O, that this too too solid flesh would melt

William Shakespeare

1564 to 1616

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With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
As if increase of appetite had grown
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
Would have mourn’d longer—married with my uncle,
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
Like Niobe, all tears:—why she, even she—
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Fie on’t! ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden,
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Let me not think on’t—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month—
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

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