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METHOUGHT that I had broken from the Tower | |
| And was embarked to cross to Burgundy; | |
| And in my company, my brother Gloster: | |
| Who from my cabin tempted me to walk | |
| Upon the hatches: thence we looked toward England. | 5 |
| And cited up a thousand heavy times, | |
| During the wars of York and Lancaster, | |
| That had befallen us. As we paced along | |
| Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, | |
| Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling, | 10 |
| Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard | |
| Into the tumbling billows of the main. | |
| O Heaven! methought what pain it was to drown! | |
| What dreadful noise of water in mine ears! | |
| What sights of ugly death within mine eyes! | 15 |
| Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; | |
| A thousand men, that fishes gnawed upon; | |
| Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, | |
| Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, | |
| All scattered in the bottom of the sea. | 20 |
| Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and in those holes | |
| Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept | |
| (As ’t were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems, | |
| That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, | |
| And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. * * * * * | 25 |
| I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, | |
| With that grim ferryman which poets write of, | |
| Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. | |
| The first that there did greet my stranger soul | |
| Was my great father-in-law, renownéd Warwick, | 30 |
| Who cried aloud, “What scourge for perjury | |
| Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?” | |
| And so he vanished: then came wandering by | |
| A shadow like an angel, with bright hair | |
| Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud, | 35 |
| “Clarence is come,—false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,— | |
| That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury;— | |
| Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!” | |
| With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends | |
| Environed me, and howled in mine ears | 40 |
| Such hideous cries, that with the very noise | |
| I trembling waked, and, for a season after, | |
| Could not believe but that I was in hell, | |
| Such terrible impression made my dream. | |
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