Fails in the promised largeness: checks and disasters Grow in the veins of actions highest reared; That we come short of our suppose so far, That, after seven years' siege, yet Troy walls stand; Bias and thwart, not answering the aim 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 hard and soft, seem all affined and kin: Puffing at all, winnows the light away; Nest. With due observance of thy godlike seat, Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance 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, 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, In whom the tempers and the minds of all 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 Should hold up high in brass; and such again, Should with a bond of air strong as the axle-tree Agam. Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be 't of less expect That matter needless of importless burden When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws We shall hear music, wit, and oracle. Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, The specialty of rule hath been neglected : What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny, 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, The enterprise is sick. How could communities, 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, |