Act II

SCENE I.

ROSAMUND'S Bower.

A Garden of Flowers. In the midst a bank of wild-flowers with a bench before it.

Voices heard singing among the trees.

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Duet.

1. Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead?

2. No; but the voice of the deep as it hollows the cliffs of the land.

1. Is there a voice coming up with the voice of the deep from the strand, One coming up with a song in the flush of the glimmering red?

2. Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea.

1. Love that can shape or can shatter a life till the life shall have fled?

2. Nay, let us welcome him, Love that can lift up a life from the dead.

1. Keep him away from the lone little isle. Let us be, let us be.

2. Nay, let him make it his own, let him reign in it--he, it is he, Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea.

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Enter HENRY and ROSAMUND:

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ROSAMUND: Be friends with him again--I do beseech thee.

HENRY: With Becket? I have but one hour with thee-- Sceptre and crozier clashing, and the mitre Grappling the crown--and when I flee from this For a gasp of freer air, a breathing-while To rest upon thy bosom and forget him-- Why thou, my bird, thou pipest Becket, Becket-- Yea, thou my golden dream of Love's own bower, Must be the nightmare breaking on my peace With 'BECKET:'

ROSAMUND: O my life's life, not to smile Is all but death to me. My sun, no cloud! Let there not be one frown in this one hour. Out of the many thine, let this be mine! Look rather thou all-royal as when first I met thee.

HENRY: Where was that?

ROSAMUND: Forgetting that forgets me too.

HENRY: Nay, I remember it well. There on the moors.

ROSAMUND: And in a narrow path. A plover flew before thee. Then I saw Thy high black steed among the flaming furze, Like sudden night in the main glare of day. And from that height something was said to me I knew not what.

HENRY: I ask'd the way.

ROSAMUND: I think so. So I lost mine.

HENRY: Thou wast too shamed to answer.

ROSAMUND: Too scared--so young!

HENRY: The rosebud of my rose!-- Well, well, no more of him--I have sent his folk, His kin, all his belongings, overseas; Age, orphans, and babe-breasting mothers--all By hundreds to him--there to beg, starve, die-- So that the fool King Louis feed them not. The man shall feel that I can strike him yet.

ROSAMUND: Babes, orphans, mothers! is that royal, Sire?

HENRY: And I have been as royal with the Church. He shelter'd in the Abbey of Pontigny. There wore his time studying the canon law To work it against me. But since he cursed My friends at Veselay, I have let them know, That if they keep him longer as their guest, I scatter all their cowls to all the