Richard II Shakespeare's work act v scene v

KING RICHARD THE SECOND 

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it; yet I’ll hammer it out. My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father, and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts; And these some thoughts people this little world, In humors like the people of this world: For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine, are intermix’d With scruples and do set the word itself Against the word, As thus: “Come, little ones,” and then again, “It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.” Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails May tear a passage thorough the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls; And for they cannot, die in their own pride. Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves, Nor shall not be the last—like seely beggars. Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame, That many have and others must sit there; And in this thought they find a kind of ease, Bearing their own misfortunes on the back Of such as have before endur’d the like. Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented. Sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am. Then crushing penury. Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king’d again, and by and by Think that I am unking’d by Bullingbrook, And straight am nothing. But what e’er I be, Nor I, nor any man that but man is, With nothing shall be pleas’d, till he be eas’d With being nothing. The music plays. Music do I hear? Keep time! How sour sweet music is When time is broke, and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men’s lives. And here have I the daintiness of ear To check time broke in a disordered string; But for the concord of my state and time Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock. 

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