1    Now sleep y-slaked hath the rout;
2    No din but snores the house about,
3    Made louder by the o'er-fed breast
4    Of this most pompous marriage-feast.
5    The cat, with eyne of burning coal,
6    Now crouches fore the mouse's hole;
7    And crickets sing at the oven's mouth,
8    E'er the blither for their drouth.
9    Hymen hath brought the bride to bed.
10   Where, by the loss of maidenhead,
11   A babe is moulded. Be attent,
12   And time that is so briefly spent
13   With your fine fancies quaintly eche:
14   What's dumb in show I'll plain with speech.
15   By many a dern and painful perch
16   Of Pericles the careful search,
17   By the four opposing coigns
18   Which the world together joins,
19   Is made with all due diligence
20   That horse and sail and high expense
21   Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre,
22   Fame answering the most strange inquire,
23   To the court of King Simonides
24   Are letters brought, the tenor these:
25   Antiochus and his daughter dead;
26   The men of Tyrus on the head
27   Of Helicanus would set on
28   The crown of Tyre, but he will none:
29   The mutiny he there hastes t' oppress;
30   Says to 'em, if King Pericles
31   Come not home in twice six moons,
32   He, obedient to their dooms,
33   Will take the crown. The sum of this,
34   Brought hither to Pentapolis,
35   Y-ravished the regions round,
36   And every one with claps can sound,
37   'Our heir-apparent is a king!
38   Who dream'd, who thought of such a thing?'
39   Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre:
40   His queen with child makes her desire--
41   Which who shall cross?--along to go:
42   Omit we all their dole and woe:
43   Lychorida, her nurse, she takes,
44   And so to sea. Their vessel shakes
45   On Neptune's billow; half the flood
46   Hath their keel cut: but fortune's mood
47   Varies again; the grisly north
48   Disgorges such a tempest forth,
49   That, as a duck for life that dives,
50   So up and down the poor ship drives:
51   The lady shrieks, and well-a-near
52   Does fall in travail with her fear:
53   And what ensues in this fell storm
54   Shall for itself itself perform.
55   I nill relate, action may
56   Conveniently the rest convey;
57   Which might not what by me is told.
58   In your imagination hold
59   This stage the ship, upon whose deck
60   The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak.