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| RUMOUR.: |
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| Open your ears; for which of you will stop |
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| The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? |
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| I, from the orient to the drooping west, |
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| Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold |
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| The acts commenced on this ball of earth: |
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| Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, |
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| The which in every language I pronounce, |
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| Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. |
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| I speak of peace, while covert emnity |
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| Under the smile of safety wounds the world: |
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| And who but Rumour, who but only I, |
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| Make fearful musters and prepared defence, |
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| Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, |
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| Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, |
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| And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe |
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| Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, |
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| And of so easy and so plain a stop |
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| That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, |
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| The still-discordant wavering multitude, |
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| Can play upon it. But what need I thus |
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| My well-known body to anatomize |
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| Among my household? Why is Rumour here? |
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| I run before King Harry's victory; |
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| Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury |
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| Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops, |
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| Quenching the flame of bold rebellion |
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| Even with the rebels' blood. But what mean I |
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| To speak so true at first? my office is |
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| To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell |
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| Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword, |
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| And that the king before the Douglas' rage |
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| Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death. |
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| This have I rumour'd through the peasant towns |
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| Between that royal field of Shrewsbury |
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| And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone, |
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| Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland, |
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| Lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on, |
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| And not a man of them brings other news |
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| Than they have learn'd of me: from Rumour's tongues |
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| They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs. |
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