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That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?
HENRY BOLINGBROKE:
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.
JOHN OF GAUNT:
Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.
HENRY BOLINGBROKE:
Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
JOHN OF GAUNT:
What is six winters? they are quickly gone.
HENRY BOLINGBROKE:
To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.
JOHN OF GAUNT:
Call it a travel that thou takest for pleasure.
HENRY BOLINGBROKE:
My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an inforced pilgrimage.
JOHN OF GAUNT:
The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home return.
HENRY 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?
JOHN OF 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 go'st, not whence thou comest:
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd,
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.
HENRY 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 he bites, but lanceth not the sore.
JOHN OF GAUNT:
Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on thy way:
Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.
HENRY 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 banish'd, yet a trueborn Englishman.
KING RICHARD II:
We did observe. Cousin Aumerle,
How far brought you high Hereford on his way?
DUKE OF AUMERLE:
I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,
But to the next highway, and there I left him.
KING RICHARD II:
And say, what store of parting tears were shed?
DUKE OF AUMERLE:
Faith, none for me; except the north-east wind,
Which then blew bitterly against our faces,
Awaked the sleeping rheum, and so by chance
Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.