And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone :
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-
night :
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stol'n from an Indian king,
She never had so sweet a changeling,
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the lovéd boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square, that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.
Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making
quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Good-fellow. Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck
You do their work, and they shall have good luck :
Are not you he?
Puck. Fairy, thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me,
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And tailor' cries, and falls into a cough,
And then the whole quire hold their hips and
laugh
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.—
But room now, fairy: here comes Oberon.
Fai. And here my mistress.-Would that he were gone!
Enter, from one side, OBERON with his Train, and from the other, TITANIA with hers
Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.
Tita. What, jealous Oberon ! Fairies, skip
I have forsworn his bed and company.
Tita. Then I must be thy lady: but I know
When thou hast stol'n away from fairy land
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest steep of India,
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskined mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded? and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.
Obe. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus ?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering
From Perigenia, whom he ravishéd?
And make him with fair Ægle break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?
Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By pavéd fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beachéd margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents;
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock;
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud;
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable :
The human mortals want their winter here,
No night is now with hymn or carol blest,
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
Obe. Do you amend it, then; it lies in you
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
I do but beg a little changeling boy,
To be my henchman.
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order :
And, in the spicéd Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossiped by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood;
When we have laughed to see the sails conceive
And grown big-bellied with the wanton wind;
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