|
The Forest of Arden. | |
|
Enter DUKE Senior, AMIENS, and other Lords, like Foresters. | |
Duke S. 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 | 5 |
More free from peril than the envious court? | |
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, | |
The seasons’ difference; as, the icy fang | |
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind, | |
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, | 10 |
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say | |
‘This is no flattery: these are counsellors | |
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’ | |
Sweet are the uses of adversity, | |
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, | 15 |
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; | |
And this our life exempt from public haunt, | |
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, | |
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. | |
I would not change it. | 20 |
Ami. Happy is your Grace, | |
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune | |
Into so quiet and so sweet a style. | |
Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? | |
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools, | 25 |
Being native burghers of this desert city, | |
Should in their own confines with forked heads | |
Have their round haunches gor’d. | |
First Lord. Indeed, my lord, | |
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that; | 30 |
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 | |
Did steal behind him as he lay along | |
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out | 35 |
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood; | |
To the which place a poor sequester’d stag, | |
That from the hunters’ aim had ta’en a hurt, | |
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord, | |
The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans | 40 |
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat | |
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears | |
Cours’d one another down his innocent nose | |
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, | |
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, | 45 |
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, | |
Augmenting it with tears. | |
Duke S. But what said Jaques? | |
Did he not moralize this spectacle? | |
First Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes. | 50 |
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 | |
To that which had too much:’ then, being there alone, | |
Left and abandon’d of his velvet friends; | 55 |
‘’Tis right,’ quoth he; ‘thus misery doth part | |
The flux of company:’ anon, a careless herd, | |
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him | |
And never stays to greet him; ‘Ay,’ quoth Jaques, | |
‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens; | 60 |
’Tis just the fashion; wherefore do you look | |
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’ | |
Thus most invectively he pierceth through | |
The body of the country, city, court, | |
Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we | 65 |
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. | |
Duke S. And did you leave him in this contemplation? | |
Sec. Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting | 70 |
Upon the sobbing deer. | |
Duke S. Show me the place. | |
I love to cope him in these sullen fits, | |
For then he’s full of matter. | |
Sec. Lord. I’ll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt. | 75 |
|