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121

What's the matter,

That this distemper'd messenger of wet,
The many-colour'd Iris, rounds thine eye?"

122

11-i. 3.

If two gods should play some heavenly match,
And on the wager lay two earthly women,
And Portia one, there must be something else
Pawn'd with the other; for the poor rude world
Hath not her fellow.

123

O, how ripe in show

9-iii. 5.

Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

124

7-iii. 2.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That shew, contain, and nourish, all the world.

125

Where is any author in the world,

8--iv. 3.

Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?

8-iv. 3.

126

Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!

For thou hast given me in this beauteous face,
A world of earthly blessings to my soul,
If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.

22-i. 1.

127

O, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear?
But with the inundation of the eyes

What rocky heart to water will not wear?
What breast so cold that is not warmed here?
O cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath,
Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath!

Poems.

There is something exquisitely beautiful in this representation of that suffusion of colours which glimmers around the sight when the eye-lashes are wet with tears.

128

When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew.

What, still in tears?

Evermore showering? In one little body
Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind:
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
Who,-raging with thy tears, and they with them,-
Without a sudden calm, will overset

Thy tempest-tossed body.

129

See,

Posthumus anchors upon Imogen;

35-iii. 5.

And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye
On him, her brothers, me, her master; hitting
Each object with a joy.

130

31-v. 5.

Tears,—'tis the best brine a maiden can season her

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His eye being big with tears,

Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,*
And with affection wondrous sensible

He wrung Bassanio's hand, and so they parted.

133

Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble suit attends thy answer there.

9-ii. 9.

8-v. 2.

* So curious an observer of nature was our author, and so minutely had he traced the operation of the passions, that many passages of his works might furnish hints to painters. In the above passage, we have the outline of a beautiful picture.

134

Now and then an ample tear trill'd down
Her delicate cheek: it seem'd, she was a queen
Over her passion; who, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o'er her.

Patience and sorrow strove

Who should express her goodliest. You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
Were like a better day: Those happy smiles,
That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.-In brief, sorrow
Would be a rarity most beloved, if all

Could so become it.

135

The April's in her eyes: It is love's spring,
And these the showers to bring it on.

136

My plenteous joys,

Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves

In drops of sorrow.

137

34-iv. 3.

30-iii. 2.

15-i. 4.

By noting of the lady, I have mark'd
A thousand blushing apparitions start
Into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness, bear away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appear'd a fire,
To burn the errors, that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth.

138

6-iv. 1.

There might you have beheld one joy crown another; so, and in such manner, that, it seem'd, sorrow wept to take leave of them; for their joy waded in 13-v. 2.

tears.

"A better day." This is adopted by the commentators, and is without sense. Like an April day, is suggested as the right reading, and proved to be so, by the next piece,

139

Say, that upon the altar of her beauty

You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart;
Write till your ink be dry; and with your tears
Moist it again; and frame some feeling line,
That may discover such integrity:

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews;
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

140

Drawn in the flattering table of her eye!
Hang'd in the frowning wrinkle of her brow!
And quarter'd in her heart.

141

2-iii. 2.

16-ii. 2.

If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,
Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?
If zealous love should go in search of virtue,
Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?
If love ambitious sought a match of birth,
Whose veins bound richer blood than lady Blanch?
Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,
Is the young Dauphin every way complete:
If not complete, O say, he is not she:

And she again wants nothing, to name want,
If want it be not, that she is not he:
He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such a she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
O, two such silver currents, when they join,
Do glorify the banks that bound them in.

142

The Roman dame,

16-ii. 2.

Within whose face beauty and virtue strived
Which of them both should underprop her fame.
When virtue bragg'd, beauty would blush for shame;

: Pious.

When beauty boasted blushes, in despite
Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white.

But beauty, in that white intituled,

From Venus' doves doth challenge that fair field;
Then virtue claims from beauty beauty's red,
Which virtue gave the golden age to gild

Their silver cheeks, and call'd it then their shield;
Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,-
When shame assail'd, the red should fence the white.

143

Time, whose million'd accidents

Poems.

Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, Divert strong minds to the course of altering things.

144

Poems.

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow.

145

Dreams;

Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

146

Poems.

35-i. 4.

The dream's here still: even when I wake, it is
Without me, as within me; not imagined, felt.

31-iv. 2.

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