Richard II (excerpts): I have been studying how to compare

I have been studying how to compareThis prison where I live unto the world,And for because the world is populousAnd here is not a creature but myself,I cannot do it - yet I'll hammer it out.My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,My soul the father, and these two begetA generation of still breeding thoughts;And these same thoughts people this little world,In humors like the people of this world,For no thought is contented. The better sort,As thoughts of things divine, are intermixedWith scruples and do set the faith itselfAgainst the faith -As thus, "Come little ones," and then again,"It is as hard to come as for a camelTo thread the postern of a needle's eye."Thoughts tending to ambition they do plotUnlikely wonders: how these vain, weak nailsMay tear a passage through the flinty ribsOf this hard world, my ragged prison walls,And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.Thoughts tending to content flatter themselvesThat they are not the first of Fortune's slavesNor shall be the last - like silly beggarsWho sitting in the stocks refuge their shameThat many have, and others must sit there;And in this thought they find a kind of ease,Bearing their own misfortune on the backOf such as have before endured the like.Thus play I in one prison many people,And none contented. Sometimes am I king;Then treason makes me with my self a beggar,And so I am; then crushing penuryPersuades me I was better when a king,Then am I kinged again, and by and byThink I am un-kinged by BolingbrokeAnd straight am nothing. But what e'er I am MusicNor I nor any man that but man isWith nothing shall be pleased, till he be easedWith being nothing. Music do I hear?Ha, ha, keep time - how sour sweet music isWhen time is broke and no proportion kept.So is it in the music of men's lives,And here have I the daintiness of earTo hear time broke in a disordered string,But for the concord of my state and timeHad not an ear to hear my true time broke.I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.For now hath time made me his numbering clock;My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jarTheir watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,Whereto my finger like a dial's pointIs pointing still in cleansing them from tears.Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it isAre clamorous groans that strike upon the heartWhich is the bell; so sighs and tears and groansShow minutes, hours, and times, but my timeRuns posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,While I stand fooling here, his jack o'th'clock.