**JOHN OF GAUNT** O, to what purpose do...

JOHN OF GAUNT O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,

That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?

HENRY BOLINGBROKE I have too few to take my leave of you,

When the tongue's office should be prodigal

To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

JOHN OF GAUNT Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

JOHN OF GAUNT What is six winters? they are quickly gone.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

JOHN OF GAUNT Call it a travel that thou takest for pleasure.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,

Which finds it an inforced pilgrimage.

JOHN OF GAUNT The sullen passage of thy weary steps

Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set

The precious jewel of thy home return.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make

Will but remember me what a deal of world

I wander from the jewels that I love.

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood

To foreign passages, and in the end,

Having my freedom, boast of nothing else

But that I was a journeyman to grief?

JOHN OF GAUNT All places that the eye of heaven visits

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus;

There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not the king did banish thee,

But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit,

Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.

Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour

And not the king exiled thee; or suppose

Devouring pestilence hangs in our air

And thou art flying to a fresher clime:

Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou comest:

Suppose the singing birds musicians,

The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd,

The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more

Than a delightful measure or a dance;

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite

The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE O, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?

O, no! the apprehension of the good

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:

Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more

Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.

JOHN OF GAUNT Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on thy way:

Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;

My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!

Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,

Though banish'd, yet a trueborn Englishman.

William Shakespeare, Richard II. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardii/full.html