DEATH BED INJUNCTION,-continued.
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last;
Writ in remembrance, more than things long past:
Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.
They have e'en put my breath from me, the slaves;
Creditors!-devils.
These debts may well be call'd desperate ones, for a madman owes 'em.
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf.
DECEIT.
You are abus'd, and, by some putter on
That will be damn'd for't;-would I knew the
Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks,
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both.
I am,old now,
And these same crosses spoil me.
Pray do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward; and to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
But on us both did haggish age steal on,
And wore us out of act.
But cozen'd and beguil'd.
Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth.
Thou, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou :
Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword,
I fear thee not.
What man dare, I dare:
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
DEFIANCE,-continued.
The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tyger,
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble: Or, be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword;
If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me
The baby of a girl.
And spur thee on, with full as many lies
As may be holla'd in thy treacherous ear
From sun to sun.
Stand back, lord Salisbury, stand back, I say;
By heaven, I think my sword as sharp as yours:
I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,
Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;
Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget
Your worth, your greatness, and nobility.
Who sets me else? by heaven, I'll throw at all:
I have a thousand spirits in one breast,
To answer twenty thousand such as you.
Health to you, valiant Sir,
During all the question of the gentle truce;
But when I meet you arm'd, as black defiance,
As heart can think, or courage execute.
Win me and wear me,-let him answer me,-
Come, follow me, boy; come, boy, follow me:
Sir boy, I'll whip you from your foining fence;
Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.
What I did, I did in honour,
Led by the impartial conduct of my soul;
And never shall you see that I will beg
A ragged and forestall'd remission.
There is my gage, the manual seal of death,
That marks thee out for hell: I say, thou liest,
And will maintain what thou hast said, is false,
In thy heart blood, though being all too base
To stain the temper of my knightly sword.
If that thy valour stand on sympathies,
There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine:
By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand'st,
I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it,
That thou wert cause of noble Glo'ster's death.
If thou deny'st it, twenty times thou liest;
And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,
Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.
Shall I be flouted thus with dunghill grooms!
DEFIANCE,-continued.
Scorn, and defiance; slight regard, contempt,
And any thing that may not misbecome
The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.
Though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have Ĩ in me something dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear.
I had rather chop this hand off at a blow,
And with the other fling it at thy face,
Than bear so low a sail to strike to thee.
I will fight with him upon this theme,
Until my eye-lids will no longer wag.
Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
Vagabond exile, flaying; pent to linger
But with a grain a day, I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fair word.
You fools! I and my fellows
Are ministers of fate; the elements
Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that's in my plume.
Thou injurious tribune!
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
In thy hands clutch'd as many millions, in
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
Thou liest, unto thee, with voice as free
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-ey'd maid of smoky war,
All hot and bleeding will we offer them;
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit
Up to the ears in blood.
I do defy him, and I spit at him;
Call him a slanderous coward, and a villain.
Cut off all intermission; front to front,
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland, and myself;
Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
Heaven forgive him too!
My services, which I have done the signiory
Shall out-tongue his complaints.
Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with a bribe
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part;
Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp,
That carries no impression like the dam.
And am I then a man to be belov'd?
O, monstrous fault to harbour such a thought!
But I,-that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking glass;
I that am rudely stampt, and want love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable,
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them:-
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity.
But, O, how vile an idol proves this god!
Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.
In nature there's no blemish but the mind;
None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind:
Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks, o'er-flourish'd by the devil. T. N. iii. 4. DEGENERACY.
But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd by our mothers' spirits;
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
O, that a mighty man of such descent,
Of such possessions, and so high esteem,
Should be infused with so foul a spirit!
What a falling off was there!
But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic ;
And manhood is call'd foolery, when it stands
Against a falling fabric.
DEGENERACY,-continued.
For in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.
'Twas never merry world, since, of two usuries, the mer-
riest was put down, and the worser allowed, by order of
law, a furred gown to keep him warm; and furred with fox
and lambskins too, to signify that craft, being richer than
innocency, stands for the facing.
M.M. iii. 2.
Shall it, for shame, be spoken in these days,
Or fill up chronicles in time to come,
That men of your nobility and power,
Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf,-
As both of you, God pardon it! have done?
The world is grown so bad,
That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch;
Since every Jack became a gentleman,
There's many a gentle person made a Jack.
DEGRADATION.
To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
And palter in the shifts of lowness.
So man and man should be;
But clay and clay differs in dignity
Whose dust is both alike.
DELAY (See also IRRESOLUTION, OPPORTUNITY).
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger;
And danger, like an ague, subtly taints
Ev'n then when we sit idly in the sun.
We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. R.J. i. 4.
Come,-I have learn'd that fearful commenting
Is leaden servitor to dull delay;
Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary.
Let's be revenged on him; let's appoint him a meeting;
give him a show of comfort in his suit; and lead him on
with a fine-baited delay.
M. W. ii. 1.
O, my good lord, that comfort comes too late;
'Tis like a pardon after execution ;
That gentle physic, given in time, had cur'd me;
But now I'm past all comfort here, but prayers.
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