O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words

Gaunt, to Bolingbroke
O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,
That thou returnest no greeting to thy friends?
Bolingbroke
I have too few to take my leave of you,
When the tongue’s office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolor of the heart.

All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.

Gaunt
Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.
Bolingbroke
Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
Gaunt
What is six winters? They are quickly gone.
Bolingbroke
To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.
Gaunt
Call it a travel that thou tak’st for pleasure.
Bolingbroke
My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an enforcèd pilgrimage.
Gaunt
The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home return.
Bolingbroke
Nay, rather every tedious stride I make
Will but remember me what a deal of world
I wander from the jewels that I love.
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages, and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else
But that I was a journeyman to grief?
Gaunt
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the King did banish thee,
But thou the King. Woe doth the heavier sit
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honor,
And not the King exiled thee; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com’st.
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strewed,
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.
Bolingbroke
O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?
O no, the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more
Than when he bites but lanceth not the sore.
Gaunt
Come, come, my son, I’ll bring thee on thy way.
Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.
Bolingbroke
Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu,
My mother and my nurse that bears me yet.
Where’er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banished, yet a trueborn Englishman.
 They exit.