And here I prophesy: this brawl to-day, 124
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send between the red rose and the white
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
Plan. Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you, 128
That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.
Ver. In your behalf still would I wear the same.
Lawyer. And so will I.
Plan. Thanks, gentle sir. 132
Come, let us four to dinner: I dare say
This quarrel will drink blood another day. Exeunt.
Scene Five
[London. A Room in the Tower]
Enter Mortimer, brought in a chair, and Jailors.
Mor. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,
Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.
Even like a man new haled from the rack,
So fare my limbs with long imprisonment; 4
And these gray locks, the pursuivants of death,
Nestor-like aged, in an age of care,
Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.
These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, 8
Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;
Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,
And pithless arms, like to a wither'd vine
That droops his sapless branches to the ground: 12
Yet are these feet whose strengthless stay is numb,
Unable to support this lump of clay,
5 pursuivants: messengers
6 Cf. n.
7 Edmund Mortimer; cf. n.
9 exigent: end
