K. Rich. It boots thee not to be compassionate:[894]
After our sentence plaining comes too late.[895]175
Mow. Then thus I turn me from my country's light,
To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.[896]
K. Rich. Return again, and take an oath with thee.[897]
Lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands;
Swear by the duty that you owe to God—[898][899]180
Our part therein we banish with yourselves—
To keep the oath that we administer:
You never shall, so help you truth and God![899][900]
Embrace each other's love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other's face;[901]185
Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile[901][902]
This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;[903]
Nor never by advised purpose meet[901]
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill[904]
'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.190
Boling. I swear.[905]
Mow. And I, to keep all this.[906]
Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:—[907]
By this time, had the king permitted us,
One of our souls had wander'd in the air,195
Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banish'd from this land:
Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;[908]
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burthen of a guilty soul.200
Mow. No, Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banish'd as from hence!
But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know;[899]
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.205
Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;[909]
Save back to England, all the world's my way.[909][910] [Exit.
K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes[911]
I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspect
Hath from the number of his banish'd years210
Pluck'd four away. [To Boling.] Six frozen winters spent,[912]
Return with welcome home from banishment.
Boling. How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.[913]215
Gaunt. I thank my liege, that in regard of me[914]
He shortens four years of my son's exile:
But little vantage shall I reap thereby;
For, ere the six years that he hath to spend[915]
Can change their moons and bring their times about,[916]220
My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light
Shall be extinct with age and endless night;[917]
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,[918]
And blindfold death not let me see my son.