ARCHY But 'tis all over now; like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene. QUEEN What news abroad? how looks the world this morning? ARCHY Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for "A rainbow in the morning Is the shepherd's warning;' " and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast. KING The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shepherd, the wolves for the watchdogs. QUEEN But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy; it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more. ARCHY Ay, the salt-water one; but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies. — The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops, . . . and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven-like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet. QUEEN Who taught you this trash, sirrah? ARCHY A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt. - But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and . . . until the top of the Tower . . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered. KING Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. ARCHY Then conscience is a fool. -I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots; it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death. QUEEN Archy is shrewd and bitter. ARCHY Like the season, so blow the winds. But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre? Vane's wits perhaps. KING ARCHY Something as vain. I saw a gross vapor hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass. QUEEN Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane In my boudoir, and— QUEEN My beloved lord, Have you not noted that the Fool of late What can it mean? I should be loath to think KING Oh, no! He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts; QUEEN Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts. Come, I will sing to you; let us go try These airs from Italy; and, as we pass The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio Shall hang the Virgin Mother With her child, born the King of heaven and earth, 484 It partly is, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. Stamped on the heart by never-erring love; A pattern to the unborn age of thee, Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that The cares we waste upon our heavy crown Dear Henrietta! KING SCENE III. The Star Chamber. LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, and others, as Judges. PRYNNE, as a Prisoner, and then BASTWICK. LAUD Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick; let the clerk Recite his sentence. CLERK "That he pay five thousand Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded LAUD Prisoner, If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence Should not be put into effect, now speak. |