Page 1129 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

And turn you all your hatred now on me? [190]
Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven
That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death,
Their kingdom’s loss, my woeful banishment,
Should all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? [195]
Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses:
Though not by war, by surfeit die your King,
As ours by murder, to make him a king.
Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, that was Prince of Wales, [200]
Die in his youth, by like untimely violence.
Thyself, a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory like my wretched self:
Long may’st thou live to wail thy children’s death,
And see another, as I see thee now, [205]
Deck’d in thy rights, ad thou art stall’d in mine;
Long die thy happy days before thy death,
And after many lengthen’d hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s Queen.
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by, [210]
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb’d with bloody daggers. God, I pray Him,
That none of you may live his natural age,
But by some unlook’d accident cut off.

RICHARD

Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither’d hag. [215]

MARGARET

And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation [220]
On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace.
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul;
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends;
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, [225]
Unless it be while some tormenting dream