Page 1919 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor’d.

FIRST LORD
Indeed my lord, [25]
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And in that kind swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along [30]
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,
To the which place a poor sequester’d stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,

Did come to languish: and indeed my lord, [35]
The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Cours’d one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, [40]
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th’extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE SENIOR
But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle?

FIRST LORD
O yes, into a thousand similes. [45]

First, for his weeping into the needless stream,
‘Poor deer’, quoth he, ‘thou mak’st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much’. Then being there alone,
Left and abandon’d of his velvet friend, [50]

‘Tis right’, quoth he, ‘thus misery doth part
The flux of company.’ Anon a careless herd,