* What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,
* Can neither call it perfect day, nor night.
• Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea,
'Forc'd by the tide to combat with the wind;
• Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea
'Fore'd to retire by fury of the wind:

Sometime, the flood prevails; and then the wind; 'Now, one the better; then, another best;

Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, 'Yet neither conqueror, nor conquered : So is the equal poise of this fell war.

* Here on this molehill will I sit me down. * To whom God will, there be the victory!

For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too, 'Have chid me from the battle; swearing both,

They prosper best of all when I am thence.

''Would, I were dead! if God's good will were so:
For what is in this world, but grief and woe?
* O God! methinks, it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
* To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

* To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
# Thereby to see the minutes how they run:
* How many make the hour full complete,
* How many hours bring about the day,
* How many days will finish up the year,
* How many years a mortal man may live.

hours in doubtful state of victorie, uncertainlie heaving and setting on both sides,' &c. Steevens points out a similar comparison in Virgil, Æn. lib. x. ver. 354, which originates with Homer, Iliad xiv.

2 This speech is mournful and soft, exquisitely suited to the character of the king, and makes a pleasing interchange by affording, amidst the tumult and horror of the battle, an unexpected glimpse of rural innocence and pastoral tranquillity.--Johnson. There are some verses preserved of Henry VI. which are in a strain of the same pensive moralizing character. The reader may not be displeased to have them here subjoined, that he may VOL. VI. E E

* So * So

my

flock;

* When this is known, then to divide the times:
hours must I tend
many
many hours must I take my rest;
*So many hours must I cóntemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;
*So many days my ewes have been with
weeks ere the fools will yean;

*

poor

young;

* So many * So many years ere I shall shear the fleece: *So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, * Pass'd over to the end they were created, *Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! *Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade *To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, *Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy

*To kings, that fear their subjects' treachery? * O, yes it doth; a thousand fold it doth. *And to conclude, -the shepherd's homely curds, * His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, * His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, * All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, *Is far beyond a prince's delicates, * His viands sparkling in a golden cup, * His body couched in a curious bed,

* When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. compare them with the congenial thoughts the poet has attributed to him :

6

Alarum.

Enter a Son that has killed his Father3, dragging in the dead Body.

Son. Ill blows the wind, that profits no-body.< This man, whom hand to hand I slew in fight, May be possessed with some store of crowns: * And I, that haply take them from him now, * May yet ere night yield both my life and them *To some man else, as this dead man doth me.'Who's this?-O God! it is my father's face, 6 Whom in this conflict I unawares have kill'd. O heavy time, begetting such events!

6

• From London by the king was I press'd forth; My father, being the earl of Warwick's man, Came on the part of York, press'd by his master; And I, who at his hands receiv'd my life,

6

Have by my hands of life bereaved him.

Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did!

And pardon, father, for I knew not thee!

*

My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks; * And no more words, till they have flow'd their fill. 'K. Hen. O piteous spectacle! O bloody times! Whilst lions war, and battle for their dens, • Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.* Weep, wretched man, I'll aid thee tear for tear; * And let our hearts, and eyes, like civil war, * Be blind with tears, and break o'ercharg'd with grief1.

Enter a Father, who has killed his Son, with the Body in his arms.

Fath. Thou that so stoutly hast resisted me,

3 These two horrible instances are selected to show the innumerable calamities of civil war. Raphael has introduced the second of these incidents in his picture of the battle of Constantine and Maxentius.

4 The king intends to say that the state of their hearts and eyes shall be like that of the kingdom in a civil war; all shall be destroyed by power formed within themselves.

'Give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold;
For I have bought it with a hundred blows.-
But let me see :- -is this our foeman's face?

*

Ah, no, no, no, it is mine only son !

Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee,

** Throw up thine eye; see, see, what showers arise, * Blown with the windy tempest of my heart,

Upon thy wounds, that kill mine eye and heart!— O, pity, God, this miserable age!

'What stratagems 5, how fell, how butcherly, Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,

• This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!— O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon, And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!

K. Hen. Woe above woe! grief more than com

mon grief!

O, that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!— *O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!—

The red rose and the white are on his face,
The fatal colours of our striving houses:

* The one, his purple blood right well resembles;

*The other, his pale cheeks, methinks, present!

5

Stratagems here means direful events. Thus in the Second

Part of King Henry IV. Northumberland says:

Every minute now

Should be the father of some stratagem,'

And in the old play of King Leir, Regan says:'Hast thou the heart to act a stratagem,

And give a stab or two if need require.' The word stratagemme is shown by Mason to have sometimes the same meaning in Italian.

6 Of these obscure lines the following explanation by Henley is the most probable which has been offered:-Had the son been younger he would have been precluded from the levy which brought him to the field; and had the father recognised him before their mortal encounter it would not have been too late to have saved him from death. There is a passage in The Rape of Lucrece of the same kind :

I did give that life

Which she too early and too late hath spill'd.'

Wither one rose, and let the other flourish!

If you contend, a thousand lives must wither. Son. How will my mother, for a father's death, Take on with me, and ne'er be satisfied?

Fath. How will my wife, for slaughter of my son, Shed seas of tears, and ne'er be satisfied?

'K. Hen. How will the country, for these woful chances,

8

Misthink the king, and not be satisfied?

'Son. Was ever son, so ru'd a father's death? 'Fath. Was ever father, so bemoan'd a son? 'K. Hen. Was ever king, so griev'd for subjects' woe?

Much is your sorrow; mine, ten times so much. Son. I'll bear thee hence, where I may weep my fill. [Exit, with the Body. * Fath. These arms of mine shall be thy winding

sheet;

My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre; * For from my heart thine image ne'er shall go. My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell;

*

* And so obsequious9 will thy father be,
*Sad for the loss of thee, having no more,
*As Priam was for all his valiant sons.

I'll bear thee hence; and let them fight that will,
For I have murder'd where I should not kill.

[Exit, with the Body.

K. Hen. Sad-hearted men, much overgone with

care,

Here sits a king more woful than you are.

7 To take on is a phrase still in use in common parlance, and signifies to persist in clamorous lamentation.

8 Think unfavourably of.

9 Obsequious is here careful of obsequies, or funeral rites. See Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 1.