Fear no more

Re-enter ARVIRAGUS, with IMOGEN, as dead, bearing her in his arms
ARVIRAGUS
The bird is dead
That we have made so much on. I had rather
Have skipp’d from sixteen years of age to sixty,
To have turn’d my leaping-time into a crutch,
Than have seen this.
GUIDERIUS
O sweetest, fairest lily!
My brother wears thee not the one half so well
As when thou grew’st thyself.
BELARIUS
O melancholy!
Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find
The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare
Might easiliest harbour in? Thou blessed thing!
Jove knows what man thou mightst have made; but I,
Thou diedst, a most rare boy, of melancholy.
How found you him?
ARVIRAGUS
Stark, as you see:
Thus smiling, as some fly hid tickled slumber,
Not as death’s dart, being laugh’d at; his
right cheek
Reposing on a cushion.
GUIDERIUS
Where?
ARVIRAGUS
O’ the floor;
His arms thus leagued: I thought he slept, and put
My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness
Answer’d my steps too loud.
GUIDERIUS
Why, he but sleeps:
If he be gone, he’ll make his grave a bed;
With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,
And worms will not come to thee.
ARVIRAGUS
With fairest flowers
Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins, no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweeten’d not thy breath: the ruddock would,
With charitable bill,–O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
Without a monument!–bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse.
GUIDERIUS
Prithee, have done;
And do not play in wench-like words with that
Which is so serious. Let us bury him,
And not protract with admiration what
Is now due debt. To the grave!
ARVIRAGUS
Say, where shall’s lay him?
GUIDERIUS
By good Euriphile, our mother.
ARVIRAGUS
Be’t so:
And let us, Polydore, though now our voices
Have got the mannish crack, sing him to the ground,
As once our mother; use like note and words,
Save that Euriphile must be Fidele.
GUIDERIUS
Cadwal,
I cannot sing: I’ll weep, and word it with thee;
For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie.
ARVIRAGUS
We’ll speak it, then.
BELARIUS
Great griefs, I see, medicine the less; for Cloten
Is quite forgot. He was a queen’s son, boys;
And though he came our enemy, remember
He was paid for that: though mean and
mighty, rotting
Together, have one dust, yet reverence,
That angel of the world, doth make distinction
Of place ‘tween high and low. Our foe was princely
And though you took his life, as being our foe,
Yet bury him as a prince.
GUIDERIUS
Pray You, fetch him hither.
Thersites’ body is as good as Ajax’,
When neither are alive.
ARVIRAGUS
If you’ll go fetch him,
We’ll say our song the whilst. Brother, begin.
Exit BELARIUS
GUIDERIUS
Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the east;
My father hath a reason for’t.
ARVIRAGUS
‘Tis true.
GUIDERIUS
Come on then, and remove him.
ARVIRAGUS
So. Begin.
SONG

Re-enter BELARIUS, with the body of CLOTEN