1    Open your ears; for which of you will stop
2    The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
3    I, from the orient to the drooping west,
4    Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
5    The acts commenced on this ball of earth:
6    Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
7    The which in every language I pronounce,
8    Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
9    I speak of peace, while covert enmity
10   Under the smile of safety wounds the world:
11   And who but Rumour, who but only I,
12   Make fearful musters and prepared defence,
13   Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,
14   Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
15   And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
16   Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
17   And of so easy and so plain a stop
18   That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
19   The still-discordant wavering multitude,
20   Can play upon it. But what need I thus
21   My well-known body to anatomize
22   Among my household? Why is Rumour here?
23   I run before King Harry's victory;
24   Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury
25   Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
26   Quenching the flame of bold rebellion
27   Even with the rebel's blood. But what mean I
28   To speak so true at first? my office is
29   To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell
30   Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword,
31   And that the king before the Douglas' rage
32   Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death.
33   This have I rumour'd through the peasant towns
34   Between that royal field of Shrewsbury
35   And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,
36   Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
37   Lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on,
38   And not a man of them brings other news
39   Than they have learn'd of me: from Rumour's tongues
40   They bring smooth comforts false, worse than
41   true wrongs.