قراءة كتاب King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve; Laodice and Danaë
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King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve; Laodice and Danaë
time.
For these delights, and the delight
Of converse in a Surrey night
After the deep sound had lapsed by
Of ocean-haunted poetry,
For counsel and another zest
Added to beauty's life-long quest
I, in acknowledgment, would bring
The homage of an offering;
And, being too poor to reach the height
Of my conception or requite
Your greater giving equally,
I search in my capacity
And, by my self-appointed trade,
Find something I myself have made,
That here I offer. Let it be
A token betwixt you and me
Of admiration and loyalty.
February 29th, 1916.
| Lear, King of Britain. |
| Hygd, his Queen. |
| Goneril, daughter to Lear and Hygd. |
| Cordeil, daughter to Lear and Hygd. |
| Gormflaith, waiting-woman to Hygd. |
| Merryn, waiting-woman to Hygd. |
| A Physician. |
| Two Elderly Women. |
KING LEAR'S WIFE
Toward the front a bed stands with its head against the right wall; it has thin leather curtains hung by thongs and drawn back. Farther forward a rich robe and a crown hang on a peg in the same wall. There is a second door beyond the bed, and between this and the bed's head stands a small table with a bronze lamp and a bronze cup on it. Queen Hygd, an emaciated woman, is asleep in the bed; her plenteous black hair, veined with silver, spreads over the pillow. Her waiting-woman, Merryn, middle-aged and hard-featured, sits watching her in a chair on the farther side of the bed. The light of early morning fills the room.
Yet this one cannot die who longs to die:
Even her sleep, come now at last, thwarts death,
Although sleep lures us all half way to death....
I could not sit beside her every night
If I believed that I might suffer so:
I am sure I am not made to be diseased,
I feel there is no malady can touch me—
Save the red cancer, growing where it will.
Shield me from rooting cancers and from madness:
Shield me from sudden death, worse than two death-beds;
Let me not lie like this unwanted queen,
Yet let my time come not ere I am ready—
Grant space enow to relish the watchers' tears
And give my clothes away and calm my features
And streek my limbs according to my will,
Not the hard will of fumbling corpse-washers.
Why are you here? Are you here for ever?
Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is she?
Merryn.
O, Sire, move softly; the Queen sleeps at last.
Lear, continuing in an undertone.
Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is Gormflaith?
It is her watch.... I know; I have marked your hours.
Did the Queen send her away? Did the Queen
Bid you stay near her in her hate of Gormflaith?
You work upon her yeasting brain to think
That she's not safe except when you crouch near her
To spy with your dropt eyes and soundless presence.
Merryn.
Sire, midnight should have ended Gormflaith's watch,
But Gormflaith had another kind of will
And ended at a godlier hour by slumber,
A letter in her hand, the night-lamp out.
She loitered in the hall when she should sleep.
My duty has two hours ere she returns.
Lear.
The Queen should have young women about her bed,
Fresh cool-breathed women to lie down at her side
And plenish her with vigour; for sick or wasted women
Can draw a virtue from such abounding presence,
When night makes life unwary and looses the strings of being,
Even by the breath, and most of all by sleep.
Her slumber was then no fault: go you and find her.
Physician.
It is not strange that a bought watcher drowses;
What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps
Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep
In the last days. When did this change appear?
Merryn.
We shall not know—it came while Gormflaith nodded.
When I awoke her and she saw the Queen
She could not speak for fear:
When the rekindling lamp showed certainly
The bed-clothes stirring about our lady's neck,
She knew there was no death, she breathed, she said
She had not slept until her mistress slept
And lulled her; but I asked her how her mistress
Slept, and her utterance faded.
She should be blamed with rods, as I was blamed
For slumber, after a day and a night of watching,
By the Queen's child-bed, twenty years ago.
Lear.
She does what she must do: let her alone.
I know her watch is now: get gone and send her.
What change is here? What see you in the Queen?
Can you discern how this disease will end?
Physician.
Surmise might spring and healing follow yet,
If I could find a trouble that could heal;
But these strong inward pains that keep her ebbing
Have not their source in perishing flesh.
I have seen women creep into their beds
And sink with this blind pain because they nursed
Some bitterness or burden in the mind
That drew the life, sucklings too long at breast.
Do you know such a cause in this poor lady?
Lear.
There is no cause. How should there be a cause?
Physician.
We cannot die wholly against our wills;
And in the texture of women I have found
Harder determination than in men:
The body grows impatient of enduring,
The harried mind is from