graces life,
Yet round you life and light eternal beam.
Ne'er on this threshold can I set my foot,
That my poor heart with anguish is not torn,
Nor ravished with delight at gazing on you.
Yet fearfully the fatal time draws near,
And danger hourly growing presses on.
I can delay no longer--can no more
Conceal the dreadful news.

MARY.
My sentence then!
It is pronounced? Speak freely--I can bear it.

MORTIMER.
It is pronounced! The two-and-forty judges
Have given the verdict, "guilty"; and the Houses
Of Lords and Commons, with the citizens
Of London, eagerly and urgently
Demand the execution of the sentence:--
The queen alone still craftily delays,
That she may be constrained to yield, but not
From feelings of humanity or mercy.

MARY (collected).
Sir, I am not surprised, nor terrified.
I have been long prepared for such a message.
Too well I know my judges. After all
Their cruel treatment I can well conceive
They dare not now restore my liberty.
I know their aim: they mean to keep me here
In everlasting bondage, and to bury,
In the sepulchral darkness of my prison,
My vengeance with me, and my rightful claims.

MORTIMER.
Oh, no, my gracious queen;--they stop not there:
Oppression will not be content to do
Its work by halves:--as long as e'en you live,
Distrust and fear will haunt the English queen.
No dungeon can inter you deep enough;
Your death alone can make her throne secure.

MARY.
Will she then dare, regardless of the shame,
Lay my crowned head upon the fatal block?

MORTIMER.
She will most surely dare it, doubt it not.

MARY.
And can she thus roll in the very dust
Her own, and every monarch's majesty?

MORTIMER.
She thinks on nothing now but present danger,
Nor looks to that which is so far removed.

MARY.
And fears she not the dread revenge of France?

MORTIMER.
With France she makes an everlasting peace;
And gives to Anjou's duke her throne and hand.

MARY.
Will not the King of Spain rise up in arms?

MORTIMER.
She fears not a collected world in arms?
If with her people she remains at peace.

MARY.
Were this a spectacle for British eyes?

MORTIMER.
This land, my queen, has, in these latter days,
Seen many a royal woman from the throne
Descend and mount the scaffold:--her own mother
And Catherine Howard trod this fatal path;
And was not Lady Grey a crowned head?

MARY (after a pause).
No, Mortimer, vain fears have blinded you;
'Tis but the honest care