The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for ChildrenLamb, Charles
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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for Children
Lamb, Charles
Children's poetry; Children's stories
The sea was no friendly element to unhappy Pericles, for long before
they reached Tyre another dreadful tempest arose, which so terrified
Thaisa that she was taken ill, and in a short space of time her nurse
Lychorida came to Pericles with a little child in her arms, to tell
the prince the sad tidings that his wife died the moment her little
babe was born. She held the babe towards its father, saying, "Here is
a thing too young for such a place. This is the child of your dead
queen." No tongue can tell the dreadful sufferings of Pericles when
he heard his wife was dead. As soon as he could speak, he said, "O
you gods, why do you make us love your goodly gifts, and then snatch
those gifts away?" "Patience, good sir," said Lychorida, "here is all
that is left alive of our dead queen, a little daughter, and for your
child's sake be more manly. Patience, good sir, even for the sake of
this precious charge." Pericles took the new-born infant in his arms,
and he said to the little babe, "Now may your life be mild, for a
more blusterous birth had never babe! May your condition be mild and
gentle, for you have had the rudest welcome that ever prince's child
did meet with! May that which follows be happy, for you have had as
chiding a nativity as fire, air, water, earth, and heaven, could make,
to herald you from the womb! Even at the first, your loss," meaning in
the death of her mother, "is more than all the joys which you shall
find upon this earth, to which you are come a new visitor, shall be
able to recompence."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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