1    Will the king come, that I may breathe my last
2    In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?

3    Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;
4    For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.

5    O, but they say the tongues of dying men
6    Enforce attention like deep harmony:
7    Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
8    For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
9    He that no more must say is listen'd more
10   Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
11   More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
12   The setting sun, and music at the close,
13   As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
14   Writ in remembrance more than things long past:
15   Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
16   My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.

17   No; it is stopp'd with other flattering sounds,
18   As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond,
19   Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound
20   The open ear of youth doth always listen;
21   Report of fashions in proud Italy,
22   Whose manners still our tardy apish nation
23   Limps after in base imitation.
24   Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity--
25   So it be new, there's no respect how vile--
26   That is not quickly buzzed into his ears?
27   Then all too late comes counsel to be heard,
28   Where will doth mutiny with wit's regard.
29   Direct not him whose way himself will choose:
30   'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.

31   Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
32   And thus expiring do foretell of him:
33   His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
34   For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
35   Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
36   He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
37   With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
38   Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
39   Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
40   This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
41   This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
42   This other Eden, demi-paradise,
43   This fortress built by Nature for herself
44   Against infection and the hand of war,
45   This happy breed of men, this little world,
46   This precious stone set in the silver sea,
47   Which serves it in the office of a wall,
48   Or as a moat defensive to a house,
49   Against the envy of less happier lands,
50   This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
51   This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
52   Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
53   Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
54   For Christian service and true chivalry,
55   As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
56   Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
57   This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
58   Dear for her reputation through the world,
59   Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
60   Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
61   England, bound in with the triumphant sea
62   Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
63   Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
64   With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
65   That England, that was wont to conquer others,
66   Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
67   Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
68   How happy then were my ensuing death!

69   The king is come: deal mildly with his youth;
70   For young hot colts being raged do rage the more.

71   How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

72   What comfort, man? how is't with aged Gaunt?

73   O how that name befits my composition!
74   Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old:
75   Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;
76   And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
77   For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;
78   Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt:
79   The pleasure that some fathers feed upon,
80   Is my strict fast; I mean, my children's looks;
81   And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt:
82   Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
83   Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.

84   Can sick men play so nicely with their names?

85   No, misery makes sport to mock itself:
86   Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
87   I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

88   Should dying men flatter with those that live?

89   No, no, men living flatter those that die.

90   Thou, now a-dying, say'st thou flatterest me.

91   O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.

92   I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.

93   Now He that made me knows I see thee ill;
94   Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
95   Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land
96   Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;
97   And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
98   Commit'st thy anointed body to the cure
99   Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
100  A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
101  Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
102  And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
103  The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
104  O, had thy grandsire with a prophet's eye
105  Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
106  From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
107  Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
108  Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.
109  Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
110  It were a shame to let this land by lease;
111  But for thy world enjoying but this land,
112  Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
113  Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
114  Thy state of law is bondslave to the law; And thou--

115  A lunatic lean-witted fool,
116  Presuming on an ague's privilege,
117  Darest with thy frozen admonition
118  Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood
119  With fury from his native residence.
120  Now, by my seat's right royal majesty,
121  Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,
122  This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head
123  Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.

124  O, spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
125  For that I was his father Edward's son;
126  That blood already, like the pelican,
127  Hast thou tapp'd out and drunkenly caroused:
128  My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,
129  Whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls!
130  May be a precedent and witness good
131  That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
132  Join with the present sickness that I have;
133  And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
134  To crop at once a too long wither'd flower.
135  Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!
136  These words hereafter thy tormentors be!
137  Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
138  Love they to live that love and honour have.

139  And let them die that age and sullens have;
140  For both hast thou, and both become the grave.

141  I do beseech your majesty, impute his words
142  To wayward sickliness and age in him:
143  He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
144  As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.

145  Right, you say true: as Hereford's love, so his;
146  As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

147  My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.

148  What says he?

149  Nay, nothing; all is said
150  His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
151  Words, life and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

152  Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!
153  Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

154  The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;
155  His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be.
156  So much for that. Now for our Irish wars:
157  We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,
158  Which live like venom where no venom else
159  But only they have privilege to live.
160  And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
161  Towards our assistance we do seize to us
162  The plate, corn, revenues and moveables,
163  Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd.

164  How long shall I be patient? ah, how long
165  Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
166  Not Gloucester's death, nor Hereford's banishment
167  Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
168  Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
169  About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
170  Have ever made me sour my patient cheek,
171  Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face.
172  I am the last of noble Edward's sons,
173  Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first:
174  In war was never lion raged more fierce,
175  In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
176  Than was that young and princely gentleman.
177  His face thou hast, for even so look'd he,
178  Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours;
179  But when he frown'd, it was against the French
180  And not against his friends; his noble hand
181  Did will what he did spend and spent not that
182  Which his triumphant father's hand had won;
183  His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,
184  But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
185  O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
186  Or else he never would compare between.

187  Why, uncle, what's the matter?

188  O my liege,
189  Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleased
190  Not to be pardon'd, am content withal.
191  Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands
192  The royalties and rights of banish'd Hereford?
193  Is not Gaunt dead, and doth not Hereford live?
194  Was not Gaunt just, and is not Harry true?
195  Did not the one deserve to have an heir?
196  Is not his heir a well-deserving son?
197  Take Hereford's rights away, and take from Time
198  His charters and his customary rights;
199  Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
200  Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
201  But by fair sequence and succession?
202  Now, afore God--God forbid I say true!--
203  If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
204  Call in the letters patent that he hath
205  By his attorneys-general to sue
206  His livery, and deny his offer'd homage,
207  You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
208  You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts
209  And prick my tender patience, to those thoughts
210  Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

211  Think what you will, we seize into our hands
212  His plate, his goods, his money and his lands.

213  I'll not be by the while: my liege, farewell:
214  What will ensue hereof, there's none can tell;
215  But by bad courses may be understood
216  That their events can never fall out good.

217  Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight:
218  Bid him repair to us to Ely House
219  To see this business. To-morrow next
220  We will for Ireland; and 'tis time, I trow:
221  And we create, in absence of ourself,
222  Our uncle York lord governor of England;
223  For he is just and always loved us well.
224  Come on, our queen: to-morrow must we part;
225  Be merry, for our time of stay is short

226  Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.

227  And living too; for now his son is duke.

228  Barely in title, not in revenue.

229  Richly in both, if justice had her right.

230  My heart is great; but it must break with silence,
231  Ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue.

232  Nay, speak thy mind; and let him ne'er speak more
233  That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!

234  Tends that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?
235  If it be so, out with it boldly, man;
236  Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.

237  No good at all that I can do for him;
238  Unless you call it good to pity him,
239  Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

240  Now, afore God, 'tis shame such wrongs are borne
241  In him, a royal prince, and many moe
242  Of noble blood in this declining land.
243  The king is not himself, but basely led
244  By flatterers; and what they will inform,
245  Merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all,
246  That will the king severely prosecute
247  'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

248  The commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes,
249  And quite lost their hearts: the nobles hath he fined
250  For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.

251  And daily new exactions are devised,
252  As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what:
253  But what, o' God's name, doth become of this?

254  Wars have not wasted it, for warr'd he hath not,
255  But basely yielded upon compromise
256  That which his noble ancestors achieved with blows:
257  More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.

258  The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.

259  The king's grown bankrupt, like a broken man.

260  Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.

261  He hath not money for these Irish wars,
262  His burthenous taxations notwithstanding,
263  But by the robbing of the banish'd duke.

264  His noble kinsman: most degenerate king!
265  But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,
266  Yet see no shelter to avoid the storm;
267  We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,
268  And yet we strike not, but securely perish.

269  We see the very wreck that we must suffer;
270  And unavoided is the danger now,
271  For suffering so the causes of our wreck.

272  Not so; even through the hollow eyes of death
273  I spy life peering; but I dare not say
274  How near the tidings of our comfort is.

275  Nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours.

276  Be confident to speak, Northumberland:
277  We three are but thyself; and, speaking so,
278  Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore, be bold.

279  Then thus: I have from Port le Blanc, a bay
280  In Brittany, received intelligence
281  That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord Cobham,
282  That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,
283  His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,
284  Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,
285  Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton and Francis Quoint,
286  All these well furnish'd by the Duke of Bretagne
287  With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,
288  Are making hither with all due expedience
289  And shortly mean to touch our northern shore:
290  Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay
291  The first departing of the king for Ireland.
292  If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,
293  Imp out our drooping country's broken wing,
294  Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown,
295  Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt
296  And make high majesty look like itself,
297  Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh;
298  But if you faint, as fearing to do so,
299  Stay and be secret, and myself will go.

300  To horse, to horse! urge doubts to them that fear.

301  Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.