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.

come from her; they say, too, that she will rather die than give any sign of affection.-I did never think to marry :I must not seem proud :-happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness: and virtuous;-'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me;-by my troth, it is no addition to her wit;-nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage :-but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth, that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences, and these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his humour? No : the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice: by this day, she's a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her.

FAVOURITES COMPARED TO HONEYSUCKLES.

Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter;-like favourites,
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it.

A VILLAIN TO BE NOTED.

Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes;

That when I note another man like him,

Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

COUNSEL OF NO WEIGHT IN MISERY.

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve: give not me counsel:
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear,

But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.
Bring me a father that so loved his child,
Whose joy of her is overwhelmed like mine,

And bid him speak of patience;

Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,
And let it answer every strain for strain;
As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,
In every lineament, branch, shape, and form :

If such a one will smile, and stroke his beard;
Cry-sorrow, wag! and hem, when he should groan;
Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk
With candle wasters; bring him yet to me,

And I of him will gather patience.

But there is no such man: for, brother, men
Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words :
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow :
But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,

To be so moral, when he shall endure
The like himself: therefore give me no counsel,
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.