Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.
Boling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone.260
Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.[932]
Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou takest for pleasure.
Boling. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an inforced pilgrimage.
Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps265
Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set[933]
The precious jewel of thy home return.
Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make[934][935]
Will but remember me what a deal of world[934][935][936]
I wander from the jewels that I love.[934][935]270
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood[934][935]
To foreign passages, and in the end,[934][935]
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else[934][935]
But that I was a journeyman to grief?[934][935]
Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven visits[934]275
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.[934][937]
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;[934]
There is no virtue like necessity.[934]
Think not the king did banish thee,[934][938][939]
But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit,[934][938][940]280
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.[934][938]
Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour[934]
And not the king exiled thee; or suppose[934]
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air[934]
And thou art flying to a fresher clime:[934]285
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it[934]
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou comest:[934]
Suppose the singing birds musicians,[934]
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd,[934][941]
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more[934]290
Than a delightful measure or a dance;[934]
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite[934][942]
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.[934][942]
Boling. O, who can hold a fire in his hand[943]
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?295
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow[944]
By thinking on fastastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good300
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:[945]
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more[946]
Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.[947]