Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep'st;
Is not the King's name forty thousand names?
Arm, arm, my name: a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory.
King Henry does not make any such vapouring resistance to the loss
of his crown, but lets it slip from off his head as a weight which
he is neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly by to see the
issue of the contest for his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-
pin, and is pleased when the odds prove against him.
When Richard first hears of the death of his favourites, Bushy,
Bagot, and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of any further
efforts, and only indulges in the extravagant impatience of his
grief and his despair, in that fine speech which has been so often
quoted:
Aumerle. Where is the duke my father, with his power?
K. Richard. No matter where: of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow in the bosom of the earth!
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so--for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
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