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.*
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 mak'st 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.
'Tis just the fashion: Wherefore do you look
Upon that
poor and broken bankrupt there?
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.
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd,t so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, 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.
Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them,
And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.
I with the Morning's Love) have oft made sport;
And, like a forester, the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams:
As free as mountain winds.
These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring,||
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
The flews are the large chaps of a hound.
So marked with small spots.
Cephalus, the paramour of Aurora.
Midsummer shoots, second spring.
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land,
Have every pelting* river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents:†
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn
Hath rotted, ere his youth attain'd a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
The crows are fatted with the murrain flock;
The nine men's morrist is fill'd up with mud;
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable;
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:-
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound :§
And thorough this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hyem's chin, and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds,
Is, as in mockery, set: The spring, the summer,
The chilling autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries: and the 'mazed world,
By their increase,** now knows not which is which.
see, queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
† Banks which contain them.
That the moon does create tides in the atmosphere, as well as in the sea, is the opinion of several eminent modern philosophers. Perturbation of the elements.
Autumn producing flowers unseasonably.
Drawn with a team of little atomies*
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams:
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash of film:
Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love:
On courtiers' knees, that dream of court'sies straight:
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream;
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit :†
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep-
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear; at which he starts, and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab,
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-lockst in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
My gentle Puck, come hither: Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
* Atoms. i. e. Fairy-locks, locks of hair clotted and tangled in the night.
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.-
That very time I saw (but thou could'st not),
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned 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
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial vot'ress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.*
Yet mark'd 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.
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. 7-iii. 1.
The purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshut his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musits through the which he goes,
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
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