YOUNG BRUCE

Yowl be too ripe for marriage, If you delay, by day, and day, thus long, There is the noble Wigmore, lord of the March, That lies on Wye, Lug, and the Severn streams, His son is Like the suns sires Ganymede, And for your love, hath sent a Lord to plead: His absence, I did purpose to excuse: But Lester to the man for him that sues. I, thanks to noble Lester. And for a doer, cousin take my word, Look for a good egg, he was a good bird: Cock a the game i'faith, never fear. What then? she with a courtly curtsy saying nay. Oh but ye leave too soon. That were a gage to be engaged. We can not help it uncle. His soul to joy is fled: His gri fe is in my bosom buried. Tears help not I confess: yet must I weep. Soldiers, your help to bear him to my tent. Away good uncle, to the battle go: But that a certain good ensues I know, For all the world, I would not leave you so. Chester and Mowbray, you are Johns sworn friends Will you see more? Speak, answer me my Lords: I am no nig guard, you shall have your fill. Are you all full? Here comes a ravening kite, That both at quick, at dead, at all will smite. He shall, he must, I, and bir Lady, may Command me to give over holy day, And set wide open, what you would not see. Oh miserable thing: Comes mercy from the mouth of John our king? Why then belike hell will be pitiful. I will not open the gates, the gate I will: The gate where thy shame, and my sorrow fits. See my dead mother, and her famished son Open thy tyrants eyes: for to the world, I will lay open thy fell cruelties. Sin doubled upon sin. Slaunderst thou the dead? Unwilling willingness it shall appear, By then I have produced, as I will do, The joust presumptions gainst your unjust act, Unlikely supposition: nature first denies, That any mother, when her young ling cries, If she have means, is so unnatural To let it faint and starve, But we will prove She had no means except this moanful mean, This torture of her self. Come forth, come forth, Sir William Blunt, whom slander says I slew: Come tell the king and Lords what you know true. Had I not reason, think you, to make wide The window that should let so much woe forth? Where sits my mother martyrde by her self, Hoping to save her child from martyrdom: Where stands my brother martyred by himself, Because he would not taste his mother's blood. For thus I gather this? my mother's teeth and chin Are bloody with the savage cookery, Which her soft heart, through pity of her son, Respectless, made her practice on her self: And her right hand, with offering it the child, Is with her own pure blood stained and defiled, My little brother's lips and chin, alone, Are tainted with the blood: but his eauen teeth, Like orient pearl, or snowwhite ivory, Have not one touch of blood, one little spot: Which is and argument the boy would not. Once stir his lips, to taste that bloody food, Our cruel gentle mother ministered: But as it seemed (for see, his pretty Palm is bloody too) he cast it on the ground: For on this side these blessed relics lie, By famines rage divided from this shrine, Sad woeful mother in Jerusalem, Who when thy son and thou didst faint for food, Buried his sweet flesh in thy hungry womb: How merciless Wertenberg thou, if we compare Thy fact and this: For my poor Lady mother Did kill her self, to save my dying brother. And thou ungentle son of Miriam, Why didst thou beg life when thy mother lacked? My little brother George did nobly act A more courageous partly; he would not eat, Nor beg to live, it seemed he did not cry: Few tears stand on his cheek, smooth is each eye: But when he saw my mother bent to die, He died with her: Oh childish valiancy! Oh Houourable Awbery de Vere, Let sorrow in a sable suit appear: Do not mishap her garments, Like delight. If it be grief, why clothest thou her in white? My banished uncle's daughter, art thou there? Then I defy all hope, and swear Oxford, I do. I will come down: but first farewell dear mother, Farewell poor little George, my pretty brother. Now will I shut my shambles in again. Farewell, farewell. In everlasting bliss your sweet souls dwell. Of Windsor Castle here the keys I yield. Will not my bitter bannings and sad plaints, My joust and execrable execrations, My tears, my prayers, my pity-moving mones Prevail, thou glorious bright Lamp of the day, To cause thee keep and bit for their souls, And dwell one month with the Antipodes? Bright sun retire, gylde not this vault of death, With thy illustrate rays: retire, retire, And yield black night thy Empery a while: A little while, till as my tears be spent, My blood be likewise shed in raining drops, By the tempestuous rage of tyrant John. Learn of thy love, the morning: she hath wept, Shower upon shower, of silver dewy tears. High trees, low plants, and pretty little flowers Witness her woe: on them her grief appears: And as she dre pes on them, they do not let, By drop and drop, their mother earth to wet. See these hard stones, how fast small rouelets Issue from them, though they seem issueless: And wet eyed woe on every thing is viewde: Save in thy face that smilest at my distress. Oh do not drink their tears thus greedily: Yet let the morning's mourning garment dwell Upon the sad earth. Wilt thou not, thou churl? Then surfeit with thy exhalations speedily: For all earth's venomous infecting worms Have belched their several poisons on the fields, Mixing their simples in thy compound draught. Well Phœbus well, drink on I say, drink on: But when thou dost vngorge thee, grant me this, Thou power those poisons on the head of John. How now my Lords: were you last night so pleased With the beholding of that property, Which John and other murderers have wrought, Upon my starved mother and her son: That you are come again? Shall I again Set open shop, show my dead beware, deer bought, Of a relentless merchant that does trade On the read sea, swollen mighty with the blood Of noble, virtuous, harmless innocents? Whose coal black vessel is of Ebony, Their shrouds & tackle (wrought & woven by wrong) Stretched with no other gale of wind, but grief: Whose sighs with full blasts beats on her shrouds: The Master murder is, the Pilot shame, The Mariners rape, theft, and perjury: The burden, tyrannous oppression, Which hourly he in England does unladen: Say, shall I open shop, and show my wares? No Lester, no: for here is no such sign Of any meats digesture. I would be loath to be a strangers slave: For England's love, I would no French king have. we will stay and fight.