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To an impatient child that hath new robes,
And may not wear them.

109

35-iii. 2.

He hath persecuted time with hope; and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time. 11-i. 1.

110

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons: I'll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. He trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her marriage, and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a se'nnight, time's pace is so hard, that it seems the length of seven years. He ambles with a priest, that lacks Latin, and a rich man, that hath not the gout: for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain: the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning; the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury: These time ambles withal. He gallops with a thief to the gallows for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.—He stays still with lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time

moves.

111

The swallowing gulf

Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion.

10-iii. 2.

24-iii. 7.

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Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,

The ear more quick of apprehension makes;
Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
It pays the hearing double recompense.

7-iii. 2.

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Dew the sovereign flower, and drown the weeds.

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And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants.

123

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.

124

4-v. 1.

1-i. 2.

7-v. 1.

Like to the time o' the year between the extremes
Of hot and cold, he was nor sad, nor merry.

125

Music! hark!

30-1.5.

Nothing is good, I see, without respect;

Methinks, it sounds much sweeter than by day. . .
Silence bestows that virtue on it.

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and, I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.

How many things by seasons season'd are
To their right praise and true perfection!

126

Do but note a wild and wanton herd,

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

9-v. 1.

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or air of music touch their ears,

any

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,

By the sweet power of music: Therefore, the poet Did feign, that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;

Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature:
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

127

This music crept by me upon the waters;
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air.

128

O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!

129

Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes

9-v. 1.

1-i. 2.

20-i. Chorus.

From whence 'tis nourish'd: The fire i' the flint
Shews not, till it be struck; our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies
Each bound it chafes,

iSuch is the general character of music.

27-i. 1.

j Perhaps the sense is, that having touched on one subject, it flies off in quest of another. Old copy reads chases.

130

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

[silver;
The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie

In her pavilion (cloth of gold of tissue),
O'erpicturing that Venus, where we see,

The fancy out-work nature; on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did....

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame1 the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,

And made a gap in nature.

131

30-ii. 2.

Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,

The gutter'd rocks, and congregated sands,-
Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel,

As having sense of beauty, do omit

Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona.

132

O, it is monstrous! monstrous!

37-ii. 1.

Methought, the billows spoke, and told me of it;

* Added to the warmth they were intended to diminish.
1 Readily perform.

The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass."
1-iii. 3.

133

Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,—
Being native burghers of this desert city,-
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored. . . .
Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that.-
To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself,
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook, that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears....

But what said Jaques?
Did he not moralize this spectacle? ...
O, yes, into a thousand similes.

First, for his weeping in the needless" stream;
Poor deer, quoth he, thou makʼst a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much: Then, being alone,
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;
Tis right, quoth he; thus misery doth part
The flux of company: Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him; Ay, quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;

The deep pipe told it me in a rough bass sound.
The stream that wanted not a supply of moisture,

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