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This scatter'd corn into one mutual sheaf,

These broken limbs again into one body;

Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,

And she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to,

Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,

Do shameful execution on herself.

But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,

Grave witnesses of true experience,

Cannot induce you to attend my words,

[To Lucius.] Speak, Rome's dear friend, as erst our ancestor,

When with his solemn tongue he did discourse

To love-sick Dido's sad attending ear

The story of that baleful burning night

When subtle Greeks surpris'd King Priam's Troy;

Tell us what Sinon hath bewitch'd our ears,

Or who hath brought the fatal engine in

That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.

My heart is not compact of flint nor steel,

Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,

But floods of tears will drown my oratory,

And break my very utterance, even in the time

When it should move you to attend me most,

Lending your kind commiseration.

Here is a captain, let him tell the tale;

Your hearts will throb and weep to hear him speak.

Luc. This, noble auditory, be it known to you,

That cursed Chiron and Demetrius

Were they that murdered our emperor's brother;

And they it was that ravished our sister.

For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded,

 71 mutual: united

77 chaps: wrinkles

80 our ancestor: Æneas

85 Sinon; cf. n.

88 compact: composed

93–97 Cf. n.

100 fell: cruel

