GAUNT. What is six winters? They are quickly gone. 

 BOLINGBROKE. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten. 

 GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak’st for pleasure. 

 BOLINGBROKE. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage. 

 GAUNT. The sullen passage of thy weary steps Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set The precious jewel of thy home return. 

 BOLINGBROKE. 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 exiled 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 goest, not whence thou com’st. Suppose the singing birds musicians, The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strewed, 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. 

 BOLINGBROKE. 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 fantastic 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. 

 BOLINGBROKE. Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu, My mother and my nurse that bears me yet! Where’er I wander, boast of this I can, Though banished, yet a true-born Englishman. 

 [Exeunt.]

 SCENE 

 Prev. P 13/66 next