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Fails in the promised largeness: checks and

disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest reared;
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Nor, princes, is it matter new to us,

That we come short of our suppose so far,

That, after seven years' siege, yet Troy walls stand;
Sith every action that hath gone before
Whereof we have record, trial did draw

Bias and thwart, not answering the aim
And that unbodied figure of the thought
That gave 't surmised shape.

princes,

Why then, you

Do you with cheeks abashed behold our wrecks And think them shames, which are, indeed, nought

else

But the protractive trials of great Jove

To find persistive constancy in men?

The fineness of which metal is not found

In fortune's love; for then the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,

The hard and soft, seem all affined and kin:
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,

Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass or matter, by itself
Lies rich in virtue and unmingléd.

Nest. With due observance of thy godlike seat, Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply

Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!

But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage

The gentle Thetis, and, anon, behold

The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains

cut,

Bounding between the two moist elements,

Like Perseus' horse: where's then the saucy boat,
Whose weak untimbered sides but even now
Co-rivalled greatness? either to harbour fled,
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
Doth valour's show and valour's worth divide
In storms of fortune: for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the brize
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,

And flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of courage,

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise,

And with an accent tuned in selfsame key

Retorts to chiding fortune.

Ulyss.

Agamemnon,

Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,
Heart of our numbers, soul and holy spirit,

In whom the tempers and the minds of all
Should be shut up,-hear what Ulysses speaks.
Besides the applause and approbation

The which,-[to AGAMEMNON] most mighty for thy place and sway,

[TO NESTOR] And thou most reverend for thy stretched-out life,

I give to both your speeches, which were such
As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece

Should hold up high in brass; and such again,
As venerable Nestor, hatched in silver,

Should with a bond of air strong as the axle-tree
On which heaven rides knit all the Greekish ears
To his experienced tongue,—yet let it please both,
Thou great, and wise,―to hear Ulysses speak.

Agam. Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be 't of less

expect

That matter needless of importless burden
Divide thy lips, than we are confident

When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws

We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector's sword had lacked a master,
But for these instances:

The specialty of rule hath been neglected :
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow on this plain so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair,

What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
centre,

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad: but when the planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,

Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and

wrong

Between whose endless jar justice resides—

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,

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