Start: KING HENRY VI Hadst thou been ki...

Start: KING HENRY VI

Hadst thou been kill'd when first thou didst presume,

Thou hadst not lived to kill a son of mine.

And thus I prophesy, that many a thousand,

Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,

And many an old man's sigh and many a widow's,

And many an orphan's water-standing eye--

Men for their sons, wives for their husbands,

And orphans for their parents timeless death--

Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.

The owl shriek'd at thy birth,--an evil sign;

The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;

Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempest shook down trees;

The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top,

And chattering pies in dismal discords sung.

Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain,

And, yet brought forth less than a mother's hope,

To wit, an indigested and deformed lump,

Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.

Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,

To signify thou camest to bite the world:

And, if the rest be true which I have heard,

Thou camest--

Shakespeare, William, Henry VI Part 3, Act 5, Scene 6, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2256/pg2256.html.

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