Page 909 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words:
My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point
Than can my ears that tragic history.
But wherefore dost thou come? Is’t for my life?

GLOUCEST ER

Think’st thou I am an executioner? [30]

KING HENRY

A persecutor I am sure thou art;
If murdering innocents be executing,
Why then, thou art an executioner.

GLOUCEST ER

Thy son I killed for his presumption.

KING HENRY

Hadst thou been killed when first thou didst presume [35]
Thou hadst not lived to kill a son of mine.
And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand
Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,
And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s,
And many an orphan’s water-standing eye - [40]
Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’,
Orphans for their parents’ timeless death -
Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.
The owl shrieked at thy birth - an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; [45]
Dogs howled and hideous tempests shook down trees;
The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top
And chattering pies in dismal discords sung;
Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain
And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope, [50]
To wit, an indigested and deformèd lump,
Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.
Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born
To signify thou cam’st to bite the world;
And if the rest be true, which I have heard, [55]
Thou cam’st -