Alls Wel that ends Well

Re-enter LAFEU with HELENA

LAFEU. Nay, come your ways.

KING. This haste hath wings indeed.

LAFEU. Nay, come your ways;

This is his Majesty; say your mind to him.

A traitor you do look like; but such traitors

His Majesty seldom fears. I am Cressid's uncle, 

That dare leave two together. Fare you well. Exit

KING. Now, fair one, does your business follow us?

HELENA. Ay, my good lord.

Gerard de Narbon was my father,

In what he did profess, well found.

KING. I knew him.

HELENA. The rather will I spare my praises towards him;

Knowing him is enough. On's bed of death

Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,

Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,

And of his old experience th' only darling,

He bade me store up as a triple eye,

Safer than mine own two, more dear. I have so:

And, hearing your high Majesty is touch'd

With that malignant cause wherein the honour

Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power,

I come to tender it, and my appliance,

With all bound humbleness.

KING. We thank you, maiden;

But may not be so credulous of cure, 

When our most learned doctors leave us, and

The congregated college have concluded

That labouring art can never ransom nature

From her inaidable estate-I say we must not

So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,

To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empirics; or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.

HELENA. My duty then shall pay me for my pains.

I will no more enforce mine office on you;

Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts

A modest one to bear me back again.

KING. I cannot give thee less, to be call'd grateful.

Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I give

As one near death to those that wish him live.

But what at full I know, thou know'st no part;

I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

HELENA. What I can do can do no hurt to try,

Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy. 

He that of greatest works is finisher

Oft does them by the weakest minister.

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,

When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown

From simple sources, and great seas have dried

When miracles have by the greatest been denied.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises; and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.

KING. I must not hear thee. Fare thee well, kind maid;

Thy pains, not us'd, must by thyself be paid;

Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.

HELENA. Inspired merit so by breath is barr'd.

It is not so with Him that all things knows,

As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;

But most it is presumption in us when

The help of heaven we count the act of men.

Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent;

Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.

I am not an impostor, that proclaim 

Myself against the level of mine aim;

But know I think, and think I know most sure,

My art is not past power nor you past cure.

KING. Art thou so confident? Within what space

Hop'st thou my cure?

HELENA. The greatest Grace lending grace.

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring

Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring,

Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp,

Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass

Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,

What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,

Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.

KING. Upon thy certainty and confidence

What dar'st thou venture?

HELENA. Tax of impudence,

A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame,

Traduc'd by odious ballads; my maiden's name

Sear'd otherwise; ne worse of worst-extended 

With vilest torture let my life be ended.

KING. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak

His powerful sound within an organ weak;

And what impossibility would slay

In common sense, sense saves another way.

Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate

Worth name of life in thee hath estimate:

Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all

That happiness and prime can happy call.

Thou this to hazard needs must intimate

Skill infinite or monstrous desperate.

Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try,

That ministers thine own death if I die.

HELENA. If I break time, or flinch in property

Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die;

And well deserv'd. Not helping, death's my fee;

But, if I help, what do you promise me?

KING. Make thy demand.

HELENA. But will you make it even?

KING. Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven. 

HELENA. Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand

What husband in thy power I will command.

Exempted be from me the arrogance

To choose from forth the royal blood of France,

My low and humble name to propagate

With any branch or image of thy state;

But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know

Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ'd,

Thy will by my performance shall be serv'd.

So make the choice of thy own time, for I,

Thy resolv'd patient, on thee still rely.

More should I question thee, and more I must,

Though more to know could not be more to trust,

From whence thou cam'st, how tended on. But rest

Unquestion'd welcome and undoubted blest.