Georgian Poetry 1913-15 Part 10

[She turns to LEAR, who has approached the bed and drawn back the curtain.]

What utterance of doom would the king use Upon a watchman in the castle garth Who left his gate and let an enemy in?

The watcher by the Queen thus left her station: The sick bruised Queen is dead of that neglect.

And what should be the doom on a seducer Who drew that sentinel from his fixt watch?

Lear:

She had long been dying, and she would have died Had all her dutiful daughters tended her bed.

Goneril:

Yes, she had long been dying in her heart.

She lived to see you give her crown away; She died to see you fondle a menial: These blows you dealt now, but what elder wounds Received them to such purpose suddenly?

What had you caused her to remember most?

What things would she be like to babble over In the wild helpless hour when fitful life No more can choose what thoughts it shall encourage In the tost mind? She has suffered you twice over, Your animal thoughts and hungry powers, this day, Until I knew you unkingly and untrue.

Lear:

Punishment once taught you daughterly silence; It shall be tried again ... What has she said?

Goneril:

You cannot touch me now I know your nature: Your force upon my mind was only terrible When I believed you a cruel flawless man.

Ruler of lands and dreaded judge of men, Now you have done a murder with your mind Can you see any murderer put to death?

Can you--

Lear:

What has she said?

Goneril:

Continue in your joy of punishing evil, Your pa.s.sion of just revenge upon wrong-doers, Unkingly and untrue?

Lear:

Enough: what do you know?

Goneril:

That which could add a further agony To the last agony, the daily poison Of her late, withering life; but never word Of fairer hours or any lost delight.

Have you no memory, either, of her youth, While she was still to use, spoil, forsake, That maims your new contentment with a longing For what is gone and will not come again?

Lear:

I did not know that she could die to-day.

She had a bloodless beauty that cheated me: She was not born for wedlock. She shut me out.

She is no colder now ... I'll hear no more.

You shall be answered afterward for this.

Put something over her: get her buried: I will not look on her again.

[He breaks from GONERIL and flings abruptly out by the door near the bed.]

Gormflaith:

My king, you leave me!

Goneril:

Soon we follow him: But, ah, poor fragile beauty, you cannot rise While this grave burden weights your drooping head.

[Laying her hand caressingly on GORMFLAITH'S neck, she gradually forces her head farther and farther down.]

You were not nurtured to sustain a crown, Your unanointed parents could not breed The spirit that ten hundred years must ripen.

Lo, how you sink and fail.

Gormflaith:

You had best take care, For where my neck has bruises yours shall have wounds.

The King knows of your wolfish snapping at me: He will protect me.

Goneril:

Ay, if he is in time.

Gormflaith (taking off the crown and holding it up blindly toward Goneril with one hand):

Take it and let me go!

Goneril: