CONSTANCE AND FREDERICK
Some strange grand language wrote upon her face.
All this more wasted than a flame that fails
On sick lamp lit at daybreak—more rebuked,
Chastened and beaten by the imperious time,
Than my words last year spoken!
Con.Oh, not so:
Not the soul—let the body wear so thin
Each feature shows of it by this———
Mas.I said
No man's change that we are ruled by does much harm,
God overlines it, shall not the queen live?
But this so new and bitter thing to taste
That poisons me—this curse that changes her—
I saw not ever.
Con.This—
Mas.That you should turn
A woman none of those men pay to find
The costliness of such a golden sin
As loves by hire and loves not—-no such thing
Would praise or pity, would despise or hate—
A shame familiar on the pander's lip,
Smiled out by courtiers from their slippery mouth,
Laughed over, chattered over by the page
A groom might spit on—handled, breathed upon
By the spent breath in his mid office worn
As garb and badge of his necessity
On one permitted shoulder, by this king . . .
All this more wasted than a flame that fails
On sick lamp lit at daybreak—more rebuked,
Chastened and beaten by the imperious time,
Than my words last year spoken!
Con.Oh, not so:
Not the soul—let the body wear so thin
Each feature shows of it by this———
Mas.I said
No man's change that we are ruled by does much harm,
God overlines it, shall not the queen live?
But this so new and bitter thing to taste
That poisons me—this curse that changes her—
I saw not ever.
Con.This—
Mas.That you should turn
A woman none of those men pay to find
The costliness of such a golden sin
As loves by hire and loves not—-no such thing
Would praise or pity, would despise or hate—
A shame familiar on the pander's lip,
Smiled out by courtiers from their slippery mouth,
Laughed over, chattered over by the page
A groom might spit on—handled, breathed upon
By the spent breath in his mid office worn
As garb and badge of his necessity
On one permitted shoulder, by this king . . .
119
