Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life. Nor. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth: A dearer merit, not so deep a maim As to be cast forth in the common air, Have I deserved at your highness' hand. That knows no touch to tune the harmony. Is made my gaoler to attend on me What is thy sentence then, but speechless death, Nor. Then thus I turn me from my country's light, To dwell in solemn shades of endless night. [Retiring. K. Rich. Return again, and take an oath with thee. Lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands; (Our part therein we banish with yourselves,) 5 Barr'd. • To move compassion. You never shall (so help you truth and heaven!) Nor never look upon each other's face; To plot, contrive, or complot any ill, 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. Boling. I swear. Nor. And I, to keep all this. Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy ;- Nor. No Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor, My name be blotted from the book of life, And I from heaven banish'd, as from hence! But what thou art, heaven, thou, and I do know ; And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.Farewell, my liege :-Now no way can I stray; Save back to England, all the world's my way. [Exit. K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspéct Hath from the number of his banish'd years Pluck'd four away;-Six frozen winters spent, Return [To BOLING.] with welcome home from banishment. Boling. How long a time lies in one little word! For, ere the six years, that he hath to spend, K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live. Thy word is current with him for my death; 9 Gaunt. Things sweet to taste, prove in digestion sour. You urg'd me as a judge; but I had rather, You would have bid me argue like a father :O, had it been a stranger, not my child, To smooth his fault I should have been more mild: A partial slander' sought I to avoid, And in the sentence my own life destroy'd. • Consideration. 9 Had a part or share. ■ Reproach of partiality. say, Alas, I look'd, when some of you should K. Rich. Cousin, farewell :-and, uncle, bid him so; Six years we banish him, and he shall go. [Flourish. Exeunt K. RICHARD and Train.. Aum. Cousin, farewell: what presence must not know, From where you do remain, let paper show. Mar. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your side. Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words, That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends? Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time. ten. Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure. Boling. My heart will sigh, when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage. Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set The precious jewel of thy home-return. 2 Grief. Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make Will but remember me, what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages; and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else, But that I was a journeyman to grief? Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven visits, Are to a wise man ports and happy havens : Teach thy necessity to reason thus; There is no virtue like necessity. Think not, the king did banish thee; But thou the king: Woe doth the heavier sit, To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st: The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence3 strew'd; The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more Than a delightful measure, or a dance: For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? By bare imagination of a feast? 3 Presence chamber at court. 4 Growling. |