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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 divineare 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 needles 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 Fortunes 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, whateer 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 mens 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 dials 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 Bolingbrokes 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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