PAULINA.
There’s time enough for that;
Lest they desire upon this push to trouble
Your joys with like relation. Go together,
You precious winners all; your exultation
Partake to everyone. I, an old turtle,
Will wing me to some wither’d bough, and there
My mate, that’s never to be found again,
Lament till I am lost.
LEONTES.
O peace, Paulina!
Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,
As I by thine a wife: this is a match,
And made between ’s by vows. Thou hast found mine;
But how, is to be question’d; for I saw her,
As I thought, dead; and have in vain said many
A prayer upon her grave. I’ll not seek far—
For him, I partly know his mind—to find thee
An honourable husband. Come, Camillo,
And take her by the hand, whose worth and honesty
Is richly noted, and here justified
By us, a pair of kings. Let’s from this place.
What! look upon my brother: both your pardons,
That e’er I put between your holy looks
My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law,
And son unto the king, whom heavens directing,
Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina,
Lead us from hence; where we may leisurely
Each one demand, and answer to his part
Perform’d in this wide gap of time, since first
We were dissever’d. Hastily lead away!
[Exeunt.]
A LOVER’S COMPLAINT
From off a hill whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sist’ring vale,
My spirits t’attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tun’d tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.
Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of a beauty spent and done;
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven’s fell rage
Some beauty peeped through lattice of sear’d age.
Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laund’ring the silken figures in the brine
That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish’d woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.
Sometimes her levell’d eyes their carriage ride,
As they did batt’ry to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To th’orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and nowhere fix’d,
The mind and sight distractedly commix’d.
Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim’d in her a careless hand of pride;
For some untuck’d descended her sheav’d hat,
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,
And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.