Epithalamium for Mary Stuart and the Dauphin of France
Whence the sudden stir that roars through my vitals? Why is my breast, unused to the experience of Apollo's inspiration, by breathless excitement agitated, and amid Parnassus' long silent shade do the mob raise anew the Paean in their secret caves? But lately, I remember, the laurels were untended, drooping, dumb the tortoise-shell, glum Apollo, and the lyre's inventor an Arcadian. . . . You, do you without backwardness, no belier of your royal progenitors, and like a true-born Frenchman, wholeheartedly take as your wedded wife this woman whom law has made spouse to you, nurture sister, sex servant of your command, courtesy mistress of your life, whom as life-partner to you have united her parents, and pedigree and goodness and beauty and eligible age and promise to obey and what, fastening these many chains together, makes tighter and faster the fastenings on all these individual chains--namely her love. If unto you the Goddesses with unanimous consent to suit you with a wife made offer--the three whom Paris saw on shady Ida--and allowed you to join the nuptial torches according to your free choice, what, however ambitious are your desires, could you ask for that would be better? Is the charm of exceptional beauty your delight? See the great nobility of her brow, what charm through her winsome cheeks is suffused, how ripe a flame from eyes how lovely flashes its lightnings, in what friendly alliance harmonises with fresh youth mature seriousness, and soft, easy gracefulness with queenly dignity! No whit behind her body is her brain, being well trained in the employments of Pallas, and, as it has received the culture of the Muses' arts, so tranquillises her moods as to render them gentle and obedient to wisdom's rule. If unbroken family-tree and long pedigree are looked for, this royal house from its one stock a hundred descendants, who all successively bore the sceptre, can reckon; this is the only house that covers in its historical records twice ten centuries, it alone, often as it was hit by the storms its neighbours felt, maintaining itself free from foreign domination; whatever antiquity is claimed for the other nations by traditions, tales or the boldness of myth, or is credited to them by our generation on the strengtrh of old records--compared with our antiquity--is mere modernity. If splendour of dowry is what stirs you, take as your dowry these war-brave hearts, the Scots.
Not here will I tell you about the country's acres of fertile land, about its glens fruitful in cattle, its waters fruitful in fish, its copper- and lead-laden fields, its hills where is found bright gold and hard iron, its rivers flowing through metalliferous veins--enriching commodities which other nations besides ours possess. These things let the numbskull mob admire, and those who despise everything but wealth--those whom constantly the keen thirst for possessions is making thick and muddy-witted with deadly poison.
But the real boast of the quivered Scots is this: to encircle the glens in the hunting, to cross, by swimming, the rivers, to bear hunger, to despise the variations of cold and hot weather; not by moat and walls, but by fighting to defend their native land, and to hold life cheap when their good name has to be maintained unimpaired; once a promise has been made, to keep faith; to revere the holy spirit of friendship; and to love not magnificence but character. It was due to these qualities that, when wars roared throughout all the world, and there was no land but changed its ancestral laws, made subject to a foreign yoke--one solitary nation in its old home still bade on, and still enjoyed its traditional freedom. Here the fury of the Angles halted, here stuck fast the deadly onset of the Saxons, here the Danes stuck after defeating the Saxons, and when the fierce Danes were subjugated, the Normans too. If to turn the pages of history books disgusts not, here too Roman victoriousness halted its headlong march: that onrush which the unhealthy sirocco repelled not, and not Arabia's rough desert plains, not the Sudan with its heat, not the Rhine and Elbe with their cold delayed--to Italy's onrush Scotland put a stop, and is the only nation in the world along whose frontiers not with mountain summit, not with a rapid river's banks, not with the barrier of a forest, not with stretches of desert plain did the Roman power defend the marches of its empire, but with walls and a trench; and though the other nations it drove by force of arms from their homes or else defeated and preserved for a disgraceful life of slavery, here content to protect its own territories, Rome built a long wall as defence against the battle-axes of the Scots. Here all hopes of advancing further were abandoned, and by the Solway water the boundary stone marks the limit of the Roman Empire.
And think not that, so accustomed as they are to cruel Mars' pursuits, their hearts have attained not to the refinement of the cultural arts. Scotland too, when barbarian invasions shook the Roman world, almost alone among nations gave hospitality to the banished muses. From here the teachings of Greek culture and Latin culture, and teachers and shapers of unlearned youth, Charlemagne brought across to the Gauls; Charlemagne too, who to the French the Latin fasces and Quirinus' robe gave to bear, to the French joined by treaty the Scots; a treaty which neither the War-God with iron, nor unruly sedition can undo, nor mad lust for power, nor the succession of years, nor any other force, but a holier treaty, binding with closer bonds. Tell over the list of your nation's triumphs since that age and of the conspiracies of the world in all its airts for the destruction of the French name--without the help of Scottish soldiers never victory shone upon the French camp; never really cruel disaster crushed the French without the shedding of Scottish blood; it has shared the brunt of all the vicissitudes of French fortune, has this one nation; and the swords that threatened the French it has often diverted against itself. The bellicose English know this, the wild Netherlanders know this, to this the Po's waters are witness, and Naples, attacked again and again by unsuccessful invasion. This is the dowry your wife offers you, a nation for so many centuries faithful to your subjects and conjoined with them by a treaty of alliance--happy omen of agreement between you in wedlock--a people unsubjugated by arms throughout so many dangerous crises--happy omen for wars and presage that to you will come victory's palm.
Rejoice! now she is yours to kiss, and more than kiss. But check your haste. Give us a share of the happiness today; you will monopolise all the joys tonight--and yet you won't monopolise all the joys today! The people's disposition is determined by the ruler's disposition as much as the state of landscape and seascape is determined by the state of the sky. Let there be untroubled bright sunshine, and smiling is the countryside, placidly rippling the sea, bland, untempestuous the air. But if the heavens are cloudy and overcast with storms, the fields bear a mournful, sullen aspect, the waves are angry and the atmosphere dark with fog and oppressive.
Thus to your people as a whole the contentment wedlock brings you assures corresponding contentment. Hence the present outburst of popular rejoicing. Nature, too, is throughout agog with eagerness to honour this wedding: see how the sun comes northward and daily lengthens his stay in the sky as if to behold the honeymoon couple! how the earth puts forth buds and greenery as if to promise happiness and fruitfulness to the union! Lucky couple! I pray that no quarrels will shake your concord and that your wedlock will endure steadfastly and long, like the alliance that joins your respective nations. Bride, your beauty and ability will doubtless so impress your husband that he will offer to let you control his life and guide his kingdom. Be you true to the nature of your sex and refuse to exercise rule. Land, where it presents a rough craggy front, has to suffer Sea's buffets and fierce waves, but where it makes no stand but lies open, sand-strewn with a fine beach, then Sea puts away its violent moods and woos Land with gentle kisses. Ivy by clinging and obeying climbs as high as the tree to which it is wedded. So too in marriage, submission is the woman's role. Do not be too dismayed by your absence from your native land. In France you have many noble kinsmen (the Guises), there too you will everywhere find the allies of your own race, and memorials of historic exploits by members of your own nation, and there besides you have a husband who will soon mean more to you than either kinsmen or native land, and soon too you will have children to delight you with their baby ways.[The poem then concludes:]
Grant me, Fates, this length of days--until Scotland and France, joined through so many centuries by mutual kindnesses, and by poets and by the fetters of laws, are now ruled by the sceptres of brothers and are growing one in spirit; and those whom sea with waves, and sky and earth by huge distances sunder, unity of purpose unites into one people, unity of purpose destined to endure as long as the everlasting fires of the stars.
Not here will I tell you about the country's acres of fertile land, about its glens fruitful in cattle, its waters fruitful in fish, its copper- and lead-laden fields, its hills where is found bright gold and hard iron, its rivers flowing through metalliferous veins--enriching commodities which other nations besides ours possess. These things let the numbskull mob admire, and those who despise everything but wealth--those whom constantly the keen thirst for possessions is making thick and muddy-witted with deadly poison.
But the real boast of the quivered Scots is this: to encircle the glens in the hunting, to cross, by swimming, the rivers, to bear hunger, to despise the variations of cold and hot weather; not by moat and walls, but by fighting to defend their native land, and to hold life cheap when their good name has to be maintained unimpaired; once a promise has been made, to keep faith; to revere the holy spirit of friendship; and to love not magnificence but character. It was due to these qualities that, when wars roared throughout all the world, and there was no land but changed its ancestral laws, made subject to a foreign yoke--one solitary nation in its old home still bade on, and still enjoyed its traditional freedom. Here the fury of the Angles halted, here stuck fast the deadly onset of the Saxons, here the Danes stuck after defeating the Saxons, and when the fierce Danes were subjugated, the Normans too. If to turn the pages of history books disgusts not, here too Roman victoriousness halted its headlong march: that onrush which the unhealthy sirocco repelled not, and not Arabia's rough desert plains, not the Sudan with its heat, not the Rhine and Elbe with their cold delayed--to Italy's onrush Scotland put a stop, and is the only nation in the world along whose frontiers not with mountain summit, not with a rapid river's banks, not with the barrier of a forest, not with stretches of desert plain did the Roman power defend the marches of its empire, but with walls and a trench; and though the other nations it drove by force of arms from their homes or else defeated and preserved for a disgraceful life of slavery, here content to protect its own territories, Rome built a long wall as defence against the battle-axes of the Scots. Here all hopes of advancing further were abandoned, and by the Solway water the boundary stone marks the limit of the Roman Empire.
And think not that, so accustomed as they are to cruel Mars' pursuits, their hearts have attained not to the refinement of the cultural arts. Scotland too, when barbarian invasions shook the Roman world, almost alone among nations gave hospitality to the banished muses. From here the teachings of Greek culture and Latin culture, and teachers and shapers of unlearned youth, Charlemagne brought across to the Gauls; Charlemagne too, who to the French the Latin fasces and Quirinus' robe gave to bear, to the French joined by treaty the Scots; a treaty which neither the War-God with iron, nor unruly sedition can undo, nor mad lust for power, nor the succession of years, nor any other force, but a holier treaty, binding with closer bonds. Tell over the list of your nation's triumphs since that age and of the conspiracies of the world in all its airts for the destruction of the French name--without the help of Scottish soldiers never victory shone upon the French camp; never really cruel disaster crushed the French without the shedding of Scottish blood; it has shared the brunt of all the vicissitudes of French fortune, has this one nation; and the swords that threatened the French it has often diverted against itself. The bellicose English know this, the wild Netherlanders know this, to this the Po's waters are witness, and Naples, attacked again and again by unsuccessful invasion. This is the dowry your wife offers you, a nation for so many centuries faithful to your subjects and conjoined with them by a treaty of alliance--happy omen of agreement between you in wedlock--a people unsubjugated by arms throughout so many dangerous crises--happy omen for wars and presage that to you will come victory's palm.
Rejoice! now she is yours to kiss, and more than kiss. But check your haste. Give us a share of the happiness today; you will monopolise all the joys tonight--and yet you won't monopolise all the joys today! The people's disposition is determined by the ruler's disposition as much as the state of landscape and seascape is determined by the state of the sky. Let there be untroubled bright sunshine, and smiling is the countryside, placidly rippling the sea, bland, untempestuous the air. But if the heavens are cloudy and overcast with storms, the fields bear a mournful, sullen aspect, the waves are angry and the atmosphere dark with fog and oppressive.
Thus to your people as a whole the contentment wedlock brings you assures corresponding contentment. Hence the present outburst of popular rejoicing. Nature, too, is throughout agog with eagerness to honour this wedding: see how the sun comes northward and daily lengthens his stay in the sky as if to behold the honeymoon couple! how the earth puts forth buds and greenery as if to promise happiness and fruitfulness to the union! Lucky couple! I pray that no quarrels will shake your concord and that your wedlock will endure steadfastly and long, like the alliance that joins your respective nations. Bride, your beauty and ability will doubtless so impress your husband that he will offer to let you control his life and guide his kingdom. Be you true to the nature of your sex and refuse to exercise rule. Land, where it presents a rough craggy front, has to suffer Sea's buffets and fierce waves, but where it makes no stand but lies open, sand-strewn with a fine beach, then Sea puts away its violent moods and woos Land with gentle kisses. Ivy by clinging and obeying climbs as high as the tree to which it is wedded. So too in marriage, submission is the woman's role. Do not be too dismayed by your absence from your native land. In France you have many noble kinsmen (the Guises), there too you will everywhere find the allies of your own race, and memorials of historic exploits by members of your own nation, and there besides you have a husband who will soon mean more to you than either kinsmen or native land, and soon too you will have children to delight you with their baby ways.[The poem then concludes:]
Grant me, Fates, this length of days--until Scotland and France, joined through so many centuries by mutual kindnesses, and by poets and by the fetters of laws, are now ruled by the sceptres of brothers and are growing one in spirit; and those whom sea with waves, and sky and earth by huge distances sunder, unity of purpose unites into one people, unity of purpose destined to endure as long as the everlasting fires of the stars.
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