Books and Characters, French & English. Strachey Lytton

Чтение книги онлайн.

      What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?

      What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling

      In leads or oils? what old or newer torture

      Must I receive, whose every word deserves

      To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,

      Together working with thy jealousies,

      Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle

      For girls of nine, O! think what they have done,

      And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all

      Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.

      That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing;

      That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant

      And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much

      Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour,

      To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,

      More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon

      The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter

      To be or none or little; though a devil

      Would have shed water out of fire ere done't.

      Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death

      Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,

      Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart

      That could conceive a gross and foolish sire

      Blemished his gracious dam.

      The cloyed will,

      That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub

      Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb,

      Longs after for the garbage.

      an eye

      Base and unlustrous as the smoky light

      That's fed with stinking tallow.

      Is there no way for men to be, but women

      Must be half-workers?

      We are all bastards;

      And that most venerable man, which I

      Did call my father, was I know not where

      When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools

      Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed

      The Dian of that time; so doth my wife

      The nonpareil of this—O vengeance, vengeance!

      Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained

      And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with

      A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't

      Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her

      As chaste as unsunned snow—O, all the devils!—

      This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—was't not?

      Or less,—at first: perchance he spoke not; but,

      Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,

      Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition

      But what he looked for should oppose, and she

      Should from encounter guard.

      There have been,

      Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now,

      And many a man there is, even at this present,

      Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,

      That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence

      And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by

      Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't,

      Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened,

      As mine, against their will. Should all despair

      That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind

      Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none;

      It is a bawdy planet, that will strike

      Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,

      From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,

      No barricade for a belly, know't;

      It will let in and out the enemy

      With bag and baggage: many thousand on's

      Have the disease, and feel't not.