Page 793 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

But goers backward.

BERTRAM
His good remembrance, sir,
Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;
So in approof lives not his epitaph [50]
As in your royal speech.

KING
Would I were with him! He would always say −
Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words
He scattered not in ears, but grafted them
To grow there and to bear − ‘Let me not live’, [55]

This his good melancholy oft began
On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,
When it was out, ‘Let me not live’, quoth he,
‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff

Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses [60]
All but new things disdain; whose judgements are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions.’ This he wished.

I, after him, do after him wish too,
Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home, [65]
I quickly were dissolvèd from my hive
To give some labourers room.

SECOND LORD
You’re loved, sir;

They that least lend it you shall lack you first.

KING
I fill a place, I know’t. How long is’t, Count,
Since the physician at your father’s died? [70]
He was much famed.

BERTRAM

Some six months since, my lord.