Gower

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1. Now sleep yslacked hath the rout,
2. No din but snores the house about,
3. Made louder by the o’erfed breast
4. Of this most pompous marriage-feast.
5. The cat, with eyne of burning coal,
6. Now couches from the mouse’s hole;
7. And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth,
8. Are the blither for their drouth.
9. Hymen hath brought the bride to bed,
10. Where, by the loss of maidenhead,
11. A babe is moulded. Be attent,
12. And time that is so briefly spent
13. With your fine fancies quaintly eche:
14. What’s dumb in show I’ll plain with speech.
0. Dumb Show.
0. Enter Pericles and Simonides, at one door, with Attendants.
0. The Second Tyrian Messenger meets them, kneels, and gives
0. Pericles a letter. Pericles shows it Simonides; the Lords
0. kneel to him. Then enter Thaisa with child, with Lychorida,
0. a nurse. The King shows her the letter; she rejoices. She
0. and Pericles take leave of her father, and depart with
0. Lychorida and their Attendants. Then exeunt Simonides and
0. the rest.
15. By many a dern and painful perch,
16. Of Pericles the careful search,
17. By the four opposing coigns
18. Which the world together joins,
19. Is made with all due diligence
20. That horse and sail and high expense
21. Can stead the quest. At last from Tyre,
22. Fame answering the most strange inquire,
23. To th’ court of King Simonides
24. Are letters brought, the tenor these:
25. Antiochus and his daughter dead,
26. The men of Tyrus on the head
27. Of Helicanus would set on
28. The crown of Tyre, but he will none.
29. The mutiny he there hastes t’ oppress,
30. Says to ’em, if King Pericles
31. Come not home in twice six moons,
32. He, obedient to their dooms,
33. Will take the crown. The sum of this,
34. Brought hither to Pentapolis,
35. Yravished the regions round,
36. And every one with claps can sound,
37. “Our heir-apparent is a king!
38. Who dreamt? Who thought of such a thing?”
39. Brief, he must hence depart to Tyre:
40. His queen, with child, makes her desire—
41. Which who shall cross?—along to go.
42. Omit we all their dole and woe.
43. Lychorida, her nurse, she takes,
44. And so to sea. Their vessel shakes
45. On Neptune’s billow; half the flood
46. Hath their keel cut. But fortune, mov’d,
47. Varies again; the grisled north
48. Disgorges such a tempest forth,
49. That, as a duck for life that dives,
50. So up and down the poor ship drives.
51. The lady shrieks, and well-a-near
52. Does fall in travail with her fear;
53. And what ensues in this fell storm
54. Shall for itself itself perform.
55. I nill relate, action may
56. Conveniently the rest convey,
57. Which might not what by me is told.
58. In your imagination hold
59. This stage the ship, upon whose deck
60. The seas-toss’d Pericles appears to speak.