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Isab. Ay, with such gifts, that Heaven shall share Lucio. You had marr'd all else.

[with you,

Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,
Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor,
As fancy values them: but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sun-rise; prayers from preserved* souls,
From fasting-maids, whose minds are delicate
To nothing temporal.

* Preserved from the corruption of the world.

THE TERRORS OF DEATH MOST IN APPREHENSION.

O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Darest thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

REFLECTIONS ON THE VANITY OF LIFE.

Reason thus with life,

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing,

That none but fools would keep a breath thou art
(Servile to all the skiey influences)

That does this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict merely, thou art death's fool:
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn'st toward him still thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nursed by baseness: thou art by no means valiant; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st

Thy death, which is no more: thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains

That issue out of dust: happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get;

And what thou hast, forgett'st thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,*
After the moon: if thou art rich, thou art poor;

For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey

* Affects, affections.

And death unloads thee: friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowls, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo,* and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner thou hast not youth nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld;† and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this

That bears the name of life?

Yet in this life

Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

VIRTUE AND GOODNESS.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

GREATNESS SUBJECT TO CENSURE.

O place and greatness, millions of false eyes
Are struck upon thee! volumes of report
Run with these false and most contrarious quests
Upon thy doings! thousand 'scapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,

And rack thee in their fancies.

RESOLUTION FROM A SENSE OF HONOUR.

Why give me this shame ?

Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,

I will encounter darkness as a bride,

And hug it in mine arms.

Leprous eruptions.

† Old age.

+ Sallies.

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Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot:

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts

Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

MIRTH AND MELANCHOLY.

Now, by two-headed Janus,

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time Some that will evermore peep through their eyes, And laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper;

And other of such vinegar aspect,

That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

WORLDLINESS.

You have too much respect upon the world:
They lose it that do buy it with much care.

CHEERFULNESS.

Let me play the fool:

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ?

Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish?

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