Page 2960 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs [20]
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of Fortune’s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars, [25]
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have, and others must sit there.
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endur’d the like. [30]
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king:
Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar;
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king. [35]
Then am I king’d again; and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleased till he be eas’d [40]
With being nothing. (The music plays) Music do I hear.
Ha, ha; keep time! How sour sweet music is
When time is broke, and no proportion kept.
So is it in the music of men’s lives;
And here have I the daintiness of ear [45]
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock. [50]
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is [55]
Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell. So sighs, and tears, and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time