 
 wrangling comes from the high ar- 
 cade. Presently one of the young 
 women hurries down the stair, pulling 
 59 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 the girl after her by the arm and 
 followed by the other young woman, 
 who thrusts the girl forivard from 
 behind. The girl stands sobbing and 
 nibbing her eyes; she] is only half 
 dressed, and carries the rest of her 
 clothes wider one arm. 
 
 First Young Woman. 
 
 Come on, Onion-Peeler, Grease-Skimmer, Rancid 
 
 Rags; 
 You shall learn not to lie in bed like an earl's 
 
 daughter. 
 
 Girl. 
 
 I will not go: I will not. 
 
 Second Young Woman. 
 
 Lig-a-bed, you are to be up first. {Pinching her.) 
 
 Will you remember? 
 If you are not down in time to kindle my fires, 
 You shall be pinched all over, all over, all over, 
 Until you are like a bush of ripe blackberries. 
 So. (Girl. O!) And so. (Girl. O!) And so. 
 
 (Girl. O!) 
 
 Girl. 
 
 I'll not bear it. I'll not stay, you murderers. 
 My mother told me to go straight home to her 
 If the kitchen-ladies at the Castle were unkind to 
 
 First Young Woman. 
 
 Go home to her now : she will be glad to see you, 
 And gladder still to see old Marget after you. 
 60 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Girl. 
 
 I cannot help it: I cannot: indeed I cannot. 
 
 When I am with you by day I only see what is 
 
 there ; 
 But every night when I am alone the Sight comes 
 
 on me. 
 It will not let me sleep until the dawn begins: 
 Then I am heavy and sick. Let me lie down. 
 
 Pity, pity me. 
 
 First Young Woman. 
 
 What do you see, you mole, when the Sight is on 
 you? 
 
 Girl. 
 
 I see the Lady Gruach. 
 
 Second Young Woman. 
 
 We all see the Lady Gruach 
 More than we choose; but she never keeps us 
 awake. 
 
 First Young Woman. 
 
 Nor do we call it second sight when she appears. 
 
 Girl, desperately. 
 
 I tell you I see the Lady Gruach every night. 
 
 She is covered from shoulder to foot with a trail- 
 ing, spreading cloak 
 
 That is not red like blood, nor blue like the deep 
 lake, 
 
 Yet gleams of both in the folds: it is covered with 
 green, bright eyes. 
 61 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 There are large green lights in her hair over both 
 
 her ears. 
 She wears a golden crown as if she is a queen. 
 Her pitiless face alarms, yet I must look and look : 
 Her gaze is hard to me, yet when we meet by day 
 She holds no memory of me in those cold eyes. 
 Nightly she bears a dagger. . . . 
 
 First Young Woman. Shivering liar, 
 
 That finds you out: you have neither sight nor 
 
 truth: 
 Queens carry sceptres, they are not seen with 
 
 daggers. 
 
 Second Young Woman. 
 
 And how can Gruach ever become a queen? 
 
 She is to wed long Conan after sunrise. 
 
 Girl. 
 
 She bears a dagger, a red dagger. . . . 
 
 First Young Woman, seizing a tangle of the 
 Girl's dangling hair. 
 
 Come on. 
 Your second sight is not worth waiting for: 
 You had better see your own ghost lighting fires, 
 For that is all you are worth. Come on. 
 
 Second Young Woman, seizing the Girl's 
 hanging hair on the other side. 
 
 Come down : 
 Come down, you shall draw me the water. 
 62 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Girl. O, no, no! 
 
 They hurry the Girl by her hair out 
 through the low doorway to the right: 
 she sobs and protests inarticulately 
 and struggles as they go. 
 
 The Boy descends the stair quickly, and 
 follows the women out. 
 
 Marget follows the Boy down the stair. 
 
 Marget. 
 
 The women are too noisy. 
 
 Domhnal. Let them alone: 
 
 The girl from the clachan has been marred at 
 
 home, 
 She needs rough teasing. 
 
 Marget. They are not too rough, 
 
 They are too noisy : they must be spoken to. 
 
 Domhnal. 
 
 Let them alone: there is a graver thing 
 
 To speak of now. 
 
 The man who yester-eve knocked at our gate 
 
 Has carried off young Gruach in the night. 
 
 Go down and stop the roasting and the boiling: 
 
 I go to raise the house and the whole township, 
 
 To send out riders to hunt the naughty child, 
 
 And others to meet the wedding-guests who ride 
 
 And turn them home again. 
 
 Marget. 
 
 How have you heard of it? 
 
 Domhnal. By Gruach's hand: 
 
 I found this writing on the table here. 
 
 Marget takes the letter, turns it about 
 all ways, and throws it on the table. 
 63 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 Marget. 
 
 Leave it for others to find. All shall go on. 
 
 Again, old friend, you are about to be 
 
 A foolish, vain, officious, blind old man. 
 
 What have you to do with it? What have I? 
 
 Morag is ageing: when the old devil dies 
 
 We do not want a ferret-eyed young mistress 
 
 To keep us still uneasy. Let her go: 
 
 Fern is mild : Conan will follow her. 
 
 And let the feast go on : Conan would feast 
 
 If Gruach were dead, and welcome the event 
 
 That brought him many guests : he will not miss 
 
 A bride he feared, if he may eat. Come down ; 
 
 I'll lift the crust of the lamb pie for you. 
 
 She goes out by the low door. 
 
 Domhnal. 
 
 Elderly women believe they are always right : 
 
 But this one may be now. 
 
 He follows Marget out. 
 
 The two Serving-Men descend the stair; 
 one supports the other. 
 
 First Man. 
 You are drunk. 
 
 Second Man. I am not drunk. 
 
 First Man. I say you are drunk. 
 
 Second Man. 
 
 I am not drunk: I was comfortable last night, 
 But now I have slept it off. You can see for 
 yourself. 
 
 64 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 First Man. 
 
 You have not had the time to sleep it off: 
 
 We are fetched out of bed at an immoral hour. 
 
 Second Man. 
 
 A most unhealthy hour; an immodest hour. 
 But all will be well to-morrow in the morning. 
 The new young mistress, the pink and coy young 
 
 mistress, 
 Will not forsake her bed to-morrow morn 
 At the unwise hours ordained by the old mistress. 
 
 First Man. 
 
 That is deep wisdom. You are drunk, neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 Second Man. 
 
 I say I am not drunk. 
 
 They go out together affectionately by the 
 
 low door. 
 Conan descends the stair stealthily ', peep- 
 ing round the corner mistrustfully as 
 he comes. He is in his shirt and 
 cross -gartered braccae, and bare- 
 footed; he holds a sword out of sight 
 at his side. 
 
 Conan. 
 
 The disquieting stranger has gone. He has truly 
 
 gone. 
 I could have slept again had I believed it. 
 He has not finished here: he will return: 
 He shall not pass my outer gate again. 
 But he is gone: I should be easy now, 
 If this were not my wedding-day. 
 
 65 F 
 
G R U A C H 
 
 The Thane of Ardven's daughters will look at me, 
 
 To watch with mocking eyes what I shall do; 
 
 And Gruach will not look at me, nor seem 
 
 To know I stand or kneel or sit by her. 
 
 But that's no grief; when she does look at me 
 
 She brims me with discomfort. She is not fit 
 
 To be a wife : she follows her own will. 
 
 I had liefer wed the bridge-end blacksmith's 
 
 daughter: 
 She fills her clothes as well as my lady cousin, 
 And her lips bringthoughts of dew on rosy plums. 
 I am not afraid to touch her. If I touch Gruach 
 I feel her body go hard beneath my hand, 
 And danger crouching there : if she does nothing, 
 She makes me feel outside her. 
 I would not wed her if she had no land : 
 The inconvenient wisdom of my mother 
 Is not to be avoided; land is land. 
 The knightly stranger shall not imperil it. 
 He has gone. It is early. I'll get to bed again, 
 And sleep till I am called. 
 
 He turns to ascend the stair. 
 
 CURTAIN. 
 
 66 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 PLAY IN ONE ACT 
 
TO EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 ~Ty Y Babbicombe and Oddicombe 
 •*-S The daily waters go and come, 
 And rise and foam, and fall and foam: 
 And on that unforgotten shore, 
 Whose freedoms can be mine no more, 
 Backward through time's prospect-glass 
 I see a divindling presence pass, 
 A lonely youth who loitered there 
 In the still, sparkling Winter air, 
 Thinking of plays and poetry 
 And beauty newly found thereby 
 That should to life at last give life 
 And make it worth enduring, strife 
 And scorn and bitterness and numb 
 Passion alike that made youth dumb 
 At misconception of hard men 
 Whose world of getting hemmed him then, 
 Whose sympathy was at the best 
 A kind contempt, indulgent jest, 
 For all that could not be possessed. 
 
 And as he paced that shining shore 
 He thought of you long years before 
 Treading those shifting stones beside 
 The changing volume of the tide, 
 Learning the nature of beauty there 
 By other ways of youth and care; 
 And when the waning Winter light 
 And sharpening air and sense of night 
 Oncoming turned him once again 
 To warmth and fi relit windows, then 
 In your old footsteps still he passed 
 By Petitor and Fore Street last 
 To a sequestered house near by 
 Of learning and austerity, 
 Shyly kind and primly wise, 
 6 9 
 
Sweet with learning's innocencies. 
 Goodness, sincerity and grace 
 Of gentleness filled that calm place 
 By her who still inhabited 
 Its chambers, and their master dead 
 Kept present by the cherishing 
 Of her benign and ministering 
 Memory and its tender glow 
 Upon the things of long ago. 
 
 With lamplight, and the curtains drawn 
 Upon the empty tree-wrapped lawn 
 Pale beneath an early moon 
 And stilled save for the broken tune 
 Of wandering sea-airs scarcely heard 
 Among the topmost boughs unstirred 
 Above the house, she spoke of you 
 Then lately gone, the men you knew, 
 The books you knew, the books you wrote: 
 At that first news of things remote 
 From meagre life yet daily true 
 A heaven and earth were made anew; 
 The kingdom of the word became 
 Power, illumination, fame; 
 Romance, enchantment came to be 
 Fad and authenticity. 
 
 How many days, how many ways, 
 Since those far-off and primal days 
 Lit by their own interior light, 
 Have I pursued the infinite 
 Of poetry, how often found 
 Upon some new-discovered ground 
 I trod among your footsteps still. 
 Tidings of unknown poets would thrill 
 The mind from some chance page of yours, 
 And, while the craftsman's quest endures, 
 By instinct and but half aware 
 TO 
 
Deep in my consciousness the care 
 I shall remember wherewith I 
 Eagerly and delicately 
 Savoured the delicate certainty 
 Of your clear verse 's filagree, 
 Then found that savour could impart 
 My earliest lessons in the art. 
 
 Take then from me a gift in kind, 
 And let it say that, though my mind 
 Broods upon ruder themes than those 
 In which your rare fair music flows, 
 Yet I have lingered once to hear 
 That music and still hold it dear 
 And unforgotten in the glow 
 Of beauty taught me long ago. 
 
 December 31st, 1920. 
 
 7' 
 
PERSONS: 
 
 Madron, a British peasant. 
 An Old Man, a Briton. 
 A Young Man, a Briton. 
 Placidius, a Roman General. 
 A Centurion. 
 Three Roman Soldiers. 
 A Young Roman Soldier. 
 Two Roman Sailors. 
 
 Nest, a Princess of Britain. 
 
 Widan, her nurse. 
 
 Ellin. 
 
 Ennid. 
 
 Five Girls. 
 
 Three Women. 
 
 A Young Woman. 
 
 An Old Woman. 
 
 Soldiers, Sailors, and Populace. 
 
 The scene is in Britain at the period of the Roman 
 subjugation of the country. 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The scene is a sea-shore on the South-East coast of 
 Britain at midnight. The night is clear, with 
 a few stars; the sea is still, except for the 
 occasional plash of a small wave at the water's 
 edge and the occasional flash of a star's reflec- 
 tion extended along a gathering ripple. 
 
 In the darkness the stems of two Roman 
 galleys make a darker mass at the back to the 
 left, hi the right foreground rises a weed- 
 hang, salt-encrusted mooring post. 
 
 A young woman, Nest, is tied by the wrists 
 to a ring in the post higher than her head: a 
 pale, blood-bedabbled cloak hangs from her 
 shoulders and falls close to her body. A t her 
 feet an older woman, Widan, crouches on her 
 knees; she is covered with a dark blue mantle 
 that makes her almost invisible in the night; 
 her head is bent and her long, thick, grey hair 
 falls forward over her face. A Roman soldier 
 stands on guard near the post, leaning on his 
 spear. 
 
 The silence at the rising of the curtain is 
 broken by a sob and a short low cry from 
 Widan. 
 
 The Soldier sings in a rumbling undertone. 
 
 THE rat is a sociable fellow, 
 But I cannot abide his tail; 
 I like to hear the long bone crack 
 
 73 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 When my little dog's teeth get into his back. . . . 
 The song is lost in a yawn. He addresses 
 Widan. 
 Fat hen with no rump feathers, 
 When will you weary of squatting in your dust- 
 hole? 
 What will the other old women in the town 
 Think when they hear that, while they were in bed 
 Shivering lonely, or waking with cold bones 
 Of skinny husbands thrust against their sides, 
 You have been out all night with a fighting man? 
 Get home and leave your little princess to me. 
 
 Widan, raising her head and addressing Nest. 
 Nest, Nest, your silences stung them. Why will 
 
 you brave them? 
 Why are you stubborn for these great-hearted 
 
 ways? 
 What is the use? Yield, and live. 
 If you are lashed again you will not live. 
 Will you not save yourself? Then save others: 
 The last woes come upon us all at dawn. 
 Obedience is required from you in the end: 
 This is more bitter for you than for low beings, 
 Yet you must learn it. There 's a hard place in 
 
 life 
 When it is plain to everyone who is born 
 That something in another mind arises 
 Which he will need to obey, or life is checked: 
 Then wilfulness is only violence 
 Done against the indifferent nature of life. 
 These outland Romans will not kill us all 
 If you permit them to do their governing, 
 Which is so dear to them, over you and us. 
 74 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Soldier. 
 
 Tall maiden, I have daughters in several places 
 I shall not see again, and the thought of them 
 Inundates me with a fatherly feeling. 
 The aged are all for caution, never for glory ; 
 But they live longest: and low people know 
 They need one voice to utter their hearts, and one 
 To talk to mighty men with: women know 
 Submission only frees their natural force: 
 And soldiers do not fight unless they must. 
 Then yield and live in stillness here, or else 
 Either to Hades or to Rome you fare. 
 
 A silence follows, in which Nest thrice 
 raises her head wearily, as if she 
 would address Widan: the third 
 time she speaks. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 What is the hour, nurse? 
 
 No, do not speak. I have no need to know, 
 
 For all that I must do is to endure. 
 
 Is it dark yet, or is the night in me? 
 
 Stars glow and pass too quickly in my eyes, 
 
 Sunsets or sudden dawns go out too soon. 
 
 All night a surf-bell tolls, yet none was there; 
 
 Or this continuing darkness is eternity 
 
 Where a great clock strikes one each hour for ever. 
 
 Is the tide rising? Am I to be drowned? 
 
 The high waves beat the earth ; they shake my 
 
 limbs. 
 Yet now they do not sound, though I still throb. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 Your limbs shake? Will you fall? 
 
 75 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest. 
 
 I can stand for ever, unless my dim mind swoons. 
 But if I lose myself you must buttress me, 
 Or I shall tear my arm-strings that I need 
 While I have life and Romans tread my land. 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 I saved your clothes: shall I wet the linen 
 And lay it on your shoulders and your brow? 
 
 The Soldier, pricking Widan with his spear as 
 
 she is about to rise. 
 Granmam, lie down, or I shall make a hole in you 
 In a wrong place. Has not your tribe been told 
 By the centurion, by the general, and by me, 
 That no one is to finger this felon girl, 
 Or speak to her, or even step on her shadow, 
 Until she has been assessed and handed to fate? 
 I am loved and longed for in every garrison 
 Between here and Rome, being an easy man 
 Toward all sizes and patterns of petticoats ; 
 And though you are foodless, coinless, roofless 
 
 and shigged, 
 I am kind and have left you both without muzzle 
 
 or bit 
 So long as you talked comfortably to her, 
 Dripping good advice like a worn-out spigot 
 With the cask's lees behind it on her hard mind: 
 But humoured women are quick to go too far, 
 And now I see you'll loosen her ungratefully 
 And leave me her shoes to stand in for full pay: 
 So cower and hush, or go ; 
 
 For when I must be strict I am always angered. 
 76 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 My bosom-piece, my Nestling, 
 Why would you light the bale-fires up again? 
 When, with the Queen, the hosts were overthrown 
 They accepted shame, they stooped i' the yoke ; 
 
 so now 
 They are being murdered after more defeat, 
 They are named dishonoured fighters and word- 
 breakers. 
 Call off the Western rally ; tell the men 
 To get to their townships and to hide their arms ; 
 Say that the beacons were raked up by witches, 
 That marsh-pooks bore the brand from farm to 
 
 farm, 
 And you may be let live. 
 Obey, obey, and something can be saved. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Where is my mother the Queen? 
 
 Widan. She is dead. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Where is my elder sister, Widan? 
 
 Widan. Dead. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Where is my younger sister? 
 
 Widan. Dead. Dead. Dead. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Then I am changed; I have become a queen, 
 
 The Icenian queen, mysterious to myself. 
 
 77 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 You must not lesson or chide me, or call me child, 
 Or think because your pap has nourished me 
 That blood like yours runs in me untransformed; 
 For in the mixing of a queen and a king, 
 And doublv by the use of power, there stirs 
 A spark that turns the substance of the blood 
 To white ethereal fire most hard to thwart, 
 Harder to bear, and yet to be sustained. 
 I have no earthly kin; I stand alone, 
 I am not commensurate with human things. 
 
 The Soldier. 
 
 I knew a woman once. . . . 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Obedience is the duty of each one, 
 
 But my obedience is a sterner passion 
 
 Than anything that others or you can know. 
 
 I have no protection, I am stripped and bared 
 
 To my own judgment with none to temper it; 
 
 The torment of clear vision is in my lot, 
 
 I must obey myself, I dare not flinch. 
 
 Am I unjust to make men fight and fail? 
 
 Injustice is the essence of discipline, 
 
 And when they are weary of failing, weary of woe, 
 
 Something will swell in them, their minds will 
 
 change, 
 They will succeed: let them but be, with me, 
 Determined not to feel, and to obey: 
 Britain is holy : it is mine and theirs, 
 And we must keep the trust. The Western men 
 May reach us before dawn : if I could hear 
 The Western tidings. . . . 
 
 The Soldifr. Once I knew a woman. . . 
 
 78 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Midnight cannot be past: this is an hour 
 
 Of flittering ghosts and haunting. Tell me, nurse, 
 
 Are dead men free and potent on this edge, 
 
 Nor earth nor deep, where no life can take hold ; 
 
 Or is't the very shore where they embark 
 
 For darkness? Tell me quickly, and get me loosed ; 
 
 Then I can see my mother before dawn comes, 
 
 And hear her need and mine. Or do I hang 
 
 Upon the edge of sense, and shall I lose 
 
 The borders of being? Almost outside my eyes 
 
 I see a grey thin woman flap and sway 
 
 With skimming motions like an alighting bird's. 
 
 I cannot move my head to follow her. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 No ghost walks nearer here than Maiden's Leap. 
 
 Has she white long hair? 
 
 Nest. Grey loose hair. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 Mad Ellin wanders so upon this shore ; 
 
 Yet she 's no ghost, but only a girl gone grey, 
 
 By day she sleeps, by night she wanders so, 
 
 Looking at nothing, seeking her lost mind, 
 
 Her dead self. 
 
 Nest. It comes again : it starts, 
 
 Throws up its head like a frightened coney and 
 
 checks : 
 Nurse, it can fly : it has gone ! 
 79 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Second Soldier, outside and at a little dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Tune up, you jades : 
 You had better not sulk when I speak pleasantly. 
 
 The First Girl, also outside. 
 
 Kiss me quickly, my mother is coming, soldier. 
 
 A shrill unnatural laugh follows. 
 
 Two soldiers enter from the right rear, 
 driving before them, respectively, 
 three and tzvo girls with clothing and 
 hair torn and hands bound behind and 
 held in long leashes of rope. The 
 First Girl, in the group of three, 
 carries herself gaily and provoca- 
 tively; the others are crying quietly. 
 
 The First Soldier. 
 
 Hoi, Brennus, what have you there? 
 
 The Second Soldier. Forage, forage. 
 
 The First Soldier. 
 
 Whither away? Are you for ship-board now; 
 
 Or do you change the guard? 
 
 The Second Soldier. 
 
 We are the ship-board guard; 
 
 We bring up reinforcements, like good soldiers. 
 
 Nights are too long ; we tired of catching our fleas 
 
 And needed a nimbler hunt. 
 
 The First Soldier. Such soft wrappings 
 
 Are not for fighting men, who should lie roughly. 
 
 80 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Keep one for me until my watch is past ; 
 You do not need the nosegay. 
 
 The Third Soldier. 
 
 Covetousness and envy among comrades are sins, 
 Greediness is a sin, and lust is a naughty sin: 
 Whisper to your trussed pullet there and leave 
 our pickings to us. 
 
 The First Soldier. 
 
 Keep the red-haired one an hour or two for me — 
 The one with the jolly face, who leers at ill luck: 
 I have seen no damsel nearer my mind or size 
 Since last I went rat-catching on Tiber's bank. 
 
 The First Girl. 
 
 Hearken to nuncle rambling in his mind: 
 
 He 's an old man ; he has a beard ; he looks forty. 
 
 The First Soldier. 
 
 You are a fine woman : love me and leave me, if 
 
 you like ; 
 But do not undervalue me until you know me. 
 
 The First Girl. 
 
 Aha, nuncle, are you there? 
 
 You are bow-legged ; you are short of breath ; 
 
 you creak. 
 Go in and pull your night-cap over your ears, 
 Bandage your rheumatisms, and mottle your legs 
 
 at the fire ; 
 And learn your times are over. 
 
 81 G 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Second Soldier, twitching her by her wrist- 
 
 rope. 
 Animal, you speak to a Roman fighting man ; 
 Be humble and obliging. And save your breath ; 
 You may be short of it later. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Who is the woman, Widan? 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 Birgit's daughter Megg. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Megg, daughter of Birgit, I have heard. 
 Britain is bleeding, Britain is dying to-night, 
 And waiting for worse things than death at dawn : 
 The young men of our land, my land and yours, 
 Lie out on frozen mire, dying to-night : 
 Does one of them stare up at unseen stars 
 And think death would be well if you were saved ? 
 Or were you always light and free with yourself, 
 Yielding yourself to a fancy or a bribe? 
 Then there are many men beneath this sky, 
 Whose blood runs out to enrich the soil they tilled, 
 Thinking kindly and gently of you, and how 
 Your body can multiply such bodies as theirs, 
 Renewing Britain's sap to fight again. 
 But you are japing with their murderers, 
 And too much love spills from your roving heart; 
 You love your enemies and anyone. 
 Our sacred uplands, this old reverend tide, 
 And young men's agonies thought of nowand now 
 Should have a voice in you : 
 Though trapped and fangless you can find sharp 
 stones 
 
 82 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 To push between your ribs, and then to-night 
 Lie down unconquered as your lovers lie. 
 
 The First Girl. 
 
 What have you to do with me, to command me, 
 
 To speak to me, child of the evil race? 
 
 I know when I am defeated : let me alone. 
 
 Shall I tell my enemy my heart with cries? 
 
 Shall I waste my blood as you waste others' blood? 
 
 If men must fight for Britain, women must live 
 
 for Britain : 
 But your mother and her brood, the ruling women, 
 The mad fighting fools, who have poured us out 
 In their pride, in their high-handed magnanimity, 
 With noble gestures of their souls, with priceless 
 
 passions, 
 Let them be brought to lamentation ; 
 Let them discover they are not higher beings than 
 
 women ; 
 Let us be freed from the danger of their great 
 
 vision ; 
 Let them die, let them die, ere they ruin Britain 
 
 again. 
 You Roman dog, snoring upon your spear, 
 Why do you covet my body when half the night 
 You have stood untroubled near this finer corpse? 
 We are all dead women, but still alive enough 
 To suffer. And she is royal : will that stir you ? 
 At her ; at her ; be at her, and let her find 
 The need to laugh at her enemy, and the light 
 To tread our bitter path. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Megg, daughter of Birgit, I and you 
 Never spoke together before now, 
 83 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 And shall no more — so soon we must be stilled: 
 
 Speak to me if you wish, but spare yourself 
 
 My judgment on your quality; reject 
 
 The common, violent, ineffectual things 
 
 That no one needs to say. 
 
 Rain-drops from different heights fall side by side : 
 
 We might have sunk far down in British earth, 
 
 And turned to loveliness ; but now we fall 
 
 Into a vagrant, barren, shapeless sea : 
 
 Yet even an ebbing tide preserves this land, 
 
 And when the certain flood sets in again 
 
 A greater wave shall fling our spirit up, 
 
 Our ardours reach their own, their aim, at last. 
 
 What I have done was done to serve our land 
 
 And its inheritors, not to serve you : 
 
 If your hard, helpless passion and ill will 
 
 Are for your country's griefs and not your own, 
 
 You have capacity, had you intent, 
 
 To know I have done well. 
 
 The Second Girl, one of the tivo and 
 puny andyounger than all the others, 
 bursts into more piteous crying and 
 stumbles forward to the length of her 
 rope, speaking between her sobs. 
 
 The Second Girl. 
 
 Rain-drops that fall ? But we are blood-drops that 
 
 fall: 
 Britain is bleeding, Britain is dying to-night 
 Because you broke the peace the Romans gave. 
 Or if we live we must bear Roman boys, 
 Bastards and serfs, to fight against our Britain ; 
 Such evil mothers as your mother was 
 We must become, hatching broods to destroy it. 
 84 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 You have taken our youth from us, you have 
 
 taken our age, 
 You have turned a nation into heaped refuse 
 To prove your foresight and your fortitude. 
 We lift our heads above the settling wrack 
 And laugh to see the ruin crush you too. . . . 
 We laugh. . . . We laugh. . . . 
 
 Her words are lost in loud breath-catching 
 sobs. 
 
 The Third Girl. Hearken, royal girl; 
 
 May your hard death sound thus in others' ears. 
 
 The Fourth Girl. 
 Hush, now she 's Queen ! 
 
 The Third Girl. Deliver us, Queen! 
 
 The Fifth Girl. Shield us! 
 
 The First Soldier. 
 
 Beaten people are often eloquent, 
 
 Brennus ; but there 's no time for eloquence here. 
 
 Be off with your pecking cage-birds, for all this 
 
 music 
 Will bring the captain of the guard upon us: 
 I see his lantern. Beside, we have learnt before 
 That a hen-fight never comes to anything. 
 
 The Third Soldier. 
 
 True, true, O man of wisdom. 
 
 The Second Soldier. 
 
 Come up, you beauties: 
 Good-night, old monument. 
 85 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The First Soldier. Sleep well, my friends. 
 The Second and Third Soldiers drive 
 the girls forward again and out to the 
 left rear. There is a short silence. 
 
 The Second Girl, at a distance. 
 Mother, mother! O, no! I must not go. 
 Leave me: I cannot go. 
 
 The Second Soldier. 
 
 Cut her down if she will not come quietly; 
 
 Or all the camp will know we left our station. 
 
 The Third Soldier. 
 Get up, baby ; stand up. 
 
 Again a silence. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Is she dead? 
 
 Widan, raising her head and peering into the 
 darkness. 
 
 She is lying still. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 If she is only wounded and not maimed 
 She could be sent into the Western hills 
 To fetch me tidings of the Western fight, 
 That is a fair hope yet. Someone must toil 
 To the far hills and back before the dawn, 
 And you are old and useless. Go to her. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 She jerks all over: she is dying. 
 86 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest. 
 
 I liked the terms of her ingratitude, 
 
 Her passionate injustice and force of hate: 
 
 She loved our land too much to think of me. 
 
 She would have served: 'tis pity she is dead. 
 
 Madron, a Briton, an elderly man, slips 
 stealthily and swiftly from the left 
 front toward Nest, and begins to beat 
 her on back and shoulders with a 
 belt which he carries in his hand. 
 
 Madron. 
 
 If the Romans kill me to-night 
 
 I have lived as long as my hope: 
 
 The blood of the unjust Queen 
 
 Shall pay me again and again 
 
 For my discomfort of shame, 
 
 For the town's scorn pointed at me, 
 
 And the wrong and oppression done 
 
 For her country's sake. 
 
 If this were the old Queen's body 
 
 I would kill it again. . . . 
 
 An involuntary low exclamation escapes 
 from Nest at the first blo-ws, and 
 she visibly braces herself to support 
 Madron's assault in silence. 
 Meanwhile Widan has sprung at his 
 throat from her crouching posture; 
 he goes down under her, and she 
 begins to strangle him. 
 
 Take care, you are choking me. . . . 
 
 Princess, Princess, Princess, 
 
 Call off your old wild she-dog. . . . 
 
 Will you let her kill me? 
 87 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The First Soldier, who has been nodding on his 
 
 spear. 
 Hey . . . How . . . Who . . . Why . . . 
 
 What — When . . . Where from. . . . 
 
 He advances with his spear ready. 
 The old women of this nation fight better than 
 
 the young: 
 We ought to have roped them too. If I were a 
 
 marrying man 
 I would rather have the old cat than the kitten. 
 She needs no help: she's best let alone. 
 
 He retires and resumes his guard. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Let the man stand up, Widan. 
 
 Widan, preoccupied. 
 
 Hush, hush: leave me alone: 
 
 He will be quiet soon. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Let the man stand up, I say. 
 
 Live Britons, although rascals, are worth more 
 
 Than Britons dead by honest British hands. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 Yes, deary; be patient; I am too stiff-jointed and 
 
 old; 
 I cannot do things quickly as your thoughts do 
 
 them; 
 But I am here because your will is mine. 
 I shall only bind him carefully lest he harms you. 
 As she speaks she kneels on Madron's 
 neck and binds his hands together 
 with the belt he still Iwlds. Then she 
 rises and addresses him. 
 88 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 It is my lady's will you shall stand up: 
 
 And she must be obeyed ungrudgingly. 
 
 But if you hurt her again I shall hurt you more. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Now who are you, weak man who does by night 
 The things he plans but dare not do by day? 
 What is your name? And are you of my race? 
 
 Madron, rising with difficulty. 
 I am called Madron the Potter. 
 I come from the next township. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 I am a Briton too: are you my foe? 
 
 Why would you injure me? Your enemies 
 
 Already blemish me and wound my heart 
 
 In more unbearable and dreadful ways 
 
 Than you were born to dream of or to do : 
 
 May not these griefs prove that I am your friend? 
 
 Madron. 
 
 What virtue, reward, or profit is there now 
 
 In being a Briton? Roman hands are heavy; 
 
 So they can truly guide, they can protect. 
 
 The Romans have unlearned your childish folly 
 
 Of fighting for pleasure, for healthfulness or pride; 
 
 They advance their battle to spread the Roman 
 
 peace, 
 The Roman order. We shall live better as 
 
 Romans, 
 And safe from your ungovernable kind. 
 You are to be forgotten in quiet years; 
 But bitterness is in me and must out 
 For your hard mother's chill injustice done 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 When I was beaten on three market days 
 Where the whole countryside could see and hear. 
 I have prayed that my intolerable feelings 
 And impotence to ignore them might renew 
 Their force in her and her high fatherless girls: 
 So now my peasant mind and hands rejoice, 
 Repeating ruin on your helplessness. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 You mean that the just Queen once punished you 
 
 Against some limit of law, reason or truth? 
 
 Potters were not often known to her: 
 
 Tell me, how did she find that you exist? 
 
 Madron. 
 
 I drove a beast in milk from her full pastures 
 
 Because her foraging fighters threatened me 
 
 And took my only cow. 
 
 Yet but an hour before I had believed 
 
 I should give more and heartily for her, 
 
 Thinking blindly that I was free to give. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Then, Madron, you were whippedfor being a thief. 
 
 Have you made me a thief by whipping me? 
 
 If our protectors' needs had left you free 
 
 Would Britain now be free? 
 
 Just blows have left a sore place in your mind, 
 
 Which shews unease of thought not found in me. 
 
 You cannot make me feel your festering shame, 
 
 And if it comforts and inspirits you 
 
 To hurt me more than any Roman can 
 
 You shall cut my back again, if, when you have 
 
 done, 
 You will this night act in one thing for me 
 90 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 On which Britain's recovery may turn. 
 
 Nurse, loose his arms ; give him his thong again, 
 
 And let him lay on quickly. 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 I cannot find the fastening in this light. 
 He is so safe : I dare not loose him now. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Disloyal, be my hands or go from me. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 You know I must not go. 
 
 As she is fumbling with Madron's bonds, 
 three women swathed in dark blue 
 cloaks enter from the right rear. 
 
 The First Woman. 
 Is this the spot? 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 
 Is that the girl? 
 
 The Third Woman. Surely. 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 She looks taller. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 She is stretched. 
 
 The First Woman. But not enough. 
 
 They laugh. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 We shall hear all here. 
 9i 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 
 But shall we see her face? 
 When do they start on her again? 
 
 The Third Woman. At dawn. 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 
 The cold strikes through my shoes: even on the 
 
 sands 
 The rime is thick. The rime will settle on us, 
 The frost will reach our bone-pith before dawn 
 
 comes. 
 I shall have a stiff stomach for a week. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 You should have brought two cloaks. 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 My house is full of drunken Roman men 
 Who throw their arms around my empty mead- 
 vat. 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 At the top of the street I passed a dead woman 
 
 Wearing good clothes. I pared off her skirt and 
 
 leg-cloths, 
 And donned them over my own. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 We can keep warm if we cower close together. 
 They seat themselves on the earth between 
 Nest and the backoftlie scene, hud- 
 dling near each other and hunching 
 their knees under their chins, a dark 
 indistinct mass in which only three 
 pale faces are clearly visible. 
 92 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Where is he? Does he fear my blood at last? 
 
 Dullard, begin ; begin. 
 
 Madron, released by Widan. 
 
 I have not seen such mettle in a girl. 
 
 My lasses are flinchers and wheedlers and all for 
 
 themselves. 
 Delicate meats, soft clothing and warm fur, 
 The eagerness of hunting, and gold that frees 
 From long toil and subservience, seem to breed 
 A generous and daring freedom of spirit 
 That more might share if more were favoured so. 
 Maiden, the keenness of your soul can hurt, 
 Though not your pride or state, not your steeled 
 
 mind : 
 Life is fair and an opening wonder in you: 
 I will not touch you ; I will serve life in you, 
 Though not your state, if you will tell your need. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 By Arvodun and Meirodun go forth, 
 
 Keep on by Ford of Tain and the Wood of Blaen, 
 
 By Giants' Pound and Weirstone and the Beacon ; 
 
 Look for my Western men and get their news, 
 
 Find if their battle is joined and say to them 
 
 That we are ruined here and look to them. 
 
 Madron. 
 
 Where will you be to-morrow? 
 
 Nest. I do not know. 
 
 Madron. 
 
 I'll find a horse and come again with the dawn. 
 He turns to go, then returns. 
 93 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Give me your pardon: 1 respect your passive 
 power: I am grieved I touched you. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Do what I ask: your deed will pardon you. 
 
 Madron goes out to the right, passing in 
 front of The First Soldier, who 
 has for some time again been nodding 
 on his spear. 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 Where will she be to-morrow? 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 They will leave the body here. 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 That man's wise thoughts will never lead to acts. 
 Men are so full of sentiments; a flush of feeling 
 Can turn them at a touch to mistrust or shirk 
 
 reason, 
 Keen and cool reason chat leads to irresistible 
 
 deeds 
 In women who can hate. But the man was right : 
 We are like the bees that are so poorly bred 
 They are neither men nor women, and like them 
 We fadge us a queen out of such stuff as ourselves 
 By too much feeding that makes hot and hasty 
 
 blood, 
 By warm cradling, blind respect, and make-be- 
 lieve 
 That what we have raised above us is better than 
 
 ourselves: 
 But we lack the bees' sense, who, when they hatch 
 too many queen-grubs 
 94 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Kill them all off save one. That might have 
 spared this ruin. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 Better one than many : but better none o' this kind 
 than one. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Women, who are ye? What do ye seek from me? 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 What does she say? 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 She is asking what we seek. 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 
 I seek my two sons: would she pay me for them? 
 
 What do you seek? 
 
 The Third Woman. I seek my sick husband: 
 I cannot find the house where he lay. Has she 
 seen it? 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 Ye are burdened with grief alone: I am spent 
 
 with fear: 
 Your men are only dead : I seek my daughter. 
 Prayers run round in my mind all night apart 
 
 from me 
 That I may behold her fate if I watch the Queen's 
 
 daughter. 
 
 Widan, again seated at the feet of Nest. 
 1 know you: I know you now: henceforth you 
 are marked. 
 
 95 
 
B R I r \ I N S D V U G H r E R 
 
 selfish beings s sue grs • 
 
 • ik that women have nose - 
 . isses B 
 Whohaslos 
 
 lespec ie silence G e i tents 
 
 A blea ig do soones wgets s ca 
 
 Second W ' v\ 
 s 
 
 Widan ic >ld Q een*sgo-b< ween. 
 
 \. 
 
 She is s < - iter, but the 
 
 g eal ones 
 
 .iened her heart with DC n ] 
 their lea\ ings 
 
 ■ •; nind against he 
 p sed •-• 
 
 The First Won 
 
 Yousgx ["herean x>tsteps. Some- 
 
 o ie cc nes 
 
 rmRDWoi in, fke» .eadtowG 
 
 \ 
 
 I id Ellin is the : 
 
 The Second v. • . \ 
 
 Is she C night like this? Then ruin impends. 
 
 mssa she's no ^ •.-.an. but a sea-bird 
 lies to < ... - ■ i earth-be 
 
 - 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 From a following storm of the evil force in dark- 
 ness. 
 
 Ellin enters from the right rear: her 
 supple and flitting motion, slim fig- 
 ure, and delicate features are those 
 of youth, but her hair, that falls loose 
 beyond her "waist, is grey. A scanty, 
 grey woollen gown that reaches to her 
 ankles, her hair, and the cold pallor 
 of her features and bare feet, make 
 her seem as if a film of hoar frost 
 covers her. 
 
 Ellin, to herself and as if she thinks she is alone. 
 
 Ellin must find the little wolves 
 
 And dwell with them in the farther hills: 
 
 There are live men everywhere to-night 
 
 And she cannot hear her thoughts for their 
 
 thoughts. 
 They have frightened the dead into vanishment 
 From their foothold between the earth and the sea, 
 Who will need no more to walk with Ellin 
 But will be content with the lately dead 
 And will dread this sounding place for ever. 
 
 Widan. 
 
 Ellin, Ellin, why are you out to-night? 
 
 Ellin. 
 
 Angry Widan, what are you doing? 
 
 Why are you always angry with Ellin? 
 
 Widan. 
 
 Why are you out to-night? 
 
 What is your sister doing? 
 
 97 h 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Ellin. 
 
 Dilys drove Ellin out of doors: 
 
 She is left alone with an iron man. 
 
 Ellin has come to her little one 
 
 That once was a baby crumpled and warm 
 
 Before you put it into this sea 
 
 When waves sprang high. A wild wind brought it 
 
 Back to her breast like a wide-winged gull: 
 
 It seeks her here on the moony nights. 
 
 She aches to find it safe to-night. 
 
 Let Ellin go: why, why are you here? 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Widan, this inhuman happy voice 
 
 Which chills me is that of a woman younger than 
 
 I; 
 And yet she says a wicked thing of you. 
 What does she mean? What can you know of her? 
 Come here, poor girl. 
 
 Ellin, noticing Nest. 
 
 What is a girl doing there? 
 
 Why is she reaching up into the sky? 
 
 Ah, cruel Widan, you have tied her. 
 
 Has she been naughty? What have you done? 
 
 When Ellin was naughty you tied her so. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Come here, strange girl. 
 
 Ellin. 
 
 No. Ellin is afraid of you. 
 
 You smell of blood. What is under your cloak? 
 A child's crying is heard, intermittent 
 and approaching. 
 98 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 Obey, Ellin: a divine presence speaks, 
 
 A daughter of our gods speaks here to you. 
 
 This was the Princess Nest, and is now the Queen. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 There is the child again : it has followed us. 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 
 You should have gathered it up and carried it 
 
 Under your two warm cloaks. 
 
 The Third Woman. 
 
 My slack arms could not hold it : I have not eaten 
 
 For a night and a day and a night. 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 Everyone in that house was dead but the child: 
 
 What can we do with it? Can we save ourselves? 
 
 It will die to-morrow: it had better die to-night 
 
 Easily in the frost. Do not notice it, 
 
 Or it will come to us. 
 
 Ellin. 
 
 She cannot be a god or queen 
 
 If she can be tied up or whipped: 
 
 And if she had ever been a queen 
 
 Bonds and defilement of her blood 
 
 Would make of her a common woman 
 
 Subject to men and feared no more. 
 
 At the beginning of this speech a very 
 young child is seen to pass slowly and 
 hesitantly from right to left across 
 the back of the scene, close to the 
 ■water's edge. As its faint, fitful cry- 
 ing comes nearer it attracts Ellin's 
 attention. 
 
 99 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Ellin's little one, Ellin's daughter 
 
 Seeks her in the night of fear; 
 
 Wingless and helpless she returns, 
 
 Escaping from the jealous sea-birds, 
 
 Gently floated 'twixt darkness and tide; 
 
 Small enough to fit the bosom 
 
 Of Ellin, with tiny spread hands that are fainter 
 
 Than wing-feathers, breast-feathers, neck-feathers, 
 down, 
 
 Yet quick and quiet and fluttering and grown, 
 
 And a creeping, tender voice of her own. 
 
 Lullaby-by, a-by; 
 
 Lull, lull, lull-lullaby. 
 
 While speaking she has gone to the child 
 with a dainty, swift, swooping motion, 
 and taken it into her arms. As she 
 finishes speaking she disappears with 
 it quickly by the way she came. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 What is this of a child? Have you done dark 
 things? 
 
 Widan. 
 
 Ellin 's my sister's girl: she was born simple: 
 
 She conceived a child unknown, to an unknown 
 
 sire, 
 Dropping it in the wildwood, nursing it there. 
 She fouled the scent of a wolf for the Queen's 
 
 hunt; 
 The huntsmen found her and the Queen said 
 If idiots might breed idiots when they would 
 Her land would be over-run : the child must die. 
 I pleaded for it, and she bade me drown it. 
 My kin misjudged me for my dutifulness: 
 Do not misjudge me now. 
 ioo 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 Ay, what a Queen was that: the earth was hers 
 To idealize, judge, improve and cut to waste. 
 Poor folk and poor folks' brats have been to her 
 Like maggots in cheese, to be smeared off at her 
 will. 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 Women, put by your grudges and griefs and 
 
 spites: 
 Be all Icenian till our country is free. 
 The watchman sleeps : help me to loose our Queen 
 And get her to the shelter of a wood, 
 The safety of a cave, where she can gather 
 Spent men and hearten them again to conquest 
 And lead a force thence to the Western men. 
 Do this, and I shall pledge her word and mine 
 That when she has driven out the Roman pack 
 The nation in assize shall probe and judge 
 Her deeds, her aspirations, and your wrongs, 
 Before she shall have leave to rule again, 
 Dispose of lives, or quarrel in our names. 
 
 Nest, shrieking and wailing abruptly. 
 
 Aia! Aia! Aiaha! Nurse! O, nurse! 
 
 A bat is in my hair! Deliver me: 
 
 Come to me: come quickly: it is cold and creeps: 
 
 It is wet and slimes my neck: will you never 
 come? 
 
 A shivering moan each time she breathes 
 shews that she is shaking all over : 
 she swings her hanging locks, throw- 
 ing her head back repeatedly, drags 
 at her bonds, and stamps repeatedly 
 like a startled thoroughbred horse. 
 
 IOI 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Widan, starting up. 
 Yes, child, I will. 
 
 The First Soldier, having awakened at Nest's 
 cries. Get down: have I not warned you? 
 
 Nest, shivering convulsively all the time she speaks. 
 Yes, yes, she will obey: and then, good Roman, 
 Will you not help me and ease me? I will entreat 
 
 you. 
 Hasten; now, now: come, touch me without awe, 
 And tear the bat from under my hair. . . . 
 
 Ellin enters from the right rear during 
 Nest's speech, and runs lightly to 
 her. 
 
 Ellin, disentangling something from Nest's hair. 
 
 Can terror shake the smallest queen? 
 
 You are no more than a very tall child 
 
 Crying for fear of the dark and its people 
 
 Of wings and gentle presences. 
 
 Look: be ashamed of your noisy dread 
 
 Of this dear little mouse with wings who sought 
 
 To sleep all day beneath your hair 
 
 For love of your savour and company. . . . 
 
 Another! Friend bat, it is time to fly. 
 
 The Roman general, Placidius, lias en- 
 tered behind the First Soldier dur- 
 ing Ellis's speech: she perceives him 
 at the last line but one, and straight- 
 way glides out by the rimy she came, 
 launching the bat in the air with a 
 graceful upward sweep of her arm as 
 she goes. 
 
 102 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Placidius. . 
 
 What is this scuffling and wild crying, sentry.'' 
 Have you laid hands upon the prisoner, 
 Against the order? 
 
 The First Soldier, presenting arms. 
 
 I have not touched her, Sir; 
 Although she has encouraged me to approach 
 
 her. 
 She seems to be a maid of a timorous strain, 
 Who has overgrown her strength or is shaken 
 
 with handling; 
 She cried aloud for fear of a bat in her hair, 
 Till a lunatic girl, with the cunning of her kind. 
 Crept past my guard and took it away and soothed 
 
 her. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 Madwomen and bats? A trick to rescue her. 
 
 Clear this forbidden ground: drive off these 
 
 mourners, 
 Whose still compassion saps our stern effect 
 Upon the pattern of dishonour here. 
 
 WlDAN. 
 
 Great sir, I beseech you, # 
 
 Let me stay with my mistress while she is here : 
 
 I will kneel apart and speechless. . . . 
 
 The First Soldier, striking her with the butt of 
 his spear. Be off, old hen. 
 
 And you, mother, and you ; get up, get gone. 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 He drives away Widan, who goes out to 
 the left front; then he attacks the other 
 women, and drives them toward the 
 right rear, whence they eventually 
 disappear. 
 
 The First Woman, as she goes. 
 
 Ahoo ! Ahoo ! Where can we go to now ! 
 
 The Third Woman, as she goes. 
 
 Magil, will you not wait for me? Will you not 
 
 help me? 
 Magil, Magil ! 
 
 The Second Woman, approaching and cringing 
 
 to Placidius. 
 
 Sir, I have lost my sons : 
 Grant me a little food. I have lost two sons, 
 And yet I cannot think of them or grieve, 
 Being hungry and thirsty and hungry: I can but 
 
 smell 
 Smoked beef and apples and honey-bread all 
 
 night. . . . 
 
 The First Soldier, beating her away. 
 Flap away after your cletch, and cackle to them. 
 She follows the others out. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 Sentry, you are relieved: I take your watch, 
 You are not trusty: go to the Queen's High House 
 Under arrest, and await me. 
 
 The First Soldier. Now, Sir? 
 
 104 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Placidius. Now. 
 
 The First Soldier salutes and goes out 
 to the right front. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Be just, Placidius, to a luckless man 
 
 Who did such duty as he could conceive. 
 
 No cold oppression and fierce discipline 
 
 Can put our tension and tempered quality 
 
 In slack minds and blunt nerves of base-born men. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 An enemy's compassion hurts him most: 
 He shall be sound again for the next battle. 
 But what of the wild Princess and her fault? 
 And what shall heal her honour but her knife? 
 This kingdom you have won by hardihood 
 Is narrow, but your kingdom of to-morrow 
 Will be more narrow : beneath your veil of night 
 The frost has strung cold jewels in your mane, 
 But when the night's dark mercy is stripped from 
 
 you 
 More darkness and more cold will enter you. . . . 
 
 Nest. 
 
 What do you wish to say? 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 This: with the slow, inevitable dawn 
 An army awakes to a thought of death for you : 
 It will not be an easy or swift death, 
 And memories of devotion bring me now 
 To cut your bonds and lend you a Roman sword, 
 If you have fortitude to fall on it 
 And die before your time, your appointed time, 
 As many have died for you . . . 
 105 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest. Or otherwise? 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 If love with a sharp sword and hard aspect 
 Seems worthier to you than love once seemed 
 Muffled in deference, hushed in a Queen's house, 
 And you will take my love, it can be strong 
 To arrest you wavering down the gulf of death 
 Like a torn leaf: you shall be sent to Rome, 
 To kind captivity with a trusty lady, 
 Until I can return to you and turn 
 Your bondage to a name . . . 
 
 Nest. 
 
 You were once envoy at my Mother's court, 
 
 And ate her bread: I would not spouse you then, 
 
 For all your sleek words and your Roman pride; 
 
 So shall I now be ready for that name 
 
 Of Roman wife, when guesthood's holiness 
 
 Is desecrated, my clear, reverend blood 
 
 Polluted with Latin thongs of gross beasts' hides, 
 
 My naked limbs soiled with ten thousand eyes? 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 It is not to be thought of that a slave 
 From a defeated and subjected race, 
 Whose body is blemished by the Roman justice, 
 Could be a Roman's wife. 
 I owed it to my men 
 
 That in their sight your falseness and marred faith 
 Should cost you much, for it has cost them much: 
 Yet when I heard you sing aloud for battle, 
 And when I saw you twisting, dumb with stripes, 
 Your voice had power in me, your silence hurt: 
 If you will but submit, and go to Rome, 
 1 06 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 You shall not lack consideration long, 
 Grave and honourable and sweet and sure. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Beings that can conquer and rule, I learn too late, 
 
 Are ignorant of the motions of man's mind. 
 
 When I am dead 
 
 My cromlech, or charred ash upon the site 
 
 Of the savage Roman rite of corpse-burning, 
 
 Is hallowed for the offspring of the soil ; 
 
 I shall be here for ever in their minds, 
 
 The god-folk's plan of Britain will lighten there, 
 
 I shall defeat you by unborn hands in the end. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 Nest, will you die for a thought? 
 
 You should be mother to a fighter's sons. 
 
 Submit, and let us wed in Britain here. 
 
 As he speaks, Nest is listening with 
 averted head as if to something far 
 away; then she begins to cry quietly 
 and hopelessly. 
 
 Nest, in the low voice of her continuing weeping. 
 Nursy, do you hear it? Hush, hush and listen! 
 It is there again : the cubs on Morning Side 
 Are wakeful in the starlight, playing and whining 
 Before their earth, the vixen watching them. . . . 
 I shall never, never hear them any more, 
 Or scent them in the down-hilt Autumn wind. . . . 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 Is exile darker to her than slow death is? 
 
 A Young Centurion enters from the 
 right front. 
 107 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Centurion. 
 
 Get to your station, sentinel; you misuse 
 Your duty; you are here to prevent speech 
 With this fierce, tethered woman. . . . 
 
 Placidius. Whom do you seek? 
 
 The Centurion. 
 
 Give me your pardon, Sir. I am sent to you : 
 
 I have sought you at every outpost with much 
 
 news. 
 The Western rabble is captainless and broken, 
 It has melted like earth-ramparts in a flood, 
 There is nothing left to pursue. . . . 
 
 Nest. Romans, O kill me now. 
 
 The Centurion. 
 
 Tidings of insurrection in North Gaul 
 
 Met face to face with these upon your threshold : 
 
 You are asked for any troops that can be sent. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 There is here no more to do: five hundred men 
 Can garrison this arrogant kingdom now: 
 Hasten, embark the rest with the first light. 
 
 The Centurion. 
 
 If we must wait for daylight a tide is lost. 
 
 The shipmasters advise that in an hour 
 
 The galleys will float; in two the ebb will come. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 Then fire the rest of the village for your torch. 
 
 Are any foes left there? 
 
 1 08 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Centurion. Not fighting men, 
 
 But grey-beards, bedridden, maimed, idiots and 
 babes. 
 
 Placidius. 
 
 The old women of the tribe will think of them. 
 Choose all the comeliest of the younger women, 
 Herd them down to the ships before the troops, 
 And get them under hatches first: send men 
 To loose this queenling and ship her too to Gaul. 
 I will come with you : there are other orders. 
 
 Placidius and the Centurion go out 
 together by the right front. 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Britain, dear land, my land, I am not one 
 
 To mouth my passion for you in other ears: 
 
 I have not crept to you for self s mean ends, 
 
 Base use, foul warmth, like fleas in a dog's coat, 
 
 Serfs in a Queen's house: I am a child 
 
 Of your beneficent spirit, O my earth; 
 
 I have gone up from you like a still tree, 
 
 In soaring contemplation looking down, 
 
 At one with you by sap and breath-stirred 
 
 thoughts ; 
 And when my root is cut I shall not live. 
 And you, O nearer Mother and my source, 
 Mabyn and Guenliam my sisters true, 
 I have failed you ; if I had been more eager to die, 
 More willing to go from Britain as you have gone, 
 I might at least have slept unconquered here, 
 I might have conquered: a mindless, moon- 
 marred girl 
 Has put me from a throne in my own mind, 
 Shewing me myself made common by new fear ; 
 109 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 And then I lost my freedom's latest hope: 
 I cannot die for Britain now, nor be 
 Of your dread fellowship again; alone, 
 Alone I must go forth, not to death or life 
 But to a waste between them, not to be borne. 
 Mother and sisters and O land, my land, 
 Forgive me for my agony's sake. Farewell. 
 
 While Nest is speaking Widan enters 
 stealth ny from the left front; she 
 moves warily toward Nest, until, 
 when Nest's speech is near its close, 
 she is kneeling at Nest's feet, bowing 
 over them and clasping them, her 
 body heaving and shaking soundlessly . 
 In the meantime aruddy glow has appeared 
 at the right, increasing until it has 
 become a deep glare which illuminates 
 the shore, the waters and the ships, 
 leaving only the sky still dark. 
 A confused, continuous, indistinguishable 
 clamour, in which women's voices 
 predominate, is heard. It grows and 
 approaches: then straggling -women 
 run across the stage from the right 
 toward the ships, followed by more 
 and more, until the shore is almost 
 covered with a tossing, shouting, wait- 
 ing crowd of many women, a feiv halt 
 or bandaged men, and some old 
 people; many are in disordered dress, 
 many are in night-clothes, some 
 are half dressed with bare backs or 
 shoulders gleaming in the fiery light. 
 They are folio-wed by Roman pike- 
 men, who drive them forward '. 
 no 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 A Young Soldier, urging onward Ennid, a 
 
 woman zvith a baby in her arms. 
 Put down the child, or I must throw it down : 
 No woman needs to carry a babe to Rome. 
 
 Ennid. 
 
 Sir, let me take him with me; let me keep him; 
 He needs no food but that which my love yields 
 
 him. 
 I will give all that you can ask, if I may keep him. 
 
 The Young Soldier. 
 
 If you will lay it down, it may well live ; 
 
 If I must throw it down it will die. 
 
 An Old Man, stepping forward and touching 
 Ennid's arm. Young mother, 
 
 War is a surging among blind elements ; 
 It cannot hear you; you cannot strive with it. 
 Trust me; give me your child, and it shall live, 
 And I will care for it. 
 
 Ennid, in intervals of kissing the child from head 
 
 to foot. His name is Brechan : 
 
 Tell him my name was Ennid, that I was young, 
 And that I'll walk the world and come again. 
 What is your name? 
 
 The Old Man. Cadvan. 
 
 Ennid. My heart will remember. 
 
 To The Young Soldier. 
 I will obey you, sir; let my mind halt 
 
 1 1 1 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 And veer to such an unbelievable thing. 
 
 Why must you hasten? The others are not yet 
 
 shipped. 
 Let me give him his morning milk before I go. 
 
 The Young Soldier. 
 
 If you can do it quickly you may do it. 
 
 Ennid tears her dress open to the waist 
 with a single movement, and, putting 
 her baby to her breast, kneels between 
 the Old Man and the Soldier, and 
 rocks backward and forward slightly. 
 A Soldier with a sword elbows his way 
 toward Nest, and hacks at tlie cords 
 •which bind her hands to the post. 
 
 WlDAN, starting to her feet. 
 Her hands! O, spare her hands. 
 
 The cords are severed: Nest falls to the 
 ground like a shed garment. 
 Ah, ah, you have hurt her; you have killed her, 
 you. 
 
 She kneels by the side of Nest and raises 
 her in Iter arms. 
 What has he done to you, my heart's first clothing? 
 
 The Soldier, pricking Nest with his sword. 
 Up! Up! March to the ships. Stir, or I'll stir you. 
 
 Nest, putting Widan aside and rising with 
 
 difficulty. 
 Nurse, do not touch me. I must go alone. 
 Follow me if you can. 
 
 112 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 She balances herself uncerta inly an instant, 
 then steps forward into the crowd and 
 disappears, followed by Widan and 
 the Soldier. 
 
 As the crowd drifts out to the left, toward 
 the ships, new comers pour in from 
 the right. Among them is an Old 
 Woman clawing a Young Woman's 
 shoulder, and growling like a dog. 
 The Young Woman breaks away, 
 grasping the bodice of her dress. 
 
 The Old Woman. 
 
 Why did I bear you for shamelessness and 
 
 greed. . . . 
 You have struck your mother: may you have 
 
 leper's hands. . . . 
 Give me my shoulder-brooches. Unbosom them. 
 
 The Young Woman. 
 
 What kind of a mother are you? You are done: 
 
 You muffle your withering neck, and need no 
 
 adornments. 
 Your mother gave them to you: it is my turn, 
 And yet you grudge me all you can do for me now, 
 When I must go to exile among strange men. 
 
 She makes a derisive gesture and plunges 
 into the crowd: the Old Woman 
 follows her with a cry. 
 
 The Young Soldier, to Ennid. 
 I can wait no more. Have done : there is no other 
 way. 
 
 Ennid. 
 
 Must it be now? 
 
 113 1 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 She takes her child from her breast, and, 
 averting herself, holds it out back- 
 ward to the Old Man, -who receives 
 it. 
 Take him, old father; take him and hide him 
 from me. 
 
 She stands for a moment with empty, tin- 
 moving' arms, then stumbles away 
 blindly into the crowd. 
 
 The Young Soldier follows her. 
 
 Ellin appears on the prow of the foremost 
 ship : the veiling pallor of her appear- 
 ance is lost in the irradiating fire- 
 glow: the unseen flames are glassed 
 in her wide eyes. 
 
 Ellin, extending imploring arms. 
 Ellin dreads this moving water, 
 This shifting floor; take her to shore. 
 The souls on the waters will cry for Ellin, 
 To share her body; 
 
 She wrings her hands. 
 And she must not go from here, 
 For her little one, her dear, 
 Has found its body again, 
 And she has left it here. 
 She has not learnt to walk upon water, 
 Take her with you, take her away ; 
 Or she cannot sleep with stones again 
 And wait until her child is seen. 
 
 The light suddenly brightens; she claps 
 her hands and points. 
 Look; look, what flames 
 Leap from men's hearts 
 As a nation consumes; 
 
 114 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Upward we yearn for escape 
 
 With spiritual limbs of fire, 
 
 And when they fail with the flame 
 
 Hearts' ashes will whisper to night, 
 
 Night of our earth, of our home. . . . 
 
 A Sailor, starting up behind Ellin, throwing an 
 arm round her, and dragging her backivard 
 out of sight. 
 Come down, white owl, come down. 
 
 Nest steps on to the prow in Ellin's 
 
 place, gathering her cloak about her 
 
 with one hand. 
 
 The general uproar takes on an angry 
 
 sound, and separate cries are heard. 
 
 There is our enemy .... Betrayer .... Wolf .... 
 
 She knew how to save herself .... she dare not 
 
 stay here .... 
 She has sold us to the Romans and shelters with 
 
 them .... 
 She has ruined us and forsakes us . . . . She 
 
 will escape us ... . 
 Night-hag .... Traitress .... Untrue. . . . 
 
 Nest, making a gesture for silence. 
 
 Hear me. 
 
 I have not a defence left to me 
 
 Against a foe: I do not need one now: 
 
 There is no more defeat that I can feel. 
 
 Why will you spit in a dead woman's face, 
 
 Affront the unburied, sting the cold quiet heart, 
 
 Gash the unhappy dead? I go from you ; 
 
 I shall not more offend you though you shew 
 
 mercy. 
 Yet I will not belittle my intention, 
 "5 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Or any deeds of mine. Britain is lost, 
 
 But not my love has lost it, not my devotion : 
 
 A tide of ruin has come over us, 
 
 And I, who strung myself to stand against it 
 
 And let it spend itself on me, have gone 
 
 Down with weak footholdandwave-weightedhead: 
 
 But that is not my sin. Hear me again : 
 
 Hereafter hear me in your memories: 
 
 A Sailor, unseen. 
 
 Laggards, weigh, weigh the anchor ; the flood is 
 
 here. 
 Tune up and haul on the cable. 
 
 A sound of trampling feet follows. 
 
 Nest, continuing. 
 
 When your new servitude is heavy and old, 
 And you tell over its cause and speak of me, 
 Say that I might have slipt past misery 
 By delicate dishonour and loosening ease, 
 But that I went alone to an unknown country. 
 An unknown servitude, an unknown end, 
 And that I once was Britain's daughter: then 
 You will bethink you that a state of Britain 
 Has been unbuilt, that it had once been built 
 And can be built again. Remember. Britain. . . . 
 She puts her hands to her head, reels, and 
 falls backward in a swoon. 
 
 A Second Sailor, singing unseen. 
 Hannibal was a man of Carthage ; 
 Chorus of many Sailors, unseen. 
 Hoi! Hoi! Does the anchor stir? 
 116 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The Second Sailor. 
 
 A town of towers and too much wharfage: 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Hoi! Hoi! There is weed on her. 
 
 Hannibal tried to travel to Rome, 
 
 The heart of the world, where all would come; 
 
 But he never saw Rome, and he never saw home. 
 
 Hannibal! Hannibal! Hoihoihoi! 
 
 Widan crouches on the deck and takes 
 Nest into her arms during the singing. 
 
 The Old Woman, as Widan raises Nest. 
 Her royal tricks and her royal words again 
 Will cheat us if we listen : shut your ears, 
 Britons, shut your minds until she too 
 Does this duty to Britain she preaches about 
 And rids the land and us of the last of her blood. 
 Young women of Britain, look on my miserable- 
 
 ness 
 And all this ruined place, and learn by it 
 What comes to a nation when a forward daughter 
 Thinksshe was borntomend her mother's blunders. 
 If the old Queen had lived we should have won; 
 Nothing uncomfortable would have happened to 
 
 us; 
 We should not now be sport to our green 
 
 daughters. 
 
 The Young Woman, in the ship and leaning over 
 
 the side. 
 
 That is my mother : tie up her head in her petticoat, 
 
 To-night she has sold her daughter to save herself. 
 
 We should do well enough if we had no mothers: 
 
 117 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The old Queen dared the Romans and dashed us 
 
 down, 
 But her poor daughter, whose spirit has here 
 
 given way, 
 Did what she could to save us; she is young 
 And has her sense in her and is not addled 
 Bycarnalsubservienceand chewed fireside wisdom. 
 
 A Sailor, unseen. 
 She floats! 
 
 Another Sailor, unseen. 
 
 She moves ! Out with the starboard sweeps ; 
 And fend her from the other ship. Look out! 
 
 A Young Man, wounded and bandaged. 
 
 It is too true; this bleached uncouraged girl 
 
 Was yesterday a flame that could deface, 
 
 A sudden storm that could drive down our foes. 
 
 Icenians, it is hard to all of us 
 
 To stay alive to-night: it is more hard 
 
 To this unpractised Queen : she has proved herself 
 
 Within the minds oTall who fought for her, 
 
 Yet she is made a subject by strange men, 
 
 And she must go alone to be despised, 
 
 Even to become unknown, and yet to live. 
 
 I say to her against your heartless cries 
 
 Farewell, queenly and lovely in my mind, 
 
 Farewell and come again before old age 
 
 Takes all your comrades and puts out the eyes 
 
 That saw you in your pride: we are your kingdom. 
 
 Daughter of Britain, farewell. 
 
 More and More Men. 
 
 Farewell ! Farewell ! 
 uS 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest, raising herself in Widan's arms. 
 What voice of kindness breaks and shortly ceases, 
 Like music when a door is opened and shut? 
 Where am I, nurse? I have been absent, I 
 Have come again to Britain from a place 
 That did not know me; for I heard but now 
 A British voice again at last, at last. 
 Yet someone said " Farewell. . . ." 
 
 A Girl, from the ship and unseen. 
 The ship is going ! O, O, O ! 
 
 Nest. 
 
 Nurse, do not answer me: I do remember. 
 
 you, unknown and nameless and my friend, ^ 
 When I have reached that place where no man's 
 
 speech 
 Means anything and sound has no more use, 
 
 1 will not learn their inexpressive words, 
 I'll break the inmost kernels of my ears 
 To hold within unmixed your living voice 
 That joins me now to Britain and its men, 
 And sends me out in membership to insults 
 For Britain's sake, accepted and secure 
 
 On my dead throne, to be excused and loved 
 As weaklings are, losers and failures are 
 When they are dead. Farewell. 
 
 The Men. Farewell! 
 
 N EST# Farewell, 
 
 Dear land, my land. 
 
 The Men and a Woman. 
 
 Farewell ! 
 119 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Nest. Farewell! 
 
 Nest's galley, which has been moving 
 gradually throughout her speech, dis- 
 appears to the left during her last 
 words: the other galley follows it. 
 
 The Men and Some Women, hurrying off to the 
 left after the galleys. Farewell ! 
 
 The Old Woman. 
 
 Would the fools wade to Rome after the chit? 
 
 The Second Woman. 
 
 A shipful of young women is sure to draw 
 
 Men after it : but this is a welcome ship, 
 
 Relieving us of all the pushing things 
 
 Who have grown up too quickly and jostled us. 
 
 Follow the men to the Ness: when the ship has 
 
 gone 
 And they feel lonely they will take our comfort. 
 
 The First Woman. 
 
 Call out " Farewell, farewell " ; it will please the 
 men. 
 
 The Remaining Women, mechanically and 
 meaninglessly as they run out in the wake of 
 the men. 
 Farewell, farewell, farewell. 
 
 As the stage empties Cadyan is seen to 
 be co7veringat the foot of the mooring- 
 post with ENNID'S baby in his arms. 
 
 120 
 
BRITAIN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Cadvan. 
 
 There is no conqueror except the earth : 
 
 The Roman lords will stay too long in britain, 
 
 Whose water and inbreathed air and soil-borne 
 
 fruit . , , 
 
 Shall in the darkness of their inwards change 
 Their secret seed into such British sparks 
 A.s those that spread a running fire in ling: 
 Not Rome but Britain shall be strong by them. 
 It will be so : but what is that to me? 
 To-night my sinking helpless country lies 
 In the & cold ruins of its shrunken past, 
 As in the trembling arms and shrivelled breast 
 Of an old failing man a little child 
 Lies ignorantly and blindly feels for dugs 
 That do not nourish it. 
 The little child, restless within my breast, 
 I cannot nourish yet or much protect ; 
 I am a houseless wifeless aged man ; 
 When men must save themselves I can do little; 
 I can but sit, although the child may die, 
 And wait for pity and help, and if it weeps 
 Whimper with it amid this night of woe 
 For Britain that is like a friendless child. 
 
 He bows himself over the child and sobs 
 in a high quavering voice like an old 
 
 woman s. 
 
 Curtain 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 KING LEAR'S WIFE and other plays. 
 1920. 4to. With binding design by Charles 
 Ricketts. Pp. 209. \%s. net. 
 
 A special edition of 50 copies signed by the 
 author, in white and gold binding. 31^. 6d. 
 net. (Very few remain.) 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie (Lecturer in Poetry at the 
 University of Liverpool) in The Liverpool Daily 
 Post and Mercury. 
 
 This volume has been long" overdue. It was the great good 
 fortune of " Georgian Poetry " that it was permitted to give 
 this remarkable tragedy of " King Lear's Wife " to the world, 
 and thus to have the privilege of pioneering Mr. Bottomley's 
 reputation among those who are unable to do much experi- 
 mental reading. It was obviously not only a dramatic poem 
 but an actable play; so actable, indeed, that it had the extra- 
 ordinary fortune of being acted ; and what was perhaps even 
 more remarkable of a poetic play nowadays, it showed itself 
 capable of being acted precisely and entirely as it had been 
 written, the technique of the poet contriving to be, with a 
 completeness not to be paralleled anywhere to-day except in 
 Italy, simultaneously the technique of the playwright. 
 
 The other plays contained in this volume are still to be staged. 
 They would certainly be not less effective than "King Lear's 
 Wife" . . . the cunning elaboration of supernaturalism in "The 
 Crier by Night " and "The Riding to Lithend," its combination 
 in the former with the elemental humanities, in the latter with 
 vivid characterand strangely heroic passion ; the deft lucidity of 
 " Laodice and Danae," which might serve as a type of dramatic 
 suspense passing at the exact moment into inevitable catas- 
 trophe: these things, one would think, should be eminently 
 practical politics for the theatre. If any manager wants plays 
 
 1 2;: 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 in which exciting- action is at the same time profound signifi- 
 cance, here they are. 
 
 However, we are only able to speculate on this aspect of 
 Mr. Bottomley's work. But we can console ourselves by simply 
 reading the plays as poetry. ... In the days when theurgy was 
 still an honourable profession, Apollonius of Tyana' said 
 " Knowing what people say is nothing; I know what people 
 don't say." That might be put as motto for such poetry as 
 Mr. Bottomley writes. It is the art of exhibiting realities. 
 What people don't say is what they really are ; and they don't 
 say it because they can't get hold of it. But he can, and he can 
 make them say it . . . they speak and act as unconstrainedly 
 as the folk of the everyday world; yet even- word and every 
 gesture is a flashing revelation of spiritual destiny. And not only 
 men and women, but nature also: tarns and mountains, winds 
 and the night, trees and stars — of these, too, Mr. Bottomley 
 " knows what they don't say." 
 
 To the technical beauty of Mr. Bottomley' s poetry I have not 
 alluded. It is extraordinary ; but, as in all great poetry, it is 
 no more than the sign that the reality of things is being 
 successfully exhibited. 
 
 Mr. John Drinkwater in "The Nature of Drama" 
 ("Prose Papers": London, Elkin Mathews, 1917, 
 p. 220). 
 
 I do say that the capital power of the commercialised theatre 
 in England to-day is so great that it has been able to impose 
 its standard on nearly all the people who are habitually in con- 
 tact with its merchandise ... so that one piece of catchpenny 
 insincerity after another is extolled by what passes for expert 
 opinion as a valuable contribution to the great art of the 
 dramatist, while a piece of work like Mr. Gordon Bottomley's 
 " King Lear's Wife," which . . . is for vigour of imagination, 
 poetic eagerness, and dramatic passion not to be excelled by 
 anything that has been put on to the English stage since the 
 Elizabethans, is met with a clamour of ignorance ... in most 
 cases (1915-16) we find no standard whatever being brought to 
 the judgment of an original work of art other than a spurious 
 morality. 
 
 Solomon Eagle in The Outlook. 
 
 The various societies which desire to regenerate the theatre 
 
 talk a good deal about the poetic drama of the future, but 
 
 they do not seem to take much trouble to find it. . . . Of 
 
 Mr. Gordon Bottomley's fine plays only one, to the best of my 
 
 124 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 knowledge, has yet been produced in this country. . . . There 
 is certainly the possibility of a great play in their author, and 
 one at least of them is better than any play in verse which has 
 been staged for many years, and is likely to live longer than 
 most of the so-called masterpieces of our time. If " Midsummer 
 Eve" had been by Claudel, or "The Riding to Lithend" by 
 some German (a most unlikely supposition) all the coteries 
 would have been talking about them years ago. . . . 
 
 " Midsummer Eve " is original, and the work of a poet. . . . 
 There is fine meditative poetry in it, poetry, moreover, not 
 grafted or glued on to its main structure, but growing out of 
 the dialogue naturally, in an inevitable manner. ..." Laodice 
 and Danae " is equally good reading, and it is dramatic. But 
 none of these plays is equal to the two latest, " The Riding to 
 Lithend" and " King Lear's Wife." . . . 
 
 Enough has been written about the grimness of < ' King Lear's 
 Wife," the fine bursts of poetry in it, and the remarkable 
 character of Goneril. . . . " The Riding to Lithend" is, up to 
 the present, the best of Mr. Bottomley's plays; and its superi- 
 ority is a superiority which, I think, would be still more evident 
 on the stage than it is in print. ... It comes straight out of an 
 old tale ; the characters are recreated and enriched. . . . The 
 diction is, as a rule, perfect in its propriety and often striking in 
 its beauty. And, above all, Gunnar is a hero, his fight a heroic 
 fight, his courage, his generosity, his humanity (a few sentences 
 to wife and hound are wonderfully chosen), and even his 
 weaknesses are such as to move the heart. His fall is like the 
 fall of all noble and fighting things; the sense of defeat comes 
 with it, but above that a feeling of exultation. On the stage the 
 end, I fancy, would be profoundly moving, and the fight excit- 
 ing to a degree, though there is no obvious rhodomontade 
 about it. 
 
 Mr. John Freeman in The Bookman. 
 
 This comely volume at last makes public what has been too 
 long a fugitive and cloistered pleasure. . . . These five plays 
 show the author in the most powerful exercise of his faculties. 
 Imagination here is free and moves with growing ease, music 
 enlarges like a splendid wind through the verse ; and the 
 common reproach of mere "poetic plays" has been avoided in 
 these, where character and action develope as surely as music 
 itself. Gordon Bottomley has remembered that his plays can 
 have no life except in the activity of his characters. . . . Fine 
 careless raptures alone will not produce a play like "The 
 Riding to Lithend "... you may quote almost any lines from 
 this fierce Icelandic play and find that what you are reading is 
 
 125 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 vital and essential to the expression of character and action. 
 And in this poetry, too ... the beautiful images flow 
 out with the ease of light on water; the rhythms have the 
 natural movement of thought, and the secret discipline of 
 masculine habit. "King Lear's Wife" will be familiar to main- 
 readers, but to others it will come with the delicious shock of 
 a oew creation. . . . The new play is a beam of light crossing 
 the darkness of the old. Few passages of modern verse reach 
 the beaut}- of Goneril's hunting-narration; and it is no isolated 
 beauty. 
 
 Mr. William Rose Benet in The Literary Review of 
 the New York Evening Post. 
 
 "The Crier by Xight" is one of the most powerful and eerie 
 poetic dramas of the supernatural that have been written in 
 the last two decades. To me the best-known translations of 
 Maeterlinck pale beside it. . . . I hold "The Riding to Lithend" 
 his greatest achievement. To me it is like a piece of gorgeous 
 stry blurred by wood-smoke and sea-mist and hung on a 
 granite wall. The dramatic structure is knit as compact as a 
 rock. Across the shimmering imagery of the diction bit 
 chili and foreboding wind of the spirit.*. . . The verse is noblv 
 distinguished. " King Lear's Wife " is also a notable piece of 
 work. ... It possesses convincing reality. . . . Again the 
 dramatic structure satisfies completely. " Midsummer Eve " is 
 packed with fragrant beauty . . . that creeps around the 
 heart. . . . The atmosphere is the important thing about this 
 play and is unforgettable. " Laodice and Danae " is more usual 
 (for Bottomley, for very few other writers), but it is the 
 work of a sure dramatic craftsman with an enthralling tale to 
 tell. . . . There is a splendid artistic austerity about his work 
 . . . yet mixed with this there is an entirely full-blooded love 
 of the earth, a delight in intensely human detail. . . . He has 
 indeed displayed many gifts imperishably bright. His name 
 should stand high in the roster of" modern English verse. 
 
 The Morning Post. 
 
 The rare beauty and distinction of these works have been un- 
 grudgingly acclaimed by many critics, but they have hitherto 
 : that wider recognition for which they are indubitably- 
 destined. . . . But now the bringing of them together in 
 one volume permits us all to appraise the quality of what is the 
 most significant accomplishment of our Georgians. It is impos- 
 sible to be impervious to the strength and beauty, knit together, 
 of these dramas. . . . Criticism mav note with admiration the 
 126 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 unerring skill of dramatic structure ; with delight the mastery 
 of language, which constrains the simplest words to the greatest 
 needs; with wonder the reading of the human heart. . . . The 
 man who can handle character and emotion with such mastery 
 both of language and imagination is indeed a poet. . . . 
 In Mr. Bottomley the Georgian era has found an authentic 
 voice — a veritable interpreter. 
 
 The Times Literary Supplement. 
 
 We must honour the devoted writers who keep alive the 
 desire for the poetic drama, and none more than Mr. Gordon 
 Bottomley. ... He is a poet and justifies his use of poetic 
 speech ; he is eloquent, incisive, has a blank verse of his own 
 which he writes with increasing mastery. . . . In " The Riding 
 to Lithend " he rises with his story. . . . the death of Gunnar 
 is well done; you read it breathlessly, for he makes it the death 
 of Gunnar indeed ; and even the slayers feel the greatness of 
 it. Mr. Bottomley, in a more fortunate age, might, we think, 
 have been a dramatic poet like Fletcher; he has Fletcher's 
 eloquence though not his fun, . . . but not, of course, Fletcher's 
 familiarity with the stage. ... If he had been bred in the 
 theatre, he might, we think, have had Fletcher's real and 
 delightful success. 
 
 John <9' London's Weekly. 
 
 The cumulative effect of a re-reading of Mr. Bottomley's 
 work is to convince one that he is a real poet who can write 
 real drama. In the matter of construction these plays approach 
 perfection ; the building up is masterly, and the verse is full of 
 variety and imagination. . . . The finest as drama is "King 
 Lear's Wife," though for sheer beauty and spiritual significance 
 I should be inclined to place "Midsummer Eve" first. Only 
 one of these plays has been acted in England. If we had a live 
 stage they would all be acted. 
 
 The New Statesman. 
 
 Mr. Gordon Bottomley's plays are good art. There are 
 moments in "King Lear's Wife" when he approaches great- 
 ness. ... It contains passages of very rare force, and the 
 dramatic power . . . is of a very high quality. In this play 
 and in " The Crier by Night " he recalls to us not the late 
 Elizabethans so much as that strange uneasy genius Thomas 
 Lovell Beddoes. . . . He is a purer poet, dramatically, than 
 was Beddoes, and his song has a clearer richer quality, more 
 I2 7 
 
SOME PRESS OPINMONS 
 
 imaginative, though not quite so fantastic ; but he resembles 
 Beddoes in his stern saddened preoccupations with the passing 
 of mortals. Few plays have a greater unity of atmosphere or 
 a more boding one than has " The Riding to Lithend." In all 
 the plays, however, one finds a real poet who is also a real 
 dramatist ; there is little of decoration in any of the plays, and 
 nothing of that windy seasonal rhetoric which is so common in 
 some poetic plays. 
 
 I. B. in The Manchester Guardian. 
 
 It is an excellent thing that these plays, the earliest of which 
 was published twenty years ago, should have been brought 
 together and given a new lease of public life. ... It is indeed 
 quite extraordinary that, with so much publishing of poetry 
 during the last few years, work of such high distinction should 
 have remained under cover. Mr. Gordon Bottomley's art of 
 tragedy, as well as his craftsmanship in verse, can be seen 
 ripening through this series until it comes to a rich maturity in 
 " King Lear's Wife." Here . . . austerity and compassion are 
 compounded, and so create the tragic atmosphere in which 
 small words are big with infinite meaning and hints develope 
 the power of hammer-blows. ... It is the best of the group, 
 and it is significant, as showing the inherent union between 
 matter and form, that when the poet writes his best play he 
 also writes his best verse. . . . He is admirably master of 
 himself and of his medium. 
 
 The Spectator. 
 
 Neither in the setting of the scene of " King Lear's Wife," 
 the conduct of the story, or its embellishment and illustration, 
 is there a wasted word. . . . But amid the abundance of this 
 most rich, most ample of little plays, there is surely nothing — 
 nothing, we mean, that can be detached from its setting — that 
 surpasses Gonerils two speeches to her mother. . . . Whether 
 Mr. Gordon Bottomley — though calling his creations by their 
 Shakespearean names in his heart — would not have done better 
 to call his monarch Cole or Cadwallader in print is a question 
 with which controversy will probably long be busy. It is a play 
 which would not be spoiled if, in a pet, he had called the pro- 
 tagonists Smith, Jones, and Robinson. We recommend this 
 test, by the way, to those who are called upon to pronounce 
 judgment upon the poetic drama. There is more in it than 
 meets the eye. 
 
 128 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 The London Mercury. 
 
 It is some years since the public was surprised to learn that 
 Mr. Gordon Bottomley had written a prelude to " King Lear," 
 which not only offered some solution of the problems of that 
 work, but was also in itself a plav of considerable beauty, 
 originality, and power. This piece now serves for the title of a 
 volume of collected plays. . . . It was effective and moving on 
 the stage, and it makes its effect, though perhaps a different 
 one, when it is read in the study. ... An extract will serve to 
 illustrate the flexible, elastic, and individual versification. We 
 should do wrong, however, if we were to give the impression 
 that his plays are only for the study, valuable for such passages, 
 and lacking m the harder bones of dramatic merit. The action 
 is not an excuse for decorative poetry, but is the immediate and 
 all-important thing. . . . These are the creations of a dramatist 
 who has no need of descriptive decoration to conceal the weak- 
 ness of his prime conceptions. 
 
 The Nation. 
 
 The wave of poetic drama has now ebbed, and this form is 
 practised very little to-day, lyrical and experimental verse 
 having almost entirely supplanted it. Mr. Bottomley's plays 
 are the only ones which, with the going-out of the tide, have 
 managed to escape its " long withdrawing roar " and retain a 
 place on the shore. . . . Without any doubt they express a 
 singular power of mysterious evocation. . . . They are not at 
 all vague and inchoate— on the contrary-, these towerine 
 shadows are remarkably and firmlv differentiated. . . . We find 
 "The Crier by Night " and " TheRidingto Lithend "-especi- 
 a y the former— the most darkly and magically impressive of 
 all the plays. ... An image in the former positively makes 
 you jump as Donne makes you jump with his imagery. . . . 
 But perhaps his most striking achievement is the way he can 
 make these shapes of an intensely brooding . . . imagination 
 speak out in taut, muscular, even gruffly vivid language. He 
 has avoided, and very properly avoided, the tenuous chantings, 
 effeminate imagery, and listless monochrome of the Celtic drama. 
 Mr. Bottomley's plays, in fact, are peculiar and esoteric, but 
 they undoubtedly achieve a strong success in their own 
 character. 
 
 The Athenceum. 
 
 Mr. Gordon Bottomley is one of the few writers of poetical 
 plays whom it is necessary to take very seriously : his blemishes 
 I29 K 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 are minor and few in number; his poetical qualities very much 
 outweigh his defects. He is at his best in expressing subtle 
 states of mind, and in formulating generalizations. His real 
 distinction lies in his dramatic power. His characters have 
 solidity and life . . . they are not mere symbols, but human 
 beings. His plays are marked by the economy of construction 
 of stage plays. It is significant to note that Mr. Bottomley's 
 pieces are excellent in proportion as they are actable. 
 
 The Saturday Westminster Gazette. 
 
 Of their kind, Mr. Bottomley's plays are remarkably good. 
 They have atmosphere and action ; they are exquisitely 
 wrought ; they are moving and dramatic. They will surely be 
 among the most delightful discoveries of future generations ; 
 and if by the beginning of the twenty-first century our successors 
 have contrived to establish a national or folk theatre, it is fairly 
 safe to prophesy that three at least of them will find a place in 
 its repertory. 
 
 The Observer. 
 
 Since the issue of "The Crier by Night " in 1902, Mr. Bottom- 
 ley has worked with a sincerity and devotion which are more 
 commendable than themorefrequent essays of lessconscientious 
 artists. We remember one considerable and beautifully pro- 
 duced book of miscellaneous verse, "The Gate of Smaragdus," 
 and there have been other plays issued semi-privately, until the 
 publication of "King Lear's Wife" gave him a wider public, 
 and reminded younger readers of his very definite and dignified 
 talent. . . . If as a tour de force, the latter is the greatest, we 
 still prefer, for sheer poetic beauty, for propriety of phrase and 
 for directness of action, the earlier " Riding to Lithend." Hall- 
 gerd is an exceptionally fine creation, and she is given to speak 
 passages of rare force and beauty. This play, too, has a fierce 
 dramatic quality. 
 
 Mr. R. Ellis Roberts in The Daily A T ews. 
 
 Mr. Bottomley's plays have all one merit without which 
 poetical drama is a thing indefensible. There is always in them 
 a definite note of necessity. . . . Not only does Mr. Bottomley 
 choose subjects which make his decision to write in verse seem 
 natural and right, he writes blank verse of a dignity and worth 
 which responds at once to the needs of natural, and the con- 
 vention of poetic, speech. His poetry is in the full English 
 tradition; he enjoys his vocabulary with that careful, inventive 
 joy which is the privilege of all who are sensitive to the individual 
 130 
 
SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 word. He can use rhetoric ; but he rarely allows himself to be 
 drawn away into mere hectic luxury of language. The best of 
 his plays is, I think, " The Riding to Lithend," a rendering of 
 the old life of Iceland, which really represents for us the 
 passionate, hasty life of the old Sagas, while it is free from 
 the pedantry which spoils so many efforts to reproduce Scandi- 
 navian heroics. Hallgerd is a genuine piece of dramatic 
 creation. "Midsummer Eve," with its quiet, wind-blown pathos, 
 is equally notable; and the quality of its verse shows Mr. 
 bottomley s talent at its highest and simplest. 
 
 The Actor. 
 
 In these plays, the public is reminded of Mr. Gordon Bottom- 
 ley s almost unique power, as among his contemporaries, of 
 presenting the sinister, the grim, the tragic, or the merely 
 weird, in a poetic garment of power and beauty ... in dramatic 
 force and verse charm. 
 
 The Journal of Commerce, Chicago, U.S.A. 
 
 These plays are put into a format and style of book that 
 honour the contents, and when you know the contents of this 
 remarkable dramatic poetry that is praise indeed. They hold 
 you strangely. ... The dialogue is skilfully modulated, it is a 
 veritable song-speech, illuminated by luminous pauses, by the 
 speaking silences that can invest, if rightly used, the static with 
 so much more dramatic feeling than the more obviously 
 emotional action. The plays are impressive even in the reading 
 ot them, then how much more effective they would be if acted 
 and declaimed— but in a manner worthy of their high art 
 
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