| |
Enter GOWER. | |
| Now sleep yslaked hath the rout; | |
| No din but snores the house about, | |
| Made louder by the o’er-fed breast | |
| Of this most pompous marriage-feast. | 5 |
| The cat, with eyne of burning coal, | |
| Now couches fore the mouse’s hole; | |
| And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth, | |
| E’er the blither for their drouth. | |
| Hymen hath brought the bride to bed, | 10 |
| Where, by the loss of maidenhead, | |
| A babe is moulded. Be attent; | |
| And time that is so briefly spent | |
| With your fine fancies quaintly eche; | |
| What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech. | 15 |
| |
DUMB SHOW. | |
Enter, from one side, PERICLES and SIMONIDES, with Attendants; a Messenger meets them, kneels, and gives PERICLES a letter: PERICLES shows it to SIMONIDES; the Lords kneel to PERICLES. Then enter THAISA with child, and LYCHORIDA: SIMONIDES shows his daughter the letter; she rejoices: she and PERICLES take leave of her father, and all depart. | |
| By many a dern and painful perch, | |
| Of Pericles the careful search | |
| By the four opposing coigns, | 20 |
| Which the world together joins, | |
| Is made with all due diligence | |
| That horse and sail and high expense, | |
| Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre,— | |
| Fame answering the most strange inquire— | 25 |
| To the court of King Simonides | |
| Are letters brought, the tenour these: | |
| Antiochus and his daughter dead; | |
| The men of Tyrus on the head | |
| Of Helicanus would set on | 30 |
| The crown of Tyre, but he will none: | |
| The mutiny he there hastes t’ oppress; | |
| Says to ’em, if King Pericles | |
| Come not home in twice six moons, | |
| He, obedient to their dooms, | 35 |
| Will take the crown. The sum of this, | |
| Brought hither to Pentapolis, | |
| Yravished the regions round, | |
| And every one with claps can sound, | |
| ‘Our heir-apparent is a king! | 40 |
| Who dream’d, who thought of such a thing?’ | |
| Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre: | |
| His queen, with child, makes her desire,— | |
| Which who shall cross?—along to go; | |
| Omit we all their dole and woe: | 45 |
| Lychorida, her nurse, she takes, | |
| And so to sea. Their vessel shakes | |
| On Neptune’s billow; half the flood | |
| Hath their keel cut: but Fortune’s mood | |
| Varies again; the grisled north | 50 |
| Disgorges such a tempest forth, | |
| That, as a duck for life that dives, | |
| So up and down the poor ship drives. | |
| The lady shrieks, and well-a-near | |
| Does fall in travail with her fear; | 55 |
| And what ensues in this fell storm | |
| Shall for itself itself perform. | |
| I nill relate, action may | |
| Conveniently the rest convey, | |
| Which might not what by me is told. | 60 |
| In your imagination hold | |
| This stage the ship, upon whose deck | |
| The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak. [Exit. | |
| |
