Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/74

62

What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?

Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen.

Is all thy comfort shut in Gloucester's tomb?

Why, then, Dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy:

Erect his statua and worship it,

And make my image but an alehouse sign.

Was I for this nigh wrack'd upon the sea,

And twice by awkward wind from England's bank

Drove back again unto my native clime?

What boded this, but well forewarning wind

Did seem to say, 'Seek not a scorpion's nest,

Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?'

What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts

And he that loos'd them forth their brazen caves;

And bid them blow towards England's blessed shore,

Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock?

Yet Æolus would not be a murtherer,

But left that hateful office unto thee:

The pretty vaulting sea refus'd to drown me,

Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown'd on shore

With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness:

The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands,

And would not dash me with their ragged sides,

Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,

Might in thy palace perish Margaret.

As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs,

When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,

I stood upon the hatches in the storm,

And when the dusky sky began to rob

My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view,

I took a costly jewel from my neck,

A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,

 76 like the adder; cf. n.

waxen: grown

83 awkward: unfavorable

89 he: i.e. Æolus

forth: out of

90 bid: I bade

99 Because: in order that

100 perish: destroy

101 ken: discern 