Swear by the duty that you owe to heaven,
(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 other's love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other's face;
Nor never write, regreet, 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 sepulcher 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.

K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine

eyes

I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspect
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 exile:
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 ad-
vice,

Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave;
Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lower?
Gaunt. Things sweet to taste, prove in diges-

tion sour.

You nrg'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,
K. Rich. Cousin, farewell; and, uncle,'
bid him so;

Six years we banish him, and he shall go.
[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICHARD and Train.
Aum. Cousin, farewell: what presence must
not know,

From where you do remain, let paper show. Mar. M Lord, no leave takeĮ; 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. I 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

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 so 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 vi
sits,

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 preceives it is but faintly borne.

Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not the King exil'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

strew'd;

presence

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

I would not stay.

Had I thy youth, and cause,
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 English inan.
[Exeunt,

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, noue by me: except the northeast 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.