Put out the light, and then put out the light:*
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me:-but once put out thine,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy I cannot give it vital growth again,
It needs must wither:-I'll smell it on the tree.
O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword!-One more, one more.-
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after.-One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears: this sorrows heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love.
HIS CONFUSION AFTER THE MURDER.
Yes; 'tis Emilia:-by and by. She's dead.
'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio's death:
The noise was high.-Ha! no more moving?
Still as the grave. Shall she come in? Wer't good?
I think she stirs again:-No.-What's the best?
If she come in, she'll surely speak to my wife:
My wife! my wife! what wife?-I have no wife:
O, insupportable! O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon; and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.
If heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,†
I'd not have sold her for it.
Behold! I have a weapon;
A better never did itself sustain
Upon a soldier's thigh: I have seen the day,
That with this little arm, and this good sword,
I have made my way through more impediments
Than twenty times your stop:-But, O vain boast!
Who can control his fate? 'tis not so now.—
Be not afraid, though you do see my weapon'd;
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay'd? 'tis a lost fear;
Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires;-Where should Othello go?—
Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr'd wench!
Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt,*
This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,
And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl?
Even like thy chastity.—
O cursed, cursed slave!-Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!—
O Desdemona! Desdemona! dead?
HIS SPEECH BEFORE HIS DEATH.
Soft you; a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know it;
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one, that lov'd not wisely, but too well;
Of one, not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one, whose hand,
Like the base Júdean, threw a pearl away,
Richer than all his tribe; of one, whose subdu'd eyes,
Albeit unus'd to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicínal gum. Set you down this:
And say, besides,—that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian, and traduc'd the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him-thus.
Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
O, then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies*
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams:
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film:
Her waggoner, a small gray-coated knat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love:
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight:
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream;
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:*
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickiing a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathoms deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear; at which he starts, and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab,
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks† in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.
I. e. Fairy locks, locks of hair clotted and tangled in the night.
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
DESCRIPTION OF A BEAUTY,
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's* ear:
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shews a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shews.
Rom. He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.
[Juliet appears above, at a window.
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid are far more fair than she:
Be not her maid,† since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.-
A votary to the moon, to Diana
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