Imatges de pàgina
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PHYSIC.

What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence? Hearest thou of them?

If thou could'st, doctor, cast

The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.

I do remember an apothecary,

And hereabouts he dwells,-whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.

About his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,

Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.

PITY.

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

If ever you have look'd on better days;

If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church;
If ever sat at any good man's feast;

If ever from your eye-lids wip'd a tear,
And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied;
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.

How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness; and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms.

And, if thou tell'st the heavy story right,
Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears;
Yea, even my foes will shed fast falling tears,
And say,—Alas, it was a piteous deed!

Villain, thou know'st no law of God nor man: No beast so fierce, but knows some touch of pity.

But I am in

So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin.
Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.

PLAINNESS.

Because I cannot flatter, and speak fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.

Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abus'd
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

While others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with great truth catch mere simplicity;

Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,
With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.

PLEASURE.-POETS.-POISON.

PLEASURE.

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.

Where is his son,

The nimble-footed, mad-cap Prince of Wales,
And his comrades, that doff'd the world aside,
And bid it pass?

To business that we love, we rise betime,
And go to it with delight.

POETS.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

203

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to hea

ven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation, and a name.

I had rather be a kitten, and

cry-mew,

Than one of these same metre-ballad-mongers :
I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel grate on an axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry.

POISON.

Poison'd,-ill fare;-dead, forsook, cast off :
And none of you will bid the winter come,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw;
Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course

Through my burn'd bosom; nor intreat the north To make his bleak wind kiss my parched lips, And comfort me with cold.

Come hither, man-I see, that thou art poor;
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
A dram of poison; such soon-speeding geer
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may
fall dead;

And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath
As violently, as hasty powder fir'd

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

POPULARITY.

An habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he, that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond Many! with what loud applause
Did'st thou beat heav'n with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou would'st have him be!
And now, being trimm'd up in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up.

You see, how all conditions, how all minds,
(As well of glib and slippery creatures, as
Of grave and austere quality,) tender down
Their services to Lord Timon: his large fortune,
Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendance
All sorts of hearts.

O, he sits high in all the people's hearts:
And that, which would appear offence in us,
His countenance, like richest alchymy,
Will change to virtue, and to worthiness.

All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him: Your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry,

While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck,

Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,

Are smother'd up, leads fill'd, and ridges hors'd
With variable complexions; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him.

They more and less came in with cap and knee,
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;
Attended him on bridges, stood on lanes,
Laid gifts before him, proffer'd him their oaths,
Gave him their heirs; as pages follow'd him,
Even at his heels, in golden multitudes.

Such a noise arose

As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,
As loud, and to as many tunes: hats, cloaks,
(Doublets, I think,) flew up; and had their faces
Been loose, this day they had been lost. Such joy
I never saw before.

I have seen

The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind
To hear him speak: The matrons flung their gloves,
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchiefs,
Upon him as he pass'd: the nobles bended,
As to Jove's statue; and the commons made

A shower, and thunder, with their caps, and shouts :
I never saw the like.

Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,

Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know,

With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course;

While all tongues cry'd, God save thee, Bolingbroke!

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