391

High-stomach'd are they both, and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.

392

Thy sister's naught: she hath tied

17-i. 1.

Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here-*

Ingratitude, more strong than traitor's arms,
Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart.

394

O, it comes o'er my memory,

As doth the raven o'er the infected house,

Boding to all.t

395

This man's brow, like to a title-leaf,

Foretells the nature of a tragic volume:

29-iii. 2.

37-iv. 1.

So looks the strond, whereon the imperious flood
Hath left a witness'd usurpation.||

Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, T
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him, half his Troy was burn'd.

396

19-i. 1.

What haste looks through his eyes! So should he

look,

That seems to speak things strange.

397

I see a strange confession in thine eye:

Alluding to the fable of Prometheus.

15-i. 2.

The raven was thought to be a constant attendant on a house infected with the plague.

In the time of our poet the title-page to an elegy, as well as every intermediate leaf, was totally black.

§ Beach.

Far gone in woe.

| An attestation of its ravage.

Thou shak'st thy head, and hold'st it fear, or sin,

To speak a truth.

398

The setting of thine eye, and cheek, proclaim
A matter from thee; and a birth, indeed,

Which throes thee much to yield.

399

Alas, how is't with you?

19-i. 1.

1-ii. 1.

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,*
Starts up, and stands on end.

400

A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.

401

This is mere madness:

36-iii. 4.

15-ii. 1.

And thus a while the fit will work on him;

Anon, as patient as the female dove,

When that her golden couplets are disclosed,†
His silence will sit drooping.

36-v. 1.

Divided from herself, and her fair judgment;

Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts.

404

She is importunate; indeed, distract;

Her mood will needs be pitied.

36-iv. 5.

*The hair of animals is excrementitious, that is, without life or sensation.

† Hatched.

She speaks much of her father; says, she hears, There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her

heart;

Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense; her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move

The hearers to collection; they aim* at it,

And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts: Which, as her winks, and nods, and gesture's yield

them,

Indeed would make one think, there might be thought. Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

405

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can

36-iv. 5.

Her heart inform her tongue: the swan's down

feather,

That stands upon the swell at full of tide,

And neither way inclines.

30-iii. 2.

406

He was met even now

As mad as the vex'd sea: singing aloud!
Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds,
With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds, that grow
In our sustaining corn.

407

34-iv. 4.

Some strange commotion Is in his brain: he bites his lip, and starts; Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground, Then lays his finger on his temple; straight, Springs out into fast gait; then, stops again, Strikes his breast hard; and anon, he casts

His eye against the moon; in most strange postures We have seen him set himself.

408

25-iii. 2.

The exterior, not the inward man

Resembles that it was.

* Guess.

36-ii. 2.

306 PAINTINGS OF NATURE AND THE PASSIONS.

409

Mad let us grant him then; and now remains,
That we find out the cause of this effect:

Or, rather say, the cause of this defect;

For this effect, defective, comes by cause. 36-ii. 2.

410

Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;
A madman so long, now a fool: What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moss'd trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip, when thou point'st out? Will the cold brook,

Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,

To cure thy o'ernight's surfeit? call the creatures,— Whose naked natures live in all the spite

Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks, To the conflicting elements exposed,

Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee.

27-iv. 3.

APHORISMS.