CAMBER. Thou think’st I would have slain thee? Speak. DEBON. DEBON. Nay, then I will, for love of all this land: Lest, if suspicion bring forth strife, and fear Hatred, its face be withered with a curse; Lest the eyeless doubt of unseen ill be worse Than very truth of evil. Thou shalt hear Such truth as falling in a base man’s ear Should bring forth evil indeed in hearts perverse; But forth of thine shall truth, once known, disperse Doubt: and dispersed, the cloud shall leave thee clear In judgment—nor, being young, more merciless, I think, than I toward hearts that erred and yearned, Struck through with love and blind with fire of life Enkindled. When the sharp and stormy stress Of Scythian ravin round our borders burned Eastward, and he that faced it first in strife, King Albanact, thy brother, fought and fell, Locrine our lord, and lordliest born of you,— Thy chief, my prince, and mine—against them drew With all the force our southern strengths might tell, And by the strong mid water’s seaward swell That sunders half our Britain met and slew The prince whose blood baptized its fame anew And left no record of the name to dwell Whereby men called it ere it wore his name, Humber; and wide on wing the carnage went Along the drenched red fields that felt the tramp At once of fliers and slayers with feet like flame: But the king halted, seeing a royal tent Reared, with its ensign crowning all the camp, And entered—where no Scythian spoil he found, But one fair face, the Scythian’s sometime prey, A lady’s whom their ships had borne away By force of warlike hand from German ground, A bride and queen by violent power fast bound To the errant helmsman of their fierce array. And her, left lordless by that ended fray, Our lord beholding loved, and hailed, and crowned Queen. CAMBER. CAMBER. Queen! and what perchance of Guendolen? Slept she forsooth forgotten? DEBON. DEBON. Nay, my lord Knows that albeit their hands were precontract By Brute your father dying, no man of men May fasten hearts with hands in one accord. The love our master knew not that he lacked Fulfilled him even as heaven by dawn is filled With fire and light that burns and blinds and leads All men to wise or witless works or deeds, Beholding, ere indeed he wist or willed, Eyes that sent flame through veins that age had chilled.
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