Page:Henry VI Part 3 (1923) Yale.djvu/71

King Henry the Sixth, III. ii

And deck my body in gay ornaments,

And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.

O miserable thought! and more unlikely

Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns.

Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:

And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,

She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,

To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;

To make an envious mountain on my back,

Where sits deformity to mock my body;

To shape my legs of an unequal size;

To disproportion me in every part,

Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp

That carries no impression like the dam.

And am I then a man to be belov'd?

O monstrous fault! to harbour such a thought.

Then, since this earth affords no joy to me

But to command, to check, to o'erbear such

As are of better person than myself,

I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown;

And, whiles I live, to account this world but hell,

Until my misshap'd trunk that bears this head

Be round impaled with a glorious crown.

And yet I know not how to get the crown,

For many lives stand between me and home:

And I, like one lost in a thorny wood,

That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns,

Seeking a way and straying from the way;

Not knowing how to find the open air,

But toiling desperately to find it out,

Torment myself to catch the English crown:

And from that torment I will free myself,

 150 witch: bewitch, charm

162 carries dam: has nothing of its mother's shape; cf. n.

166 check: control

171 impaled: encircled

173 home: the goal

175 rents: tears, rends 