The King’S Diamond

This diamond he greets your wife withal By the name of most kind hostess.

Macbeth, Act II, sc. i.

Duncan the King,--Heaven rest his bier!-- Had a diamond icy-clear; Clear as ice and fierce as flame,-- I wot not whence he had the same. Its fellow was not in the land. It shot keen shafts of every hue On the old king’s trembling hand Where the veins were large and blue. A jewel of price was that indeed, Fit to buy a prince’s life; A royal gift for the lady wife Of a kinsman bold and true Who had served the king at need. Who was he, but the Red Macbeth That wrought the false Macdonwald’s death, And drave the sea-wolf in dismay, Sweyn the king of Norroway? Being guest to that great thane, Ere his limbs on couch had lain Duncan sent that frozen flame To Lady Gruach, the gracious dame. (Clear as ice was the lady’s fame, A flawless jewel indeed!)

Duncan the king at Colmkill sleeps, So sound he will not turn or moan; His slumber-draught was deep, I ween, Bitter-spiced with daggers keen. It is the Red Macbeth that keeps Stern state upon the throne, With Gruach, his kind queen. (“Most kind,” the old King Duncan said, Before he lay in his last bed.)

The Lady Gruach wears the crown, She wears the glistering golden gown, But yet she has not worn the ring That was the guerdon of the king. In the dark the diamond lies, Seen of no vassal’s eyes.

Nor any vassal’s tongue can tell How,--when the spying Day is sped And sleeps with the safe dead; When Gruach loosens her long hair Midnight-black on her shoulders bare, And sinks to the comfort of despair; At the witches’ hour, when the shadows swell As the swinging cressets flare, And the small swart crickets harp and harp On the tune remembered, torturing-sharp, And the sobbing owlets wake,-- The diamond in the dark Draws, draws her, like the spark In the head of a deadly snake.

Then will she sit, and dully stare On the cold diamond’s serpent-glare; Her lip is fallen, she does not stir, Her life is sucked into the gem; It is as though the Powers malign Had made with mystery in the mine A thing to be like the soul of her: It was a jest to them! All the light upgathered they That might have been a sunshine day, Broadcast blessing and heavenly boon, Peace of even and power of noon; Seized the rays with a spell unknown, Forced them into a core of fire Like the glede of a covetous desire, Shut them fast in the heart of a stone. And hard, and harder than the sword, They made the crystal, fiery-cored; On steel that oft had steel withstood Might it grave the word it would. A gem of beauty and of bale, A prisoned force in narrow pale, Evil-perfect, pure of good! --So will she sit, till naked Morn Peers at the world with visage white Like a sleeper roused in fright, Aghast and most forlorn.

What of the end? since end must be. She knows a skilled artificer, And he shall set in a dagger’s haft The thing that is like the soul of her. When first she thought thereon, she laughed, And then she shuddered fearfully. Ah, what if Heaven no end will grant, Resolved in any heats of wrath, To that which for its symbol hath The unsubduable adamant? Ah, what if like a falling jewel The soul whose light was mocking-cruel, Through gulfs of loss unplummeted Should fall, and fall, forevermore, Fire of torment at its core? Oh, horrible and leaden dread! The grace of God blot out our sins! --The women knock at the chamber door, The queen starts up, the day begins.