Page 540 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

What, will your highness leave the parliament?

KING HENRY

Ay, Margaret: my heart is drowned with grief,
Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes;
My body round engirt with misery: [200]
For what’s more miserable than discontent? -
Ah, Uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see
The map of honour, truth, and loyalty,
And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come
That e’er I proved thee false or feared thy faith. [205]
What louring star now envies thy estate
That these great lords and Margaret our queen
Do seek subversion of thy harmless life?
Thou never didst them wrong nor no man wrong.
And as the butcher takes away the calf [210]
And binds the wretch and beats it when it strains,
Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house,
Even so remorseless have they borne him hence;
And, as the dam runs lowing up and down,
Looking the way her harmless young one went [215]
And can do nought but wail her darling’s loss,
Even so myself bewails good Gloucester’s case
With sad unhelpful tears and, with dimmed eyes,
Look after him and cannot do him good;
So mighty are his vowèd enemies. [220]
His fortunes I will weep and, ’twixt each groan,
Say, ‘Who’s a traitor, Gloucester he is none’.

Exit [with Buckingham, Salisbury, and Warwick].

MARGARET

Free lords, cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams.
Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,
Too full of foolish pity; and Gloucester’s show [225]
Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile
With sorrow snares relenting passengers,
Or as the snake, rolled in a flowering bank
With shining chequered slough, doth sting a child
That for the beauty thinks it excellent. [230]
Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I -
And yet herein I judge mine own wit good -