To leave this keen encounter of our wits, And fall somewhat into a slower method, Is not the causer of the timeless deaths Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward, As blameful as the executioner? Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect. Your beauty was the cause of that effect; Your beauty: which did haunt me in my sleep To undertake the death of all the world, So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. These eyes could never endure sweet beauty's wreck; You should not blemish it, if I stood by: As all the world is cheered by the sun, So I by that; it is my day, my life. Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life! Curse not thyself, fair creature thou art both. I would I were, to be revenged on thee. It is a quarrel most unnatural, To be revenged on him that loveth you. It is a quarrel just and reasonable, To be revenged on him that slew my husband. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband. His better doth not breathe upon the earth. He lives that loves thee better than he could. Name him. Plantagenet. Why, that was he. The selfsame name, but one of better nature. Where is he? Here. Why dost thou spit at me? Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! Never came poison from so sweet a place. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead! I would they were, that I might die at once; For now they kill me with a living death. Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, Shamed their aspect with store of childish drops: These eyes that never shed remorseful tear, No, when my father York and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him; Nor when thy warlike father, like a child, Told the sad story of my father's death, And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks Like trees bedash'd with rain: in that sad time My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear; And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. I never sued to friend nor