Pain and Despair

The world’s whole sap is sunk: The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk, Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh, Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

And my ending is despair, Unless I be reliev’d by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults.

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within.

Ah! do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purpos’d overthrow.

Thou hast done a deed whereat valor will weep.

They’ll give him death by inches.

The shirt of Nessus is upon me.

I ’gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.

My fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in ’t. I have supp’d full with horrors.

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart? Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself. Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

Malcolm: Dispute it like a man. Macduff: I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What! all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?

I am in blood Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

Thou canst not say I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me.

The labor we delight in physics pain.

I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.

Dwindle, peak, and pine.

Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid.

The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Vex not his ghost: O! let him pass; he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.

And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button.