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Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy.
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Merchant of Venice, Act iv. Sc. 1.

MUSIC.

Lorenzo.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins :
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Jessica.

I am never merry, when I hear sweet music.

Lorenzo.

The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
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.

Merchant of Venice, Act v. Sc. 1,

SLEEP.

King Henry.

How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O gentle Sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber;
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile

In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch
A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge

And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamours in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

FLOWERS.

2 Henry IV. Act iii. Sc. 1.

I WOULD I had some flowers o' the spring, that might

Become your time of day; and yours,

and yours;

That wear upon your virgin branches yet

Your maidenheads growing :-O, Proserpina,

For the flowers now, that frighted thou lett'st fall

From Dis's wagon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O! these I lack,
To make you garlands of: and, my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er.

A Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

CLEOPATRA'S BARGE.

Enobarbus.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver; 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 beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold, of tissue --
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

Agrippa.

O, rare for Antony
Enobarbus.

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 frame 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.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Sc. 2.

CUPID.

Oberon.

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,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song

And certain stars shot madly from their sphere
To hear the sea-maid's music.

Puck.

I remember.

Oberon.

That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed: 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
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii. Sc. 1.

SONNETS.

XXIX.

WHEN, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope.
With what I most enjoy contented least ;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, -and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

XXX.

WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

XXXIII.

FULL many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace :
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow ;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

LX.

LIKE as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

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