Page 222 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

HUBERT

If I in act, consent, or sin of thought, [135]
Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath
Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,

Let hell want pains enough to torture me!
I left him well.

BASTARD
Go, bear him in thine arms.
I am amaz’d, methinks, and lose my way [140]
Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

How easy dost thou take all England up
From forth this morsel of dead royalty!
The life, the right and truth of all this realm
Is fled to heaven; and England now is left [145]

To tug and scamble, and to part by th’ teeth
The unow’d interest of proud swelling state.
Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest

And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace: [150]
Now powers from home and discontents at home
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,
As doth a raven on a sick-fall’n beast,

The imminent decay of wrested pomp.
Now happy he whose cloak and ceinture can [155]
Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child
And follow me with speed: I’ll to the king.

A thousand businesses are brief in hand,
And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.
[Exeunt.]