Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

LOVE,-continued.

And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd;
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphynx, as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs;
O then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.

Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in a lover's 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.

L. L. iv. 3.

R. J. i. 1.

Love like a shadow flies, when substance love pursues;
Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,
Thou would'st as soon go kindle fire with snow,
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind:
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind;
Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste;
And therefore is love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.

M. W. ii. 2.

T.G. ii. 7.

M. N. i. 1.

Love is a familiar: love is a devil: there is no evil angel but love. Yet Sampson was so tempted; and he had an excellent strength: yet was Solomon so seduced; and he had a very good wit. L. L. i. 2.

Adieu, valour! rust, rapier! be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. L. L. i. 2.

LOVE,-continued.

O king, believe not this hard-hearted man;
Love, loving not itself, none other can.

O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
Come hither, boy: If ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it, remember me;
For, such as I am, all true lovers are;
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save in the constant image of the creature

That is belov'd.

R. II. v. 3.

T. N. i. 1.

T. N. ii. 4.

4. Y. iii. 2.

It is as easy to count atomies, as to resolve the propositions of a lover.

The strongest, love will instantly make weak:

Strike the wise dumb; and teach the fool to speak. Pocms.
Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,

But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.

I know I love in vain, strive against hope;

Yet in this captious and intenible sieve,

I still pour in the waters of my love,

And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore

O. iii. 3.

The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.

A. W. i. 3.

We, that are true lovers, run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly. A. Y. ii. 4.

Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip, as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too. A. Y. iii. 2.

O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal.

Break an hour's promise in love!

A. Y. iv. 1.

A. Y. iv. 1.

By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy. L. L. iv. 3.

If he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing old signs: he brushes his hat o' mornings ;—what should that bode? M. A. iii. 3.

The greatest note of it is his melancholy.

M. A. iii. 2.

LOVE,-continued.

I found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit;

A. Y. iii. 2.

For, if they could, Cupid himself would blush. M. V. ii. 6.

This is the very ecstacy of love:

Whose violent property fore does itself,

And leads the will to desperate undertakings,

As oft as any passion under heaven,
That does afflict our natures.

Cressid, I love thee in so strain'd a purity,
That the bless'd gods-as angry with my fancy,
More bright in zeal than the devotion which
Cold lips blow to their deities.

H. ii. 1.

T.C. iv. 4.

I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much
another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviour to
love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in
others, become the argument of his own scorn, by falling
in love.
M. A. ii. 3.
The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns;
The current, that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage:
But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with th' enamel'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so, by many winding nooks, he strays,

With willing sport, to the wild ocean.

T. G. ii. 7.

O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,

To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean:
I something do excuse the thing I hate,

For his advantage that I dearly love.

M. M. ii. 4.

If I do not take pity of her, I'm a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew: I will go get her picture.

M. A. ii. 3.

Not only, Mistress Ford, in the simple office of love, but in all accoutrement, complement, and ceremony of it.

Tell her, my love, more noble than the world,
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;
The parts that fortune hath bestow'd upon her,
Tell her, I hold as giddily as fortune;
But 'tis that miracle, and queen of gems,
That nature pranks her in, attracts my soul.

M. W. iv. 2.

T. N. ii. 4.

LOVE,-continued.

As the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Ev'n so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly; blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.
O, how this spring of love resembleth

T.G. i. 1.

The uncertain glory of an April day;
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by-and-by a cloud takes all away.
As in the sweetest bud

T.G. i. 3.

The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

T.G. i. 1.

Your brother and my sister no sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed; no sooner sighed, but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason, but they sought the remedy: and in these degrees they have made a pair of stairs to marriage. A. Y. v. 2.

Indeed, he was mad for her, and talk'd of Satan, and of limbo, and of furies.

A. W. v. 3.

But if thy love were ever like to mine,

How many actions most ridiculous

Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy!

A. X. ii. 4.

He was wont to speak plain, and to the purpose, like an honest man, and a soldier; and now he has turn'd orthographer; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes.

If thou remember'st not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not lov'd.

O! And I, forsooth, in love!

I, that have been love's whip;

A very beadle to a humorous sigh;

A critic; nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o'er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents:

[blocks in formation]

What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,

M. A. ii. 3.

A. Y. ii. 4.

LOVE,―continued.

Still a repairing; ever out of frame;
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right!

For aught that ever I could read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood;

O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low!
Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;
O spite! too old to be engag'd to young!
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends:
O hell! to choose love by another's eye!
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it;
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfold both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

[blocks in formation]

The gods themselves,

Humbling their deities to love, have taken

The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter

Became a bull and bellow'd; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-rob'd god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now: Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty, rarer;
Nor in a way so chaste: since my desires.
Run not before mine honour.

He says, he loves my daughter;

I think so too; for never gaz'd the moon
Upon the water, as he'll stand and read,

As 'twere, my daughter's eyes: and, to be plain,
I think, there is not half a kiss to choose,

Who loves another best.

L. L. iii. 1.

M. N. i. 1.

0. i. 2.

Cym. iv. 2.

W. T. iv. 3.

W. T. iv. 3.

« AnteriorContinua »