I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest;
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor),
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged years play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

ACT III.

HUMOROUS DESCRIPTION OF LOVE.

O! And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been

love's whip;

A very beadle to a humorous sigh:
A critic; nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o'er the boy,
Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This wimpled*, wining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of placketst, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator and great general
Of trotting paritors. O my little heart!-
And I to be a corporal of his field,
And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop!
What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a repairing: ever out of frame;

And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right?

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye
('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument),
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
Vows, for thee broke, deserve not punishment.
A woman I forswore; but, I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me.
Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:
Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,
Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is:
If broken then, it is no fault of mine;
If by me broke, what fool is not so wise,
To lose an oath to win a paradise?

SONG.

On a day, (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom, passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn,
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn :
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.

Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee:

Thou for whom even Jove would swear,

Juno but an Ethiop were;
And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.

THE POWER OF LOVE.

But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power; And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye; A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd; Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible, Than are the tender horns of cockled snails: Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste: For valour, is not love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as sphinx, as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility.

WOMEN'S EYES.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire, They are the books, the arts, the academies;

That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent.

ACT V.

JEST AND JESTER.

Your task shall be

With all the fierce* endeavour of your wit

To enforce the pained impotent to smile. [death?
Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of
It cannot be; it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.

SONG.

Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo, O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks,

* Vehement.

D

:

The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo, O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

Winter. When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel* the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs † hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

ACT I.

VIRTUE GIVEN TO BE EXERTED.

HEAVEN doth with us, as we with torches do; Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike