Kind keepers of my weak decaying age
Mortimer
Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,
Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.
Even like a man new-halèd from the rack,
So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;
And these gray locks, the pursuivants of death,
Nestor-like agèd in an age of care,
Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer;
These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,
Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;
Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,
And pithless arms, like to a withered vine
That droops his sapless branches to the ground;
Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb,
Unable to support this lump of clay,
Swift-wingèd with desire to get a grave,
As witting I no other comfort have.
But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?
Just Death, kind umpire of men’s miseries,
With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence
Keeper
Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come.
We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber,
And answer was returned that he will come.
Mortimer
Enough. My soul shall then be satisfied.
Poor gentleman, his wrong doth equal mine.
Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign,
Before whose glory I was great in arms,
This loathsome sequestration have I had;
And even since then hath Richard been obscured,
Deprived of honor and inheritance.
But now the arbitrator of despairs,
Just Death, kind umpire of men’s miseries,
With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence.
I would his troubles likewise were expired,
That so he might recover what was lost.