| Rich. No matter where—of comfort no man speak: | |
| Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; | 145 |
| Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes | |
| Write sorrow on 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? | 150 |
| 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. | |
| For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground | 155 |
| And tell sad stories of the death of kings: | |
| How some have been depos’d, some slain in war, | |
| Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, | |
| Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d, | |
| All murthered—for within the hollow crown | 160 |
| That rounds the mortal temples of a king | |
| Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits, | |
| Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, | |
| Allowing him a breath, a little scene, | |
| To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks; | 165 |
| Infusing him with self and vain conceit | |
| As if this flesh which walls about our life | |
| Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus | |
| Comes at the last, and with a little pin | |
| Bores thorough his castle wall, and farewell king! | 170 |
| Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood | |
| With solemn reverence; throw away respect, | |
| Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty; | |
| For you have but mistook me all this while. | |
| I live with bread like you, feel want, | 175 |
| Taste grief, need friends—subjected thus, | |
| How can you say to me, I am a king? |