MacBeth at Loch Leven

None but a cuddy would covet such a mare’s nest
As this accursed country, this well-laid wolf trap!
Come, lying bards, and praise your matchless king,
This handsome red war-hound, puissant and proud!
There’s no glory in all this, that much I understand,
Only blood, bitter black, and raven-ravished bones.
Ah, prince’s truth makes the winter earth bloom;
Giddy orchards sing with fruit; gyring corn-spires
Adore the bright welkin ; cows’ udders overflow;
Streams teem with glittering ; women’s wombs
Bear fair sons and daughters to the crowing sun.
What lures me back so often to this sainted water?
Rome itself could not so calm my angered soul,
Nor mend the world, and marry heaven and earth.
Fierce August tracks me with a lion’s purpose,
Raking the air with golden claws, drawing blood
From sullen moments, alone in an isle of bone,
Seasoned for the kill, wise to weird and weal.
This God-graced sanctuary is a place of healing,
Equal to any pain, a hermit’s cloister, angels’ nest
And promise of swan-winged bliss, beyond care.
Since I sat upon the Stone of Destiny at Scone,
And pledged myself, heaven-wed with the crown,
Enthroned on Moot Hill, in a castle of clouds,
What boons have I ill-used, and suffered from?
Still the bard is singing in my ear my pedigree
Of ancient kings, from the womb of Scota sprung,
Reminding me of honour and duty, and the boasts
Of battles won, and evil exorcised by the just hand.
Here, to this Culdee isle, I come to pay due honour
To eremitic virtue, and the life of contemplation,
Whereas I myself have lived by fire and sword,
Destroying what I could not understand or appease;
This monastery I endow, trading money for prayer,
Begging holy indulgence for my sins, that God
Might forgive any error, and bless my bones withal.
Many a time I have envied these monks their way,
Their solitude and silence, enwombed in waters,
Far from the world’s affray, the wicked scheming
Of men, bent on boundless selfishness and greed,
Yet I, though I kneel beneath the high cross, cannot
Renounce the world, nor my ambitions within it.
O,beloved Moray, doom-bound behind the Mounth,
Will you that bore and shaped me be also my grave,
When time and fate turn against their ill-starred son?
Your rich earth ,I think, will soon fill my mouth,
And your stones hold me down, in the darkness;
Here I run like the wild boar, hunted from birth,
Whose tombstone will be a birch, a pillar of fire.
For what was I named “son of life”,” righteous man”,
If not to stand among the saved, at Judgment Day?
My deeds,then,must be heaven’s will fulfilled.
Still, in dreams, I see my father fall before me, run
To ground, torn to pieces by the hounds, clutching
At my body, as if I were life itself, the high tower
That all men quest for; no greater warrior ever lived,
Than he, who reared me as his lion-cub, to fulfil
A high king’s part ;hell-spawn they were, my cousins,
Who slew him , usurped my throne, and forced me
To flee my own kingdom like some devilish curse;
Revenge was all I dreamed of in those sere years,
And when at last I licked their blood from my fingers
I rejoiced in God’s justice, come home in triumph.
Proven in war and intrigue, was I not the true elect?
The path I took had long been marked out for me
In blood, from generations past, jealous of their dues,
And when a false king won the throne of Scotland,
I saw my perfect right to undo wry fate’s mistake,
And take his place, poor Duncan, neither warrior
Nor statesman, whose weak hands let slip the crown
As if relieved, as the August sun attained its zenith
And fell, bleeding fogs across the shadowed land;
I saw in his eyes as I killed him some strange sign,
Whose doubtful meaning has troubled me ever since.
In Loch Leven’s waves I see visions and dreams,
This pilgrimage holier than that I made to Rome,
Where I scattered silver coins to the scrabbling mob,
And prayed at high altars, beseeching the Creator
For absolution, and though priests and cardinals
Danced attendance upon me, I knew no revelation,
And felt no contentment, smelling the fox’s reek.
Have I, perhaps, already hanged myself, like a fool,
By letting enemies live, not destroying them at once,
Too eager to show myself magnanimous and wise,
When true wisdom is in cruelty, in murder and rapine?
August is the death of kings; I fear this sere season,
When the scythe sweeps, and lays brown fields bare;
War cries roil the air, and all around is blossom’s rout;
Sunset shines through the sockets of a horse’s skull.