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From Measure for Measure, Act III. Scene 1 DUKE. Be absolute for death; either death or life | |
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: | |
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing | |
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, | |
Servile to all the skyey influences, | 5 |
That dost this habitation, where thou keepst, | |
Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art deaths fool; | |
For him thou labourst by thy flight to shun, | |
And yet runst toward him still. Thou art not noble: | |
For all th accommodations that thou bearst | 10 |
Are nursd by baseness. Thou art by no means valiant; | |
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork | |
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, | |
And that thou oft provokst; yet grossly fearst | |
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; | 15 |
For thou existst on many a thousand grains | |
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; | |
For what thou hast not, still thou strivst to get, | |
And what thou hast, forgetst. Thou art not certain; | |
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, | 20 |
After the moon. If thou art rich, thourt poor; | |
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, | |
Thou bearst thy heavy riches but a journey, | |
And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; | |
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, | 25 |
The mere effusion of thy proper loins, | |
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, | |
For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age; | |
But, as it were, an after-dinners sleep, | |
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth | 30 |
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms | |
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, | |
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, | |
To make thy riches pleasant. What s yet in this | |
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life | 35 |
Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear, | |
That makes these odds all even. CLAUDIO. I humbly thank you. | |
To sue to live, I find I seek to die, | |
And, seeking death, find life: let it come on
. | |
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; | 40 |
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; | |
This sensible warm motion to become | |
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit | |
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside | |
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; | 45 |
To be imprisond in the viewless winds, | |
And blown with restless violence round about | |
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst | |
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts | |
Imagine howling: tis too horrible! | 50 |
The weariest and most loathed worldly life | |
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment | |
Can lay on nature is a paradise | |
To what we fear of death. | |
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