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Boling. Carlisle, this is your doom:—

Choose out some secret place, some reverend room,
More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life;
So, as thou liv'st in peace, die free from strife:
For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,
High sparks of honor in thee have I seen.

Enter Sir PIERCE of Exton, with Attendants bearing a coffin.

Exton. Great king, within this coffin I present Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies

The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,

Richard of Bourdeaux, by me hither brought.

Boling. Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought A deed of slander, with thy fatal hand, Upon my head and all this famous land.

Exton. From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed. Boling. They love not poison that do poison need, Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead,

I hate the murderer, love him murdered.

The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labor,
But neither my good word nor princely favor:
With Cain go wander through the shades of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.—
Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow:
Come, mourn with me for that I do lament,
And put on sullen black incontinent:
I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land,
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand:
March sadly after; grace my mournings here,
In weeping after this untimely bier.

--

[Exeunt

A LOVER'S COMPLAINT.

From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,

My spirits t' attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tun'd tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of a beauty spent and done:
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage,
Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season'd woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamors of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her level'd eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometimes diverted their poor balls are tied
To th' orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride;
For some, untuck'd, descended her sheav'd hat,
Hanging her pale and pinèd cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,

And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favors from a maund she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set;
Like usury, applying wet to wet,

Or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall
Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one,

Which she perus'd, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood;
Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone,
Bidding them find their sepulchers in mud;
Found yet more letters sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswath'd, and seal'd to curious secrecy.

These often bath'd she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss'd, and often gan to tear;
Cried, “O false blood, thou register of lies,
What unapproved witness dost thou bear!

Ink would have seem'd more black and damned here ! "
This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,
Big discontent so breaking their contents.

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A reverend man that graz'd his cattle nigh
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,
And, privileg'd by age, desires to know
In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.
So slides he down upon his grainèd bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,

Her grievance with his hearing to divide :
If that from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis promis'd in the charity of age.

"Father," she says, "though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied
Love to myself, and to no love beside.

"But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit — it was to gain my grace --
Of one by nature's outwards so commended,
That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face :
Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,

She was new lodg'd, and newly deified.

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His browny locks did hang in crookèd curls;
And every light occasion of the wind

Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.
What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find :
Each eye t'.at saw him did enchant the mind;
For on his visage was in little drawn

What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.

Small show of man was yet upon his chin; His phoenix down began but to appear, Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin, Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seem'd to wear Yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear; And nice affections wavering stood in doubt

If best were as it was, or best without.

"His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongu'd he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men mov'd him, was he such a storm
As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.

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