Page 813 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Or four and twenty times the pilot’s glass [165]
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
Health shall live free and sickness freely die.

KING
Upon thy certainty and confidence

What darest thou venture?

HELENA
Tax of impudence, [170]
A strumpet’s boldness, a divulgèd shame;
Traduced by odious ballads my maiden’s name;

Seared otherwise, ne worse of worst, extended
With vildest torture let my life be ended.

KING
Methinks in thee some blessèd spirit doth speak [175]
His powerful sound within an organ weak;
And what impossibility would slay

In common sense, sense saves another way.
Thy life is dear, for all that life can rate
Worth name of life in thee hath estimate: [180]

Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage − all
That happiness and prime can happy call.
Thou this to hazard needs must intimate
Skill infinite, or monstrous desperate.
Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try, [185]

That ministers thine own death if I die.

HELENA
If I break time, or flinch in property
Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die,
And well deserved. Not helping, death’s my fee;

But if I help, what do you promise me? [190]

KING