Imatges de pàgina
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With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation, that doth goad us on,
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art, and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite.

LOVE IN A GRAVE SEVERE GOVERNOR.

When I would pray and think, I think and pray To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words; Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth, As if I did but only chew his name; And in my heart the strong and swelling evil Of my conception: The state, whereon I studied, Is like a good thing, being often read, Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity, Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride, Could I, with boot*, change for an idle plume, Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form! How often dost thou with thy cases, thy habit, Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming?

FORNICATION AND MURDER EQUALED.

It were as good

To pardon him, that hath from nature stolen

A man already made, as to remit

Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image,
In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy

Falsely to take away a life true made,
As to put mettle in restrained means,
To make a false one.

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LOWLINESS OF MIND.

Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better.

Ang. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright, When it doth tax itself.

TEMPORAL FAR BETTER THAN ETERNAL DEATH.

Better it were, a brother died at once,

Than that a sister by redeeming him,

Should die for ever.

WOMEN'S FRAILTY.

Nay, women are frail too.

[selves;

Isab. Ay, as the glasses where they view themWhich are as easy broke as they make forms. Women!-Help, heaven! men their creation mar In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail; For we are soft as our complexions are, And credulous to false prints*.

АСТ III

HOPE.

The miserable have no other medicine,

But only hope.

REFLECTIONS ON THE VANITY OF LIFE. Reason thus with life,

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art (Servile to all the skiey influences),

That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
* Impressions.

And yet run'st toward him still: Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st,
Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means
valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st: yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains,
That issue out of dust: happy thou art not:
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects*,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigot, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, [nor age;
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

THE TERRORS OF DEATH MOST IN APPREHENSION.

O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,

* Affects, affections. + Leprous eruption. Old age.

Lest thou a feverish life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respected
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

RESOLUTION FROM A SENSE OF HONOUR.

Why give you me this shame?
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.

THE HYPOCRISY OF ANGELO.

There my father's grave

Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die:
Thou art too noble to conserve a life

In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,-
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i'the head, and follies doth enmew*,
As falcon doth the fowl,-is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.

THE TERRORS OF DEATH.

Death is a fearful thing.

Isab. And shamed life a hateful.

Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot:

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

*Shut up.

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless* winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

VIRTUE AND GOODNESS.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

A BAWD.

The evil that thou causest to be done, That is thy means to live: Do thou but think What 'tis to cram a maw, or clothe a back, From such a filthy vice: say to thyself,— From their abominable and beastly touches I drink, I eat, array myself, and live. Canst thou believe thy living is a life, So stinkingly depending? Go, mend, go, mend.

ACT IV.

SONG.

Take, oh take, those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn:
* Invisible.

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