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K. Henry VI 1 at the battle of Wakefield.
THIS battle fares like to the morning’s war, | |
| When dying clouds contend with growing light; | |
| What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, | |
| Can neither call it perfect day nor night. | |
| Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea, | 5 |
| Forced by the tide to combat with the wind: | |
| Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea | |
| Forced to retire by fury of the wind. | |
| Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind; | |
| Now one the better, then another best: | 10 |
| Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, | |
| Yet neither conqueror nor conquerèd: | |
| So is the equal poise of this fell war. | |
| Here on this molehill will I sit me down. | |
| To whom God will, there be the victory! | 15 |
| For Margaret my queen and Clifford too | |
| Have chid me from the battle, swearing both | |
| They prosper best of all when I am thence. | |
| Would I were dead!—if God’s good will were so; | |
| For what is in this world but grief and woe? | 20 |
| O God! methinks it were a happy life | |
| To be no better than a homely swain: | |
| To sit upon a hill, as I do now, | |
| To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, | |
| Thereby to see the minutes, how they run: | 25 |
| How many make the hour full complete, | |
| How many hours bring about the day, | |
| How many days will finish up the year, | |
| How many years a mortal man may live.— | |
| When this is known, then to divide the times: | 30 |
| So many hours must I tend my flock; | |
| So many hours must I take my rest; | |
| So many hours must I contemplate; | |
| So many hours must I sport myself; | |
| So many days my ewes have been with young; | 35 |
| So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean; | |
| So many years ere I shall shear the fleece: | |
| So minutes, hours, days,—months and years, | |
| Pass’d over to the end they were created, | |
| Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. | 40 |
| Ah! what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! | |
| Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade | |
| To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, | |
| Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy | |
| To kings, that fear their subjects’ treachery? | 45 |
| O yes it doth; a thousand-fold it doth. | |
| And to conclude,—the shepherd’s homely curds, | |
| His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, | |
| His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade, | |
| All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, | 50 |
| Is far beyond a prince’s delicates, | |
| His viands sparkling in a golden cup, | |
| His body couchèd in a curious bed, | |
| When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. | |
