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Wales. A mountainous Country with a Cave. | |
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Enter from the Cave, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS. | |
| Bel. A goodly day not to keep house, with such | |
| Whose roof’s as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate | |
| Instructs you how to adore the heavens, and bows you | 5 |
| To a morning’s holy office; the gates of monarchs | |
| Are arch’d so high that giants may jet through | |
| And keep their impious turbans on, without | |
| Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven! | |
| We house i’ the rock, yet use thee not so hardly | 10 |
| As prouder livers do. | |
| Gui. Hail, heaven! | |
| Arv. Hail, heaven! | |
| Bel. Now for our mountain sport. Up to yond hill; | |
| Your legs are young; I’ll tread these flats. Consider, | 15 |
| When you above perceive me like a crow, | |
| That it is place which lessens and sets off; | |
| And you may then revolve what tales I have told you | |
| Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war; | |
| This service is not service, so being done, | 20 |
| But being so allow’d; to apprehend thus | |
| Draws us a profit from all things we see, | |
| And often, to our comfort, shall we find | |
| The sharded beetle in a safer hold | |
| Than is the full-wing’d eagle. O! this life | 25 |
| Is nobler than attending for a check, | |
| Richer than doing nothing for a bribe, | |
| Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk; | |
| Such gain the cap of him that makes ’em fine, | |
| Yet keeps his book uncross’d; no life to ours. | 30 |
| Gui. Out of your proof you speak; we, poor unfledg’d, | |
| Have never wing’d from view o’ the nest, nor know not | |
| What air’s from home. Haply this life is best, | |
| If quiet life be best; sweeter to you | |
| That have a sharper known, well corresponding | 35 |
| With your stiff age; but unto us it is | |
| A cell of ignorance, travelling a-bea. | |
| A prison for a debtor, that not dares | |
| To stride a limit. | |
| Arv. What should we speak of | 40 |
| When we are old as you? when we shall hear | |
| The rain and wind beat dark December, how | |
| In this our pinching cave shall we discourse | |
| The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing; | |
| We are beastly, subtle as the fox for prey, | 45 |
| Like war-like as the wolf for what we eat; | |
| Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage | |
| We make a quire, as doth the prison’d bird, | |
| And sing our bondage freely. | |
| Bel How you speak! | 50 |
| Did you but know the city’s usuries | |
| And felt them knowingly; the art o’ the court, | |
| As hard to leave as keep, whose top to climb | |
| Is certain falling, or so slippery that | |
| The fear’s as bad as falling; the toil of the war, | 55 |
| A pain that only seems to seek out danger | |
| I’ the name of fame and honour; which dies i’ the search, | |
| And hath as oft a slanderous epitaph | |
| As record of fair act; nay, many times, | |
| Doth ill deserve by doing well; what’s worse, | 60 |
| Must curtsy at the censure: O boys! this story | |
| The world may read in me; my body’s mark’d | |
| With Roman swords, and my report was once | |
| First with the best of note; Cymbeline lov’d me, | |
| And when a soldier was the theme, my name | 65 |
| Was not far off; then was I as a tree | |
| Whose boughs did bend with fruit, but, in one night, | |
| A storm or robbery, call it what you will, | |
| Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, | |
| And left me bare to weather. | 70 |
| Gui. Uncertain favour! | |
| Bel. My fault being nothing,—as I have told you oft,— | |
| But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail’d | |
| Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline | |
| I was confederate with the Romans; so | 75 |
| Follow’d my banishment, and this twenty years | |
| This rock and these demesnes have been my world, | |
| Where I have liv’d at honest freedom, paid | |
| More pious debts to heaven than in all | |
| The fore-end of my time. But, up to the mountains! | 80 |
| This is not hunter’s language. He that strikes | |
| The venison first shall be the lord o’ the feast; | |
| To him the other two shall minister; | |
| And we will fear no poison which attends | |
| In place of greater state. I’ll meet you in the valleys. [Exeunt GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS. | 85 |
| How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature! | |
| These boys know little they are sons to the king; | |
| Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive. | |
| They think they are mine; and, though train’d up thus meanly | |
| I’ the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit | 90 |
| The roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them | |
| In simple and low things to prince it much | |
| Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore, | |
| The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who | |
| The king his father call’d Guiderius,—Jove! | 95 |
| When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell | |
| The war-like feats I have done, his spirits fly out | |
| Into my story: say, ‘Thus mine enemy fell, | |
| And thus I set my foot on ’s neck;’ even then | |
| The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats, | 100 |
| Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture | |
| That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal,— | |
| Once Arviragus,—in as like a figure, | |
| Strikes life into my speech and shows much more | |
| His own conceiving. Hark! the game is rous’d. | 105 |
| O Cymbeline! heaven and my conscience knows | |
| Thou didst unjustly banish me; whereon, | |
| At three and two years old, I stole these babes, | |
| Thinking to bar thee of succession, as | |
| Thou reft’st me of my lands. Euriphile, | 110 |
| Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother, | |
| And every day do honour to her grave: | |
| Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call’d, | |
| They take for natural father. The game is up. [Exit. | |
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