Читать книгу The Complete Works of Shakespeare онлайн

856 страница из 942

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke S.

Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gor’d.

1. Lord.

Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And in that kind swears you do more usurp

Than doth your brother that hath banish’d you.

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,

To the which place a poor sequest’red stag,

That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt,

Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

Cours’d one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,