Page 2493 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

PRINCESS

A time, methinks, too short [780]
To make a world-without-end bargain in.
No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured much,
Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this:
If for my love - as there is no such cause -
You will do aught, this shall you do for me: [785]
Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world;
There stay until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about the annual reckoning. [790]
If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love; [795]
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine; and, till that instance, shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house, [800]
Raining the tears of lamentation
For the remembrance of my father’s death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part,
Neither entitled in the other’s heart.

KING

If this, or more than this, I would deny, [805]
To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,
The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!
Hence hermit then - my heart is in thy breast.

The King and the Princess converse apart.

DUMAINE

But what to me, my love? But what to me?
A wife?

KAT HARINE

A beard, fair health, and honesty; [810]
With threefold love I wish you all these three.