KING RICHARD II
Rage must be withstood:
Give me his gage: lions make leopards tame.
THOMAS MOWBRAY
Yea, but not change his spots: take but my shame.
And I resign my gage.
Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.
this must my comfort be,
Sun that warms you here shall shine on me;
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation: that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.
Mine honour is my life; both grow in one:
Take honour from me, and my life is done:
Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;
In that I live and for that will I die.
and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
As thus, to drop them still upon one place,
Till they have fretted us a pair of graves
Within the earth; and, therein laid,—there lies
Two kinsmen digg'd their graves with weeping eyes.
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
We were not born to sue, but to command;
