Yea, his eyes Are liker seas that feel the summering skies In concord of sweet colour—and his brow Shines gentler than my father’s ever: thou, So seeing, dost well to hold thy sire so dear. MADAN. I said not that his love sat yet so near My heart as thine doth: rather am I thine, Thou knowest, than his. GUENDOLEN. Nay—rather seems Locrine Thy sire than I thy mother. MADAN. Wherefore? GUENDOLEN. Boy, Because of all our sires who fought for Troy Most like thy father and my lord Locrine, I think, was Paris. MADAN. How may man divine Thy meaning? Blunt am I, thou knowest, of wit; And scarce yet man—men tell me. GUENDOLEN. Ask not it. I meant not thou shouldst understand—I spake As one that sighs, to ease her heart of ache, And would not clothe in words her cause for sighs— Her naked cause of sorrow. MADAN. Wert thou wise, Mother, thy tongue had chosen of two things one— Silence, or speech. GUENDOLEN. Speech had I chosen, my son, I had wronged thee—yea, perchance I have wronged thine ears Too far, to say so much. MADAN. Nay, these are tears That gather toward thine eyelids now. Thou hast broken Silence—if now thy speech die down unspoken, Thou dost me wrong indeed—but more than mine The wrong thou dost thyself is. GUENDOLEN. And Locrine— Were not thy sire wronged likewise of me? MADAN. Yea. GUENDOLEN. Yet—I may choose yet—nothing will I say More. MADAN. Choose, and have thy choice; it galls not me. GUENDOLEN. Son, son! thy speech is bitterer than the sea. MADAN. Yet, were the gulfs of hell not bitterer, thine Might match thy son’s, who hast called my sire—Locrine— Thy lord, and lord of all this land—the king Whose name is bright and sweet as earth in spring, Whose love is mixed with Britain’s very life As heaven with earth at sunrise—thou, his wife, Hast called him—and the poison of the word Set not thy tongue on fire—I lived and heard— Coward. GUENDOLEN. Thou liest. MADAN. If then thy speech rang true, Why, now it rings not false. GUENDOLEN. Thou art treacherous too— His heart, thy father’s very heart is thine— O, well beseems it, meet it is, Locrine, That liar and traitor and changeling he should be Who, though I bare him, was begot by thee.