What fragrance scents the vernal air!
The woods their loveliest mantles wear;
Who knows what cares await the day,
When ruder gusts shall banish May?
E'en death our valleys may invade—
Be gay: too soon the flow'rs of spring may fade.
The dew-drops o'er the lilies play,
Like orient pearls, like beams of day:

If love and mirth your thoughts engage,
Attend, (a poet's words are sage),
While thus you sit beneath the shade,
Be gay: too soon the flow'rs of spring may fade.

Queen. [Rises, and comes forward.]
'Tis well! 'tis well! we thank your love;
But thou should'st please me better, would'st thou weep.

Lady.
I could weep, madam, would it do you good.

Queen.
And I could weep, would weeping do me good,
And never borrow any tear of thee.

Lady.
What can we devise,
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
Madam, we'll tell tales.

Queen.
Of sorrow, or of joy?

Lady.
Of either, madam.

Queen.
Of neither, girl:
For if of joy, being altogether wanting,
It doth remember me the more of sorrow;
Or if of grief, being altogether had,
It brings more sorrow to my want of joy.
For what I have, I need not to repeat,
And what I want, it boots not to complain.
My heart can keep no measure in delight.
What men are these?

Lady.
Only the gardeners, madam.

Queen.
Let's step into the shadow of these trees:
My wretchedness unto a row of pins,
They'll talk of state:—so every one doth now,
Against a change: woe is forerun with woe. [Queen and Ladies retire towards the Arbour.]

Enter two Gardeners.

Gard.
Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth;
All must be even in our government.
You thus employ'd, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, that without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

Man.
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law and form, and due proportion,
Showing as in a model, our firm state?
When our sea-wall'd garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds?

Gard.
Hold thy peace, man,
He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring,
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf:
The weeds that his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
That seem'd in eating him, to hold him up,
Are pluck'd up, root and all, by Bolingbroke:
I mean the earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.

Man.
What, are they dead?

Gard.
They are: and Bolingbroke
Hath seiz'd the wasteful king. What pity is it,
That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land,
As we this garden! We, at time of year,
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest being overproud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have liv'd to bear, and he to taste,

The fruits of duty. All superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

Man.
What think you then, the king shall be depos'd?

Gard.
Depress'd he is already: and depos'd,
'Tis doubt he will be: Letters came last night
To a dear friend of the good duke of York's,
That tell black tidings. [The Queen starts from her concealment.]

Queen.
O, I am press'd to death through want of speaking:
Thou Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares thy tongue sound this unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man?
Why dost thou say, king Richard is deposed?
Dar'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how,
Cam'st thou by these ill-tidings? Speak, thou wretch.

Gard.
Pardon me, madam; little joy have I
To breathe this news: yet what I say is true.
King Richard, he is in the mighty hold
Of Bolingbroke; their fortunes both are weigh'd:
In your lord's scale is nothing but himself;
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,
Besides himself, are all the English peers;
And with that odds, he weighs king Richard down.
I speak no more than every one doth know;
Post you to London and you'll find it true.

Queen.
Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,
Doth not thy embassage belong to me,
And am I last that knows it? O, thou think'st

To serve me last, that I may longest keep
Thy sorrow in my breast.—Where shall I turn?
E'en now I see him as one upon a rock,
Environ'd with a wilderness of sea,
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever, when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.—
I will hence, to meet my lovely Richard.
What, was I born to this, that my sad look,
Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke.—
“Gardener, for telling me this news of woe,
“I would the plants thou graft'st, may never grow.” [Exeunt Queen and Ladies.

Gard.
So that thy state might be no worse, poor queen!
I would my skill were subject to thy curse.
Here did she drop a tear: here in this spot
I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In true remembrance of a weeping queen. [Exit Gardener.

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