Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!

Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks!

325 Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings!

Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss,

♦ And boding screech-owls make the concert full!

♦ All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell—

330 And these dread curses, like the sun ’gainst glass,

♦ Or like an overcharged gun, recoil,

♦ And turn the force of them upon thyself.

Now, by the ground that I am banish’d from,

335 Well could I curse away a winter’s night,

Though standing naked on a mountain top,

Where biting cold would never let grass grow,

And think it but a minute spent in sport.

340 That I may dew it with my mournful tears;

Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place,

♦ To wash away my woful monuments.

O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,

♦ That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,

345 Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee!

So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;

♦ ’Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,

As one that surfeits thinking on a want.

I will repeal thee, or, be well assured,

350 Adventure to be banished myself:

And banished I am, if but from thee.

Go; speak not to me; even now be gone.

O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn’d

Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves,

355 Loather a hundred times to part than die.

Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!

Once by the king, and three times thrice by thee.

♦ ’Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence;

360 A wilderness is populous enough,

So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:

For where thou art, there is the world itself,

With every several pleasure in the world,

And where thou art not, desolation.

365 I can no more: live thou to joy thy life;

♦ Myself no joy in nought but that thou livest.

♦ That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death;

370 For suddenly a grievous sickness took him,

That makes him gasp and stare and catch the air,

Blaspheming God and cursing men on earth.

♦ Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey’s ghost

Were by his side; sometime he calls the king

375 And whispers to his pillow as to him

The secrets of his overcharged soul:

And I am sent to tell his majesty

That even now he cries aloud for him.

380 Ay me! what is this world! what news are these!

♦ But wherefore grieve I at an hour’s poor loss,

Omitting Suffolk’s exile, my soul’s treasure?

Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee,

And with the southern clouds contend in tears,

385 Theirs for the earth’s increase, mine for my sorrows?

Now get thee hence: the king, thou know’st, is coming;

If thou be found by me, thou art but dead.

And in thy sight to die, what were it else

390 But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?

Here could I breathe my soul into the air,

As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe

♦ Dying with mother’s dug between its lips:

Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad

395 And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,

To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth;

♦ So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,

Or I should breathe it so into thy body,

♦ And then it lived in sweet Elysium.

400 To die by thee were but to die in jest;

From thee to die were torture more than death:

O, let me stay, befall what may befall!

It is applied to a deathful wound.

405 To France, sweet Suffolk: let me hear from thee;

♦ For wheresoe’er thou art in this world’s globe,

I’ll have an Iris that shall find thee out.

410 That ever did contain a thing of worth.

Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we:

This way fall I to death.