Faith, I’ll lie down and sleep
Imogen
Faith, I’ll lie down and sleep.
She sees Cloten’s headless body.
But soft! No bedfellow? O gods and goddesses!
’Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes
Are sometimes like our judgments, blind.
These flowers are like the pleasures of the world,
This bloody man the care on ’t. I hope I dream,
For so I thought I was a cave-keeper
And cook to honest creatures. But ’tis not so.
’Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes
Are sometimes like our judgments, blind. Good faith,
I tremble still with fear; but if there be
Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity
As a wren’s eye, feared gods, a part of it!
The dream’s here still. Even when I wake it is
Without me as within me, not imagined, felt.
A headless man? The garments of Posthumus?
I know the shape of ’s leg. This is his hand,
His foot Mercurial, his Martial thigh,
The brawns of Hercules; but his Jovial face—
Murder in heaven! How? ’Tis gone. Pisanio,
All curses madded Hecuba gave the Greeks,
And mine to boot, be darted on thee! Thou,
Conspired with that irregulous devil Cloten,
Hath here cut off my lord. To write and read
Be henceforth treacherous. Damned Pisanio
Hath with his forgèd letters—damned Pisanio—
From this most bravest vessel of the world
Struck the maintop. O Posthumus, alas,
Where is thy head? Where’s that? Ay me, where’s that?
Pisanio might have killed thee at the heart
And left this head on. How should this be? Pisanio?
’Tis he and Cloten. Malice and lucre in them
Have laid this woe here. O, ’tis pregnant, pregnant!
The drug he gave me, which he said was precious
And cordial to me, have I not found it
Murd’rous to th’ senses? That confirms it home.
This is Pisanio’s deed, and Cloten. O,
Give color to my pale cheek with thy blood,
That we the horrider may seem to those
Which chance to find us. O my lord! My lord!