Their father was too weak, and they too strong,
To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long.
The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours,
Even in the moment that we call them ours.
Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring,
Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers,
The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing,
What virtue breeds, iniquity devours;
We have no good that we can say is ours,
But ill annexed opportunity
Or kills his life, or else his quality.
O, Opportunity! thy guilt is great:
'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason;
Thou sett'st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season
'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason;
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
Sits sin to seize the souls that wander by him.
Thou mak'st the vestal violate her oath ;
Thou blow'st the fire, when temperance is thaw'd;
Thou smother'st honesty, thou murder'st troth:
Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd!
Thou plantest scandal, and displacest laud:
Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,
Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief!
Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,
Thy private feasting to a public fast;
Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,
Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste:
Thy violent vanities can never last.
How comes it then, vile Opportunity,
Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
When wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend,
And bring him where his suit may be obtained?
When wilt thou sort an hour' great strifes to end,
* When wilt thou SORT an hour-] i. e. select or choose an hour. See Vol. v. p. 335. Steevens refers to the line,
"But I will sort a pitchy day for thee,"
as if it were in "Richard III." It is in fact in " Henry VI." part iii.; but the
Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained?
Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained?
The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee,
But they ne'er meet with Opportunity.
The patient dies while the physician sleeps;
The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;
Advice is sporting while infection breeds:
Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds.
Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murders rages;
Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.
When truth and virtue have to do with thee,
A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid :
They buy thy help; but sin ne'er gives a fee;
He gratis comes, and thou art well appay'd,
As well to hear, as grant what he hath said.
My Collatine would else have come to me,
When Tarquin did; but he was stay'd by thee.
Guilty thou art of murder and of theft;
Guilty of perjury and subornation;
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift;
Guilty of incest, that abomination :
An accessory by thine inclination
To all sins past, and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.
Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care;
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare;
Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are.
O hear me, then, injurious, shifting Time!
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.
Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,
Betray'd the hours thou gav'st me to repose?
Cancell'd my fortunes, and enchained me
scene was made a portion of "Richard III." as it was acted in the time of Steevens, and in our own, and hence, perhaps, his mistake.
To endless date of never-ending woes?
Time's office is to fine the hate of foes';
To eat up errors by opinion bred,
Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.
Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn, and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right;
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.
To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books, and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,
To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs;
To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel:
To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild;
To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil'd;
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water-drops;
Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
Unless thou couldst return to make amends?
One poor retiring minute in an age
Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,
Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends :
O! this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back,
I could prevent this storm, and shun thy wrack.
Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,
With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight :
Devise extremes beyond extremity
5 Time's office is to FINE the hate of foes;] To "fine" is here used for to
we are aware of, as a verb.
is often met with as a substantive, but only here, that
To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:
Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,
And the dire thought of his committed evil
Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.
Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,
Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;
Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
To make him moan, but pity not his moans :
Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones;
And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.
Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
Let him have time against himself to rave,
Let him have time of time's help to despair,
Let him have time to live a loathed slave;
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave,
And time to see one that by alms doth live,
Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.
Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
And merry fools to mock at him resort;
Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
His time of folly, and his time of sport:
And ever let his unrecalling crime
Have time to wail th' abusing of his time.
O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,
Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill!
At his own shadow let the thief run mad,
Himself himself seek every hour to kill!
Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill;
For who so base would such an office have
As slanderous death's-man to so base a slave?
The baser is he, coming from a king,
To shame his hope with deeds degenerate :
The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate;
For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
The moon being clouded presently is miss'd,
But little stars may hide them when they list.
The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceiv'd fly with the filth away;
But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day:
Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
But eagles gaz'd upon with every eye.
Out, idle words! servants to shallow fools,
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be you mediators:
For me, I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past the help of law.
In vain I rail at Opportunity,
At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night;
In vain I cavil with mine infamy,
In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite :
This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
The remedy, indeed, to do me good,
Is to let forth my foul, defiled, blood.
Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree?
Honour thyself to rid me of this shame;
For if I die, my honour lives in thee,
But if I live, thou liv'st in my defame:
Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame,
And wast afear'd to scratch her wicked foe,
Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.
This said, from her be-tumbled couch she starteth,
To find some desperate instrument of death;
But this no slaughter-house no tool imparteth,
To make more vent for passage of her breath,
Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth
6 I FORCE not argument a straw,]. I do not value, or care not for arguSee Vol. ii. p. 367.
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