Page 1137 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood
Stopp’d in my soul, and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand’ring air,
But smother’d it within my panting bulk, [40]
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

KEEPER

Awak’d you not in this sore agony?

CLARENCE

No, no; my dream was lengthen’d after life.
O, then began the tempest to my soul:
I pass’d, methought, the melancholy flood, [45]
With that sour ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger-soul
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who spake aloud, ‘What scourge for perjury [50]
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’
And so he vanish’d. Then came wand’ring by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shriek’d out aloud,
‘Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjur’d Clarence, [55]
That stabb’d me in the field by Tewkesbury!
Seize on him, Furies! Take him unto torment!’
With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends
Environ’d me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that with the very noise [60]
I trembling wak’d, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made my dream.

KEEPER

No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you;
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it. [65]

CLARENCE

Ah, Keeper, Keeper, I have done these things,
That now give evidence against my soul,