... 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 As in the imagery of summer clouds, my conscience. Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts: 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 ? King. Vane's wits perhaps. Archy. Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour 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 She place my lute, together with the Did I not think that after we were dead music Mari received last week from Italy, In my boudoir, and King. Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that [Exit ARCHY. The cares we waste upon our heavy I'll go in. crown If you have aught to say wherefore this With bleeding stumps might sign our sentence Should not be put into effect, now speak. Juxon. If you have aught to plead in mitigation, Speak. Bastwick. blood away. Laud. Much more such " 'mercy" among men would be, Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge Thus, my lords. If, Could suffer what I would inflict. like the prelates, I Were an invader of the royal power, Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, [Exit BASTWICK guarded. Bring up Know you not The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.(To Strafford). That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds | Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln, Were found these scandalous and sedi tious letters Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled? I speak it not as touching this poor person; Which, when ye wake from the last But of the office which should make it sleep, shall turn To cowls and robes of everlasting fire. But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not The only earthly favour ye can yield, holy, Were it as vile as it was ever spotless. Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee, Beyond the shot of tyranny, Who owed your first promotion to his Beyond the webs of that swoln spider.. Beyond the curses, calumnies, and lies How can I call thee England, or my To the poor worm who envies us his Of the evening star, spite of the city's This glorious clime, this firmament, smoke, whose lights Tell that the north wind reigns in the Dart mitigated influence through their upper air. veil Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green clouds Took as his own, and then imposed on Thick strewn with summer dust, and a them: great stream But I, whom thoughts which must re- Of people there was hurrying to and main untold fro, Had kept as wakeful as the stars that Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, gem Of a green Apennine: before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, When a strange trance over my fancy grew Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear, Which was not slumber, for the shade Some flying from the thing they feared, it spread Was so transparent, that the scene came through As clear as when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew That I had felt the freshness of that dawn, Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And sate as thus upon that slope of And some fled from it as it were a lawn ghost, Under the self-same bough, and heard Half fainting in the affliction of vain as there The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the en amoured air, breath: But more, with motions which each other crost, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw, And then a vision on my brain was Or birds within the noonday ether lost, rolled. |