Page 2927 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.

SERVANT

Why should we, in the compass of a pale, [40]
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing as in a model our firm estate,
When our sea-wallèd garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chok’d up,
Her fruit trees all unprun’d, her hedges ruined, [45]
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?

GARDENER

Hold thy peace.
He that hath suffered this disordered spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.
The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter, [50]
That seem’d in eating him to hold him up,
Are pluck’d up, root and all, by Bolingbroke -
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

SERVANT

What, are they dead?

GARDENER

They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath seiz’d the wasteful King. O, what pity is it [55]
That he had not so trimm’d and dress’d his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest being overproud in sap and blood
With too much riches it confound itself. [60]
Had he done so to great and growing men
They might have liv’d to bear, and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches
We lop away that bearing boughs may live.
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown [65]
Which waste and idle hours hath quite thrown down.

SERVANT