White lady, sitting on the sea,
Tell to me, oh, tell to me,
How long shall thy reigning be,
White lady, sitting on the sea?
Long as the oak with which I'm crown'd
Shall bear one leaf above the ground,
Round which the crawling ivy's grasp
Its cursed tendrils does not clasp;
Long as one foot remains to stand
Firm on its own ancestral land;
Or one true man be left to claim
The burden of a noble name;
Long as one Gothic shrine shall rise
With 'scutcheon'd tomb, and banner'd stall,
Or the blest glances of the skies,
Through storied casements dimly fall;
Long as one heart shall beat to hear
Legends of the old valiant time;
Long as the Sabbath wind shall bear
The music of one haunting chime.
White lady, sitting on the sea,
Tell to me, oh, tell to me,
When shall thy downfalling be,
White lady, sitting on the sea?
When the vile kennel mud is thrown
Upon the ermine of the king,
And the old worships are cast down
Before a rabble's triumphing;
When toothless ---- is young again,
To do the mischief he but dreams,
And little ---- shall make more plain
The good that glitters through his schemes;
When the steam-engine of the north
Leaves making essays and wry faces;
And patriot Whigs forget the worth
Of pensions, power, pride, and places;
When on the spot where Burke and Pitt
Earn'd their high immortality,
Boxers and bankrupts boldly sit,
Then, then shall my downfalling be.
_Monday, 18th._
After breakfast, went to rehearsal; came home and stitched at my
_Françoise de Foix_ head-dress. My father is extremely unwell; I scarce
think he will be able to get through his part to-night. After dinner,
practised, and read a canto in Dante. It pleases me, when I refer to
Biagioli's notes, to find that the very lines Alfieri has noted are
those under which I have drawn my emphatic pencil marks. At half-past
five, went to the theatre. The play was Macbeth, for my benefit: the
house was very full, and I played very ill. My father was dreadfully
exhausted by his work. I had an interesting discussion with Mr.
---- about the costume and acting of the witches in this awful play. I
should like to see them acted and dressed a little more like what they
should be, than they generally are. It has been always
customary,--Heaven only knows why,--to make low comedians act the
witches, and to dress them like old fish-women. Instead of the wild
unearthly appearance which Banquo describes, and which belongs to their
most terrible and grotesquely poetical existence and surroundings, we
have three jolly-faced fellows,--whom we are accustomed to laugh at,
night after night, in every farce on the stage,--with as due a
proportion of petticoats as any woman, letting alone witch, might
desire, jocose red faces, peaked hats, and broomsticks, which last
addition alone makes their costume different from that of Moll Flagon.
If I had the casting of Macbeth, I would give the witches to the first
melo-dramatic actors on the stage,--such men as T. P. Cooke, and O.
Smith, who understand all that belongs to picturesque devilry to
perfection,--and give them such dresses as, without ceasing to be
grotesque, should be a little more fanciful, and less ridiculous than
the established livery; something that would accord a little better with
the blasted heath, the dark fungus-grown wood, the desolate misty
hill-side, and the flickering light of the caldron cave.[90]
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_Wednesday, 20th._
After breakfast, ---- and Mr. ---- came. ---- gave me the words and tune
of a bewitching old English ballad. Mr. ---- called and sat some time
with me: I like him mainly,--he's very pleasant and clever. That
handsome creature, Mme. ----, called with her daughter and her
son-in-law. Mr. ---- and ---- dined with us. After dinner, came to my
own room, sang over ----'s ballad, and amused myself with writing one of
my own. At half-past five, took coffee, and off to the theatre. The
house was very full; play, the Stranger: I didn't play well: I'd a gown
on that did not fit me, to which species of accident our _art_ is
marvellously subservient, for a tight arm-hole shall mar the grandest
passage in Queen Constance, and too long or too short a skirt keep one's
heart cold in the balcony scene in Juliet. Came home; supped; finished
marking the Winter's Tale. What a dense fool that fat old Johnson must
have been in matters of poetry! his notes upon Shakspeare make one
swear, and his summing up of the Winter's Tale is worthy of a newspaper
critic of the present day,--in spirit, I mean, not language; Dr. Johnson
always wrote good English.--What dry, and sapless, and dusty earth his
soul must have been made of, poor fat man! After all, 'tis even a
greater misfortune than fault to be so incapable of beauty.
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