Page 267 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

When he lay couched in the ominous horse, [450]
Hat now this dread and black complexion smear’d
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is he total gules, horridly trick’d

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets, [455]
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks. [460]
So proceed you.

POLONIUS
’Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion.

1ST PLAY.
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword, [465]
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal match’d,

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, [470]
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top

Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus’ ear. For lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’th’air to stick; [475]

So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
But as we often see against some storm

A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, [480]
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As bush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region; so after Pyrrhus’ pause

Aroused vengeance sets him new awork,