king? Then happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Many good morrows to your majesty! Is it good morrow, lords? 'Tis one o'clock, and past. Why, then, good morrow to you all, my lords. Have you read o'er the letters that I sent you? We have, my liege. Then you perceive the body of our kingdom How foul it is; what rank diseases grow And with what danger, near the heart of it. It is but as a body yet distemper'd; Which to his former strength may be restored With good advice and little medicine: My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool'd. O God! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea! and, other times, to see The beachy girdle of the ocean Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock, And changes fill the cup of alteration With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, The happiest youth, viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue, Would shut the book, and sit him down and die. 'Tis not 'ten years gone Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends, Did feast together, and in two years after Were they at wars: it is but eight years since This Percy was the man nearest my soul, Who like a brother toil'd in my affairs And laid his love and life under my foot, Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard Gave him defiance. But which of you was by-- You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember-- When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears, Then cheque'd and rated by Northumberland, Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy? 'Northumberland, thou ladder by the which My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;' Though then, God knows, I had no such intent, But that necessity so bow'd the state That I and greatness were compell'd to kiss: 'The time shall come,' thus did he follow it, 'The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, Shall break into corruption:' so went on, Foretelling this same time's condition And the division of our amity. There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time;