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,
Sole imperator, and great general

Of trotting pirators.†-O my little heart!-
And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing; ever out of frame;

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watch'd that it may still go right?

SONG.

On a day, (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom, passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,

Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn,

Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.

* Veiled.

+ Officers of the spiritual courts.

Do not call it sin in me,

That I am foresworn for thee;

Thou for whom even Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiop were;

And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.

THE POWER OF LOVE.

But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
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 sphinx: 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.

୯

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.

RESOLUTION.

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

THE PRAYERS OF MAIDENS EFFECTUAL.

Go to lord Angelo,

And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,
Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe* them.

MERCY FREQUENTLY MISTAKEN.

Mercy is not itself that oft looks so;
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.

MERCY IN GOVERNORS COMMENDED.

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.

THE DUTY OF MUTUAL FORGIVENESS.

Why, all the souls that
And He that might the
Found out the remedy.

Alas! alas!
were, were forfeit once;
vantage best have took
How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

* Have.

THE ABUSE OF AUTHORITY.

O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer,

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but Merciful Heaven!

[thunder.

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgeable, and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle: O, but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority;

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,

As make the angels weep: who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.

THE PRIVILEGE OF AUTHORITY.

Great men may jest with saints: 'tis wit in them;
But, in the less, foul profanation.

That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

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.

HOPE.

The miserable have no other medicine,
But only hope.