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DUKE. Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile, | |
| Hath not old custom made this life more sweet | |
| Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods | |
| More free from peril than the envious court? | |
| Here feel we not the penalty of Adam. | 5 |
| The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang, | |
| And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,— | |
| Which when it bites and blows upon my body, | |
| Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say, | |
| This is no flattery,—these ace counsellors | 10 |
| That feelingly persuade me what I am. | |
| Sweet are the uses of adversity, | |
| Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, | |
| Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; | |
| And this our life, exempt from public haunt, | 15 |
| Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, | |
| Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. | |
| AMIENS. I would not change it: Happy is your grace, | |
| That can translate the stubbornness of fortune | |
| Into so quiet and so sweet a style. | 20 |
| DUKE. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? | |
| And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools, | |
| Being native burghers of this desert city, | |
| Should, in their own confines, with forked heads | |
| Have their round haunches gor’d. | 25 |
| 1 LORD. Indeed, my lord, | |
| The melancholy Jaques grieves at that; | |
| And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp | |
| Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you. | |
| To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself | 30 |
| Did steal behind him, as he lay along | |
| Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out | |
| Upon the brook that brawls along this wood; | |
| To the which place a poor sequester’d stag, | |
| That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt, | 35 |
| Did come to languish: and, indeed, my lord, | |
| The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans, | |
| That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat | |
| Almost to bursting; and the big round tears | |
| Cours’d one another down his innocent nose | 40 |
| In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, | |
| Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, | |
| Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, | |
| Augmenting it with tears. | |
| DUKE. But what said Jaques? | 45 |
| Did he not moralize this spectacle? | |
| 1 LORD. O yes, into a thousand similes. | |
| First, for his weeping into the needless stream; | |
| “Poor deer,” quoth he, “thou mak’st a testament | |
| As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more | 50 |
| To that which had too much.” Then, being alone, | |
| Left and abandon’d of his velvet friends; | |
| “’T is right,” quoth he; “this misery doth part | |
| The flux of company.” Anon, a careless herd, | |
| Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, | 55 |
| And never stays to greet him: “Ay,” quoth Jaques, | |
| “Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; | |
| ’T is just the fashion: Wherefore do you look | |
| Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?” | |
| Thus most invectively he pierceth through | 60 |
| The body of the country, city, court, | |
| Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we | |
| Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what ’s worse, | |
| To fright the animals, and to kill them up, | |
| In their assign’d and native dwelling-place. | 65 |
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