Page 2803 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

If I should tell thee o’er this thy day’s work,
Thou’t not believe thy deeds. But I’ll report it
Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles;
Where great patricians shall attend and shrug,

I’th’end admire; where ladies shall be frighted [5]
And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the dull tribunes,
That with the fusty plebeians hate thine honours,
Shall say against their hearts ‘We thank the gods

Our Rome hath such a soldier.’
Yet cam’st thou to a morsel of this feast, [10]
Having fully dined before.

Enter Titus Lartius, with his power, from the pursuit.

LARTIUS
O general,

Here is the steed, we the caparison.
Hadst thou beheld −

MARTIUS
Pray now, no more. My mother,
Who has a charter to extol her blood,
When she does praise me grieves me. I have done [15]

As you have done − that’s what I can; induced
As you have been − that’s for my country.
He that has but effected his good will

Hath overta’en mine act.

COMINIUS

You shall not be
The grave of your deserving. Rome must know [20]
The value of her own. ’Twere a concealment
Worse than a theft, no less than a traducement,

To hide your doings and to silence that
Which, to the spire and top of praises vouched,
Would seem but modest. Therefore, I beseech you − [25]
In sign of what you are, not to reward

What you have done − before our army hear me.