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The Forest of Arden. | |
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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 |
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