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I HAVE been studying how to compare | |
| This prison, where I live, unto the world; | |
| And, for because the world is populous, | |
| And here is not a creature but myself, | |
| I cannot do it.—Yet I ’ll hammer it out. | 5 |
| My brain I ’ll prove the female to my soul; | |
| My soul, the father: and these two beget | |
| A generation of still-breeding thoughts, | |
| And these same thoughts people this little world | |
| In humors, like the people of this world, | 10 |
| For no thought is contented. The better sort— | |
| As thoughts of things divine—are intermixed | |
| With scruples, and do set the Word itself | |
| Against the Word: as thus, Come, little ones; then again, | |
| It is as hard to come, as for a camel | 15 |
| To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye. | |
| Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot | |
| Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails | |
| May tear a passage through the flinty ribs | |
| Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls; | 20 |
| And, for they cannot, die in their own pride. | |
| Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves | |
| That they are not the first of Fortune’s slaves, | |
| Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars, | |
| Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame | 25 |
| That many have, and others must sit there: | |
| And in this thought they find a kind of ease, | |
| Bearing their own misfortune on the back | |
| Of such as have before endured the like. | |
| Thus play I, in one person, many people, | 30 |
| And none contented. Sometimes am I king; | |
| Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar, | |
| And so I am. Then crushing penury | |
| Persuades me I was better when a king; | |
| Then am I kinged again: and, by and by, | 35 |
| Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke, | |
| And straight am nothing.—But, whate’er I am, | |
| Nor I, nor any man that but man is, | |
| With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased | |
| With being nothing.—Music do I hear? | 40 |
| Ha, ha! keep time.—How sour sweet music is, | |
| When time is broke, and no proportion kept! | |
| So is it in the music of men’s lives. | |
| And here have I the daintiness of ear | |
| To check time broke in a disordered string; | 45 |
| But, for the concord of my state and time, | |
| Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. | |
| I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me; | |
| For now hath Time made me his numbering clock. | |
| My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they jar | 50 |
| Their motions unto mine eyes, the outward watch, | |
| Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point, | |
| Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. | |
| Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is | |
| Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart, | 55 |
| Which is the bell: so sighs, and tears, and groans, | |
| Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time | |
| Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy, | |
| While I stand fooling here, his Jack-o’-the-clock. | |
| This music mads me, let it sound no more; | 60 |
| For, though it have holp madmen to their wits, | |
| In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad. | |
| Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me! | |
| For ’t is a sign of love; and love to Richard | |
| Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world. | 65 |
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