Mary Stuart: A Tragedy

SCENE I.

      In a park. In the foreground trees; in the background
      a distant prospect.

      MARY advances, running from behind the trees.
      HANNAH KENNEDY follows slowly.

   KENNEDY.
   You hasten on as if endowed with wings;
   I cannot follow you so swiftly; wait.

   MARY.
   Freedom returns! Oh let me enjoy it.
   Let me be childish; be thou childish with me.
   Freedom invites me! Oh, let me employ it
   Skimming with winged step light o'er the lea;
   Have I escaped from this mansion of mourning?
   Holds me no more the sad dungeon of care?
   Let me, with joy and with eagerness burning,
   Drink in the free, the celestial air.

   KENNEDY.
   Oh, my dear lady! but a very little
   Is your sad gaol extended; you behold not
   The wall that shuts us in; these plaited tufts
   Of trees hide from your sight the hated object.

   MARY.
   Thanks to these friendly trees, that hide from me
   My prison walls, and flatter my illusion!
   Happy I now may deem myself, and free;
   Why wake me from my dream's so sweet confusion?
   The extended vault of heaven around me lies,
   Free and unfettered range my wandering eyes
   O'er space's vast, immeasurable sea!
   From where yon misty mountains rise on high
   I can my empire's boundaries explore;
   And those light clouds which, steering southwards, fly,
   Seek the mild clime of France's genial shore.
      Fast fleeting clouds! ye meteors that fly;
      Could I but with you sail through the sky!
      Tenderly greet the dear land of my youth!
      Here I am captive! oppressed by my foes,
      No other than you may carry my woes.
      Free through the ether your pathway is seen,
      Ye own not the power of this tyrant queen.

   KENNEDY.
   Alas! dear lady! You're beside yourself,
   This long-lost, long-sought freedom makes you rave.

   MARY.
   Yonder's a fisher returning to his home;
   Poor though it be, would he lend me his wherry,
   Quick to congenial shores would I ferry.
   Spare is his trade, and labor's his doom;
   Rich would I freight his vessel with treasure;
   Such a draught should be his as he never had seen;
   Wealth should he find in his nets without measure,
   Would he but rescue a poor captive queen.

   KENNEDY.
   Fond, fruitless wishes! See you not from far
   How we are followed by observing spies?
   A dismal, barbarous prohibition scares
   Each sympathetic being from our path.

   MARY.
   No, gentle Hannah! Trust me, not in vain
   My prison gates are opened. This small grace
   Is harbinger of greater happiness.
   No! I mistake not; 'tis the active hand
   Of love to which I owe this kind indulgence.
   I recognize in this the mighty arm
   Of Leicester. They will by degrees expand
   My prison; will accustom me, through small,
   To greater liberty, until at last
   I shall behold the face of him whose hand
   Will dash my fetters off, and that forever.

   KENNEDY.
   Oh, my dear queen! I cannot reconcile
   These contradictions. 'Twas but yesterday
   That they announced your death, and all at once,
   To-day, you have such liberty. Their chains
   Are also loosed, as I have oft been told,
   Whom everlasting liberty awaits.

      [Hunting horns at a distance.

   MARY.
   Hear'st then the bugle, so blithely resounding?
   Hear'st thou its echoes through wood and through plain?
   Oh, might I now, on my nimble steed bounding,
   Join with the jocund, the frolicsome train.

      [Hunting horns again heard.

   Again! Oh, this sad and this pleasing remembrance!
   These are the sounds which, so sprightly and clear,
   Oft, when with music the hounds and the horn
   So cheerfully welcomed the break of the morn,
   On the heaths of the Highlands delighted my ear.