old life's sake, lest weeping overmuch
Should wake them in a strange new time, and arm
Memory's blind hand to kill forgetfulness.

CHASTELARD.
Look, you dream still, and sadly.

QUEEN.
Sooth, a dream;
For such things died or lied in sweet love's face,
And I forget them not, God help my wit!
I would the whole world were made up of sleep
And life not fashioned out of lies and loves.
We foolish women have such times, you know,
When we are weary or afraid or sick
For perfect nothing.

CHASTELARD.
[Aside.]
Now would one be fain
To know what bitter or what dangerous thing
She thinks of, softly chafing her soft lip.
She must mean evil.

QUEEN.
Are you sad too, sir,
That you say nothing?

CHASTELARD.
I? not sad a jot--
Though this your talk might make a blithe man sad.

QUEEN.
O me! I must not let stray sorrows out;
They are ill to fledge, and if they feel blithe air
They wail and chirp untunefully. Would God
I had been a man! when I was born, men say,
My father turned his face and wept to think
I was no man.

CHASTELARD.
Will you weep too?

QUEEN.
In sooth,
If I were a man I should be no base man;
I could have fought; yea, I could fight now too
If men would show me; I would I were the king!
I should be all ways better than I am.

CHASTELARD.
Nay, would you have more honor, having this--
Men's hearts and loves and the sweet spoil of souls
Given you like simple gold to bind your hair?
Say you were king of thews, not queen of souls,
An iron headpiece hammered to a head,
You might fall too.

QUEEN.
No, then I would not fall,
Or God should make me woman back again.
To be King James-you hear men say King James,
The word sounds like a piece of gold thrown down,
Rings with a round and royal note in it--
A name to write good record of; this king
Fought here and there, was beaten such a day,
And came at last to a good end, his life
Being all lived out, and for the main part well
And like a king's life; then to have men say
(As now they say of Flodden, here they broke
And there they held up to the end) years back
They saw you-yea, I saw the king's face helmed
Red in the hot lit foreground of some fight
Hold the whole war as it were by the bit, a horse
Fit for his knees' grip-the great rearing war
That frothed with lips flung up, and shook men's lives
Off either flank of it like snow; I