Shakespere's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Front Cover
Longmans, Green, and Company, 1896 - 111 pages

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Contents

I
ix
II
3
III
20
IV
42

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Page 84 - I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.
Page 84 - The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen ; man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
Page xxv - WEEP with me all you that read This little story ; And know, for whom a tear you shed Death's self is sorry. 'Twas a child that so did thrive In grace and feature, As Heaven and Nature seemed to strive Which owned the creature.
Page 79 - I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bay"d the bear With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Page 7 - But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
Page 30 - Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath. That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's music.
Page 110 - If we shadows have offended. Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here, While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend.
Page 87 - The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation, and a name.
Page 88 - The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; •• Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear?
Page 21 - On her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I...

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