(Our part therein we banish with yourselves,)
To keep the oath that we administer :—
You never shall, (so help you truth and heaven!)
Embrace each other's love in banishment;

Nor never look upon each other's face;
Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile
This lowering tempest of your home-bred hate;
Nor never by advised purpose meet,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,

'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.
Boling. I swear.

Nor. And I, to keep all this.

Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy;
By this time, had the king permitted us,
One of our souls had wander'd in the air,
Banish'd this frail sepúlchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banish'd from this land:
Confess thy treasons, ere thou fly the realm
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burden of a guilty soul.

Nor. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banish'd, as from hence!
But what thou art, heaven, thou, and I do know;
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.
Farewell, my liege: Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way.

[Exit.

eyes

K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine I see thy grieved heart, thy sad aspéct Hath from the number of his banish'd years Pluck'd four away ;- Six frozen winters spent, Return [To BOLING.] with welcome home from banishment.

Boling. How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs, End in a word; such is the breath of kings.

Gaunt. I thank my liege, that in regard of me, He shortens four years of my. son's exíle:

But little vantage shall I reap thereby;

For, ere the six years that he hath to spend,

Can change their moons, and bring their times about,

My oil-dried lamp, and time bewasted light,
Shall be extinct with age, and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son.

K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.
Gaunt. But not a minute, king, that thou canst
give :

Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow:
Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;

Thy word is current with him for my death;
But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

K. Rich. Thy son is banish'd upon good advice;
Whereto thy tongue a party verdict gave *;
Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lower?
Gaunt. Things sweet to taste, prove in digestion

sour.

You urg'd me as a judge; but I had rather,
You would have bid me argue like a father:
O, had it been a stranger, not my child,
To smooth his fault, I should have been more mild :
A partial slander sought I to avoid,
-And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.
Alas, I look'd, when some of you should say,
I was too strict, to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will, to do myself this wrong.

Six

K. Rich. Cousin, farewell:- and, uncle, bid him

So,

years we banish him, and he shall
go.
[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICHARD and Train.

8 Had a part or share. 9 Reproach of partiality.

Aum. Cousin, farewell: what presence must not know,

From where you do remain let paper shew.

Mar. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your side.

Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy

words,

That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?
Boling. 1 have too few to take
my leave of you,
When the tongue's office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.
Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.
Boling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly

gone.

Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour

ten.

Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure. Boling. My heart will sigh, when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home-return.

Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make Will but remember me what a deal of world

I wander from the jewels that I love.
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages, and in the end,

Having my freedom, boast of nothing else,
But that I was a journeyman to grief?

Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven visits, Are to a wise man ports and happy havens: Teach thy necessity to reason thus ;

There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not, the king did banish thee;

But thou the king: Woe doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.

Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not.
the king exíl'd thee: or suppose,

Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st: Suppose the singing birds, musicians;

The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence' strew'd;

The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more Than a delightful measure, or a dance:

2

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.
Boling. O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastick summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good,
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.
Gaunt. Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on
thy way:

Had I thy youth, and cause, I would not stay. Boling. Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil adieu;

My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where-e'er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banish'd, yet a trueborn Englishman.

[Exeunt.

Presence chamber at court.

2 Growling.

SCENE IV.

The same. A Room in the King's Castle.

Enter King RICHARD, BAGOT, and GREEN;
AUMERLE following.

K. Rich. We did observe.- Cousin Aumerle,
How far brought you high Hereford on his way?
Aum. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,
But to the next highway, and there I left him.
K. Rich. And, say, what store of parting tears
were shed?

Aum. 'Faith, none by me: except the north-east wind,

Which then blew bitterly against our faces, Awak'd the sleeping rheum; and so, by chance, Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

K. Rich. What said our cousin, when you parted with him?

Aum. Farewell:

And, for my heart disdained that my tongue Should so profane the word, that taught me craft To counterfeit oppression of such grief,

That word seem'd buried in my sorrow's grave. Marry, would the word farewell have lengthen'd hours,

And added years to his short banishment,
He should have had a volume of farewells;
But, since it would not, he had none of me.

K. Rich. He is our cousin, cousin ; but 'tis doubt,
When time shall call him home from banishment,
Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.
Ourself, and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green,
Observ'd his courtship to the common people:
How he did seem to dive into their hearts,
With humble and familiar courtesy;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves;