The Winter's Tale eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 141 pages of information about The Winter's Tale.

Florizel
                            How, Camillo,
May this, almost a miracle, be done? 
That I may call thee something more than man,
And, after that, trust to thee.

Camillo
                                Have you thought on
A place whereto you’ll go?

Florizel
                           Not any yet;
But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
To what we wildly do; so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies
Of every wind that blows.

Camillo
                          Then list to me: 
This follows,—­if you will not change your purpose,
But undergo this flight,—­make for Sicilia;
And there present yourself and your fair princess,—­
For so, I see, she must be,—­’fore Leontes: 
She shall be habited as it becomes
The partner of your bed.  Methinks I see
Leontes opening his free arms, and weeping
His welcomes forth; asks thee, the son, forgiveness,
As ‘twere i’ the father’s person; kisses the hands
Of your fresh princess; o’er and o’er divides him
’Twixt his unkindness and his kindness,—­the one
He chides to hell, and bids the other grow
Faster than thought or time.

Florizel
                             Worthy Camillo,
What colour for my visitation shall I
Hold up before him?

Camillo
                    Sent by the king your father
To greet him and to give him comforts.  Sir,
The manner of your bearing towards him, with
What you as from your father, shall deliver,
Things known betwixt us three, I’ll write you down;
The which shall point you forth at every sitting,
What you must say; that he shall not perceive
But that you have your father’s bosom there,
And speak his very heart.

Florizel
                          I am bound to you: 
There is some sap in this.

Camillo
                           A course more promising
Than a wild dedication of yourselves
To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores, most certain
To miseries enough:  no hope to help you;
But as you shake off one to take another: 
Nothing so certain as your anchors; who
Do their best office if they can but stay you
Where you’ll be loath to be:  besides, you know
Prosperity’s the very bond of love,
Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together
Affliction alters.

Perdita
                   One of these is true: 
I think affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind.

Camillo
                          Yea, say you so? 
There shall not at your father’s house, these seven years
Be born another such.

Florizel
                      My good Camillo,
She is as forward of her breeding as
She is i’ the rear our birth.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Winter's Tale from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.