Imatges de pàgina
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TEARS.

When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears Stood on her cheeks; as doth the honey dew Upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd.

CRUELTY TO INSECTS.

Mar. Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly. Tit. But how, if that fly had a father and mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buz lamenting doings in the air?

Poor harmless fly!

That with his pretty buzzing melody,

[him.

Came here to make us merry; and thou hast kill'd

ACT V.

REVENGE.

Lo, by thy side where Rape, and Murder, stands; Now give some 'surance that thou art Revenge, Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels; And then I'll come, and be thy waggoner, And whirl along with thee about the globes. Provide thee proper palfries, black as jet, To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away, And find out murderers in their guilty caves: And, when thy car is loaden with their heads, I will dismount, and by the waggon wheel Trot, like a servile footman, all day long; Even from Hyperion's rising in the east, Until his very downfal in the sea.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

ACT I.

LOVE IN A BRAVE YOUNG SOLDIER.

CALL here my varlet*, I'll unarm again:
Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan, that is master of his heart,
Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.

*

The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;
But I am weaker than a woman's tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance;
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skill-less as unpractis'd infancy.

O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,-
When I do tell thee, There my hopes lie drown'd,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie indrench'd. I tell thee, I am mad
In Cressid's love: Thou answer'st, She is fair;
Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seisure
The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of ploughmen! This thou tell'st me,
As true thou tell'st me, when I say I love her;
But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,

Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me The knife that made it.

* A servant to a knight.

Weaker.

SUCCESS NOT EQUAL TO OUR HOPES,

The ample proposition, that hope makes

[ters

In all designs begun on earth below,

Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disas-
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd:

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant* from his course of growth.

ADVERSITY THE TRIAL OF MAN.

Why then, you princes,

[else

Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works;
And think them shames, which are, indeed, nought
But the protractive trials of great Jove,
To find persistive constancy in men?
The fineness of which metal is not found
In fortune's love: for, the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin'd† and kin:
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass, or matter, by itself
Lies, rich in virtue, and unmingled.

ON DEGREE.

Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, * Twisted and rambling. Joined by affinity. Absolute

(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, wil! into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself.

ACHILLES DESCRIBED BY ULYSSES.

The great Achilles,-whom opinion crowns The sinew and the forehand of our host,Having his ear full of his airy fame, Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent Lies mocking our designs: With him, Patroclus, Upon a lazy bed the livelong day

Breaks scurril jests;

And with ridiculous and awkward action
(Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,)

He pageants* us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy topless† deputation he puts on;
And, like a strutting player,-whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage‡,--
Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested§ seeming
He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,
'Tis like a chime amending; with terms unsquar'd||,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff,
The large Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
Cries-Excellent!-'tis Agamemnon just.-

* In modern language, takes us off.
The galleries of the theatre.
|| Unadapted.

+ Supreme.
§ Beyond the truth.

Now play me Nestor;-hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being 'drest to some oration.

That's done;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife:
Yet good Achilles still cries, Excellent!
'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.

And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
Must be the scene of mirth; to cough, and spit,
And with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet:—and at this sport,
Sir Valour dies; cries, O!-enough, Patroclus,
Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all
In pleasure of my spleen. And in this fashion,
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes.
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,
Success, or loss, what is, or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

CONDUCT IN WAR SUPERIOR TO ACTION.

The still and mental parts,

That do contrive how many hands shall strike,
When fitness calls them on; and know, by measure
Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight,-
Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:

They call this-bed-work, mappery, closet-war :
So that the ram, that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine;
Or those, that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.

RESPECT.

I ask, that I might waken reverence,

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