A pouncet box, which ever and anon
his
gave nose,
and took't away again;
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff.And still he smil'd, and talk'd;
And as the soldiers bare dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He questioned me: amongst the rest demanded
My prisoners, in your majesty's behalf,
I then, all smarting with the wounds; being gall'd
To be so pester'd with a popinjay,
Out of my grief, and my impatience,
Answer'd, neglectingly, I know not what:
He should, or should not; for he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman,
Of guns, and drums, and wounds; (God save the
mark)
And telling me the sovereign'st thing on earth,
Was parmacity, for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was
This villainous salt-petre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
Clarence and Brakenbury.
Brak. WHY looks your grace so heavily to day,
Clar. O! I have pass'd a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
'That as I am christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days;
So full of dismal terror was the time.
Brak. What was your dream, my Lord; I pray you tell me.
Clar. Methought that I had broken from the
Tow'r,
And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy,
And in my company my brother Glo'ster;
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches. Thence we look'd tow'rd Eng-
land,
And cited up a thousand heavy times
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befallen us. As we pass'd along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Glo'ster stumbled, and in falling
Struck me (that sought to stay him) overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main :
Lord, Lord, methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
I thought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon:
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels;
Some lay in dead men's sculls: and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.
Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death,
To gaze upon
the secrets of the deep?
Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand'ring air;
But smother'd it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
Brak. Awak'd you not with this sore agony?
Clar. No, no; my dream was lengthen'd after
Life:
O then began the tempest to my soul!
I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual Night.
The first that there did greet my stranger-soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who cry'd aloud-« What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?
And so he vanish'd. Then came wand'ring by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood, and he shriek'd out aloud—
« Clarence is Come! false, fleeting, perjur'd Cla-
That stab'd me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that with the
very noise
I trembling wak'd; and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell:
Such terrible impression made my dream.
Brak. No marvel, lord, that it affrighted you;
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it,
Clar. Ah, Brakenbury! I have done those things,
That now give evidence against my soul,
For Edward's sake! and see how he requits me;
O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee,
But thou wilt be aveng'd on my misdeeds,
Yet execute thy wrath on me alone :
0 spare my guiltless wife, and my poor children! I p'rythee, Brakenbury, stay by me: My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.
O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you,
She is the Fancy's midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman;
Drawn by a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon spokes made of long spinner's leg's;
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces of the smallest spider's web;
The collars-of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip-of cricket's bone; the lash-of film
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops, night by night,
Through lover's brains, and then they dream of
love:
On courtier's knees that dream on court'sies
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream;
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling the parson as he lies asleep;
Then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again.
SHAKESPEARE.
CH A P. X X I V.
Apothecary.
I do remember an Apothecary,
And hereabouts he dwells, whom late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks;
Sharp Misery had worn him to the bones =
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of pack thread, and old cakes of roses
Were thinly scatter'd to make up a shew.
Noting this penury, to myself I said,
And if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
Oh, this same thought did but fore-run my need!
And this same needy Man must sell it me
As I remember, this should be the house.
SHAKESPEARE.
Ir aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to sooth thy modest ear
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales,
O Nymph reserv'd, while now the bright hair'd sup
Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts
With brede ethereal wove,
Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat, With short shrill shrieks flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum,
Now teach me, maid compos'd,
To breathe some softened strain,
Whose numbers stealing through thy dark'ning vale,
|