LOVE-IN-IDLENESS,

Thou remember'st

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.

That very time I saw (but thou could'st not),
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the west;

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial vot'ress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy free.*

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before, milk-white; now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

TIME.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.

A FATHER'S AUTHORITY.

To you your father should be as a god;

One that composed your beauties; yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax,
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure, or disfigure it.

*Exempt from love.

DEW IN FLOWERS.

And that same dew, which sometime on the buds
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flow'ret's eyes,
Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with lush+ woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight.
+ Vigorous.

FAIRY COURTESIES.

Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,*
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
And, for night tapers, crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
To have my love to bed, and to arise;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes:
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

HUNTING.

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion

Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

Hip. 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.

HOUNDS.

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls,
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable

Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn

† Sound.

*Gooseberries.

The flews are large chaps of a hound.

THE POWER OF IMAGINATION.

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.

NIGHT.

Now the hungry lion roars,

And the wolf behowls the moon
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task foredone.†
Now the wasted brands do glow,

Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud,
Puts the wretch, that lies in woe,

In remembrance of a shroud.

Now it is the time of night,

That the graves, all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite,

In the church-way paths to glide.

DAYBREAK.

Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to church-yards.

Are made of mere imagination.

† Overcome.

This can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne.* -They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her affections have their full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love

*Seriously carried on.