Poems (Hooper)/Bothwell

by Lucy Hamilton Hooper

BOTHWELL.

Wie zittert Königin Marie.

How trembled Mary, Scotland's Queen,
 When through the secret door at night,
With unbowed head and unbent knee,
 Earl Bothwell strode before her sight!

Pallid as death her fair face grew;
 She, trembling, looked with asking gaze;
He dashed the drops from off his brow,
 "The deed is done!" he darkly says.

"'Tis done! thy beauty shall no more
 Upon that boy be cast away;
This evening, at eight o'clock,
 Kept Darnley his Ascension Day."

She wildly shrieked, "May God forbid!
 Take all my gold, take all and flee!"
Then loud he laughed, in grim disdain,
 "Thou giv'st me gold for blood, Marie."

"I love thee, and, should Hell itself
 Claim me for what this night befell,
It was for thee, alone for thee;
 Thou art the fairest fiend of Hell!"

"The hand that robbed a King of life
 Can seize a Queen!" he loudly calls;
With terror on each feature traced,
 She, like a waxen image, falls.

He raised her up; she felt not how
 His coat of mail her soft flesh rent;
The rippled tresses of her hair
 Flowed o'er his shoulder as he went.

He swung her on his horse, he forced
 His ring upon her frozen hand,
Then toward the castle of Dunbar
 Fled o'er the tempest-threatened land.

Dark was the night, above, around,
 Extinguished seemed each kindly star;
A glitter, like a falling axe,
 Flashed sometimes o'er the clouds afar.
Geibel.