LEAR Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' th' world! Crack Nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That makes ingrateful man! FOOL O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this rainwater out o' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters blessing! Here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool. LEAR Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters. I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness. I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription. Then let fall Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man. But yet I call you servile ministers, That will with two pernicious daughters join Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O, ho! 'tis foul! FOOL He that has a house to put 's head in has a good head-piece. The codpiece that will house Before the head has any, The head and he shall louse: So beggars marry many. The man that makes his toe What he his heart should make Shall of a corn cry woe, And turn his sleep to wake. For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass. [Enter KENT] KENT Who's there? FOOL Marry, here's grace and a codpiece—that's a wise man and a fool. KENT Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies Gallow the very wanderers of the dark And make them keep their caves. Since I was man, Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never Remember to have heard. Man's nature cannot carry Th' affliction nor the fear. LEAR Let the great gods, That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand, Thou perjur'd, and thou simular of virtue That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake, That under covert and convenient seeming Has practis'd on man's life! Close pent-up guilts Rive your concealing continents and cry These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man More sinn'd against than sinning. KENT Alack, bare-headed? Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest. Repose you there, while I to this hard house— More harder than the stones whereof 'tis rais'd, Which even but now, demanding after you, Deni'd me to come in—return, and force Their scanted courtesy. LEAR My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee. FOOL [Singing] He that has and a little tiny wit— With hey, ho, the wind and the rain— Must make content with his fortunes fit, For the rain it raineth every day. KENT Come, bring us to this hovel. [Exeunt]