Page 1618 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

EXETER

It follows then the cat must stay at home:
Yet that is but a crush’d necessity, [175]
Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries

And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.
While that the armèd hand doth fight abroad
Th’ advisèd head defends itself at home:
For government, though high and low and lower, [180]
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,

Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.

CANTERBURY
[True]. Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion; [185]
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts; [190]
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,

Others, like soldiers, armèd in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring home [195]
To the tent-royal of their emperor:

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in [200]

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-ey’d justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o’er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,

That many things, having full reference [205]
To one consent may work contrariously;
As many arrows, loosèd several ways,