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       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 used, must by thyself be paid:

       Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward.

       HELENA.

       Inspired merit so by breath is barred:

       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.—

       Give me some help here, ho!—If thou proceed

       As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

       [Flourish. Exeunt.]