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Re-enter HARDEGON with GUNHILD.
Hardegon. AT his learning! | |
| Deal with him, spare him not. | |
| Canute. Whom hast thou brought? | |
| A brooding face, with windy sea of hair, | |
| And eyes whose ample vision ebbs no more | 5 |
| Than waters from a fiord. I conceive | |
| A dread of things familiar as she breathes. | |
| Gunhild. O king. | |
| Canute. Ay, Scandinavia. | |
| Gunhild. He sees | 10 |
| How with a country’s might I cross his door; | |
| How in me all his youth was spent, in me | |
| His ancestors are buried; on my brows | |
| Inscribed is his religion; through my frame | |
| Press the great, goading forces of the waves. | 15 |
| Canute. Art thou a woman? | |
| Gunhild. Not to thee. I am | |
| Thy past. | |
| Canute. Her arms are knotted in her bosom | |
| Like ivy-stems. What does she here, so fixed | 20 |
| Before my seat? | |
| Gunhild. Harken! I wandered out | |
| Among the break-fern, and the upright flags, | |
| And snatching brambles, when the sun was gone, | |
| And the west yellow underneath the night. | 25 |
| A fir-bough rolled its mass athwart my way, | |
| With a black fowl thereon. All eve I stood | |
| And gathered in your fate. You raise your hands | |
| To other gods, you speak another tongue | |
| You learn strange things on which is Odin’s seal | 30 |
| That men should know them not, you cast the billows | |
| Behind your back, and leap upon the horse. | |
| You love no more the North that fashioned you, | |
| The ancestors whose blood is in your heart:— | |
| These things you have forgotten. | 35 |
| Canute. Yes. | |
| Gunhild. But they | |
| Will have a longer memory. Alas, | |
| The mournfulness that draws about my breasts! | |
| Woe, woe! There is a justice of the Norn, | 40 |
| Who sings about the cradle. | |
| Canute. Speak thy worst. | |
| [Aside, rising and pacing apart.] How different my queen! How liberal | |
| The splendour of her smile! This woman’s frown | |
| Is tyrannous. So will my country look, | 45 |
| When I sail back next year; for I shall feel | |
| A dread, a disappointment, and a love | |
| I loathe, it comes up from so deep a well, | |
| Where I am sod and darkness. | |
| Gunhild. At thy birth | 50 |
| Sang Urd of foregone things, of thy wild race, | |
| Of rocks and fir-trees that for ages past | |
| Stood in thy native bounds, of creeping seas, | |
| That call thy countrymen to journey forth | |
| Among strange people; and her song went on | 55 |
| As flesh was woven for thee in the womb; | |
| It cannot be forgotten, for she sang | |
| Beginnings. | |
| Canute. O grey-headed tyrannies | |
| Of yore, I will escape you. | 60 |
| Gunhild. Verily, | |
| They have requital. Thou wilt get a child: | |
| Will it not draw from the deep parts of life; | |
| Will it not take of thee that disposition, | |
| Old as the hills, and as the waterfall, | 65 |
| Whose foam alone was ever seen by man? | |
| Thou wilt produce a being of thy past, | |
| And all thy change avail not. | |
| Hardegon. How these women | |
| Can sing foundations! | 70 |
| Canute. If in those I breed | |
| It work no blessing, to myself this new, | |
| Unsettled energy within my brain | |
| Is worth all odds. I cannot understand | |
| Half that is meeting me. Go hence, your face | 75 |
| Is sheer confusion to me; it brings back | |
| The load of ignorance, the brutishness, | |
| The fetters of nativity. | |
| Gunhild. I go: | |
| But wrathful leave behind me what was told | 80 |
| When the crow bent from the swirled plume of fir, | |
| And held me like a statue. | |
| Canute. O my past, | |
| I loved thine aspect once, but now my mind | |
| Drives thee away. It seems to me that thought | 85 |
| Is as a moving on along the air— | |
| I cannot yet find language. You oppress, | |
| And hinder me; but when I brood alone, | |
| Hope stirs, and there is tumult of a joy, | |
| That flashes through my nature, like a sword, | 90 |
| Cutting the knots. | |
| Gunhild. Oh, indestructible | |
| Are the first bonds of living. Fare thee well. | |
| Thou wilt engender thine own ancestry; | |
| Nature will have her permanence. | 95 |
| Canute. And I | |
| Will have my impulse. | |
| Gunhild. Oh, the blue fir-bough, | |
| The bird, the fern, and iris at my feet! | |
| The whole world talks of birth, it is the secret | 100 |
| That shudders through all sap [Exit. | |
| Canute. She turns away | |
| With rigid shoulders, and is vanishing | |
| For ever. ’Tis in wrestles with her like | |
We are transformed.
[To HARDEGON.] Call Edric, do you hear! | 105 |
| And say no other word as you would live; | |
| My temper will not bear it. [Exit HARDEGON.] | |
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