The poetical works of Alfred Tennyson.

  • Alfred Tennyson
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The poetical works of Alfred Tennyson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

    530/870 (page 498)
    And whether this flash of news be false or true, So the wine run, and there be revelry, Content am I. Let all the steeples clash, Till the sun dance, as ujion Easter Day. [Exeunt. SCENE III. — GREAT HALL IN WHITEHALL. [At the far end a dais. On this three chairs, two under one canopy fur Mary and Philip, another on the right of these for Pole. U'lUler the dais on Pole's side, ranged along the wall, sit all the Spiritual Peers, and along the wall opposite, all the Temporal. The Commons on cross benches in front, a line of approach to the dais between them. In the foreground .Sir Ralph Bagenhall and other Members of the Commons.] First Member. St. Andrew's day; sit close, sit close, we are friends. Is reconciled the word ? the Pope again ? It must be thus ; and yet, cocksbody ! how strange That Gardiner, once so one with all of us Against this foreign marriage, should have yielded So utterly ! — strange ! but stranger still that he, So fierce against the Headship of the Pope, Should play the second actor in this pageant That brings him in ; such a chameleon he ! Second Member. This Gardiner turn'd his coat in Henry's time ; The serpent that hath slough'd will slough again. Third Member. Tut, then we all are serpents. Second Mendjer. Speak for j'ourself. Third .Member. Ay, and for Gardi- ner ! being English citizen. How should he bear a bridegroom out of Spain ? The Queen would have him ! being English churchman. How .should he bear the headship of the Pope? The Queen would have it! Statesmen that are wise Shape a necessity, as the sculptor clay, To their own model. Second Member. Statesmen that are wise Take truth herself for model, what say you ? \_To Sir Ralph Bagenhall. Bagenhall. We talk and talk. First Member. Ay, and what use to talk? Philip 's no sudden alien — the Queen's husband. He 's here, and king, or will be, — yet cocksbody! So hated here ! I watch'd a hive of late; My seven-yeaiV friend was with me, my young boy ; Out crept a wasp, with half the swarm behind. Philip, says he. I had to cuff the rogue For infant ti'eason. Third Member. But they say that bees. If any creeping life invade their hive To gross to be thrust out, will build him round. And bind him in from harming of their combs. And Philip by these articles is bound From stirring hand or foot to wrong the realm. Second Member. By bonds of bees- wax, like your creeping thing ; But your wise bees had stung him first to death. Third Member. Hush, hush ! You ^^Tong the Chancellor: the clauses added To that same treaty which the emperor sent us Were mainly Gardiner's : that no for- eigner Hold office in the household, fleet, forts, army; That if the Queen should die without d child. The bond between the kingdoms be dis- solved ; That Philip should not mix us any way With his French wars — Second Member. Ay, ay, but what se- curity. Good sir, for this, if Philip — Third Member. Peace — the Queen, Philip, and Pole. \_All rise, and stand,