Only, with Shakespeare, the afterthought is immediate:—
They come like sacrifices in their trim.
—Will it never be to-day? I will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English faces.
This sentiment Richard reiterates very plaintively, in association with the delicate sweetness of the English fields, still sweet and fresh, like London and her other fair towns in that England of Chaucer, for whose soil the exiled Bolingbroke is made to long so dangerously, while Richard on his return from Ireland salutes it—
That pale, that white-fac'd shore,—
As a long-parted mother with her child.—
So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth!
And do thee favour with my royal hands.—
Then (of Bolingbroke)
Ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons
Shall ill become the flower of England's face;
Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace
To scarlet indignation, and bedew
My pastures' grass with faithful English blood.—
[193]
Why have they dared to march?—
asks York,