Page images
PDF
EPUB

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease and midnight never come.
Fair nature's Eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day: or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
O lente lente currite noctis equi.

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
O, I will leap to heaven: who pulls me down?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament:
One drop of blood will save me: O, my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ.
Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer.
Where is it now? 'tis gone;

And see, a threatening arm, and angry brow.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No? then will I headlong run into the earth:
Gape earth. O no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence have allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven.

The watch strikes.

O half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon.
O if my soul must suffer for my sin,

Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,

A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
No end is limited to damnéd souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?

O Pythgoras' Metempsychosis! were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements:
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engender'd me:
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

The clock strikes twelve.

It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
O soul, be changed into small water drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found.

Thunder, and enter the devils.

O mercy, Heaven! look not so fierce on me. Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile: Ugly hell gape not; come not, Lucifer:

I'll burn my books: O, Mephostophilis!

[ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

Jaques.

A. COMEDIES.

From As YOU LIKE IT.

2. The World a Stage. Act II. Sc. 7.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:
Then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school: and then, the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow: then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation

E'en in the cannon's mouth: and then, the justice,.
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part: The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon;
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big, manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound: Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,

Isabella.

From MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

73. The Abuse of Authority. — Act II. Sc. 2.

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 thunder.

Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarléd oak,

Than the soft myrtle: But man, proud man,

Dressed 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.

From THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

4. Mercy. Act IV. Sc. 1.

Portia. The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronéd monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthronéd in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this
That in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

From A MIDSUMMER NIght's Dream.

75. Oberon's Vision. Act II. Sc. 2.

Obe. My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory,

Puck.

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.

I remember.
Obe. That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed; a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal, thronéd 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

Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.1

Yet marked 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.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once;
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,
Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb: and be thou here again,
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
Puck. I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

Theseus.

1 Queen Elizabeth.

76. The Power of Imagination.

Act. V. Sc. 1.

I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold

« PreviousContinue »