Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute,

And make the silken strings delight to kiss them;
He would not then have touch'd them for his life:
Or had he heard the heavenly harmony,
Which that sweet tongue hath made,

He would have dropp'd his knife, and fell asleep,
As Cerberus, at the Thracian poet's* feet.

ACT III.

LAVINA'S LOSS OF HER TONGUE DESCRIBED.

O, that delightful engine of her thoughts, That blab'd them with such pleasing eloquence, Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage: Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear!

DESPAIR.

For now I stand as one upon a rock.
Environ'd with a wilderness of sea;

Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by ware,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will, in his brinish bowels, swallow him.

TEARS.

When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears
Stood on her cheeks; as doth the honey dew
Upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd.

CRUELTY TO INSECTS.

Mar. Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.

1

Tit. But how, if that fly had a father and mother How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buz lamenting doings in the air!

Poor harmless fly!

That with his pretty buzzing melody,

[him.

Came here to make us merry; and thou hast kill'd

REVENGE.

Lo, by thy side where Rape, and Murder, stand Now give some 'surance that thou art Revenge, Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels; And then I'll come, and be thy wagoner, And whiri along with thee about the globes. * Orpheus.

Provide the proper palfries, black as jet,
To hale thy vengeful wagon swift away,
And find out murderers in their guilty caves:
And, when thy car is loaden with their heads,
I will dismount, and by the wagon wheel
Trot, like a servile footman, all day long;
Even from Hyperion's rising in the east,
Until his very downfall in the sea

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

ACT I.

LOVE IN A BRAVE YOUNG SOLDIER

CALL here my varlet,* I'll unarm again:
Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan, that is master, of his heart,
Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.

The Greeks are strong and skilful to their strength, Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant; But I am weaker then a woman's tear,

Tamer than sheep, fondert than ignorance;
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skill-less as unpractis'd infancy.

O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,—

When I do tell thee, There my hopes lie drown'd, Reply not in how many fathoms deep

They lie endrench'd. I tell thee, I am mad

In Cressida's love: Thou answer'st, she is fair;
Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of pioughmen! This thou tell'st me,

* A servant to a knight.

+ Weaker.

As true thou tell'st me, when I say-I love her;'
But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,

Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.

SUCCESS NOT EQUAL TO OUR HOPES.

The ample proposition, that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below,

Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd:
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant* from his course of growth.

ADVERSITY THE TRIAL OF MAN.

Why then, you princes,

Do you with cheeks abashed behold our works;
And think them shames, which are, indeed, nought
else,

But the protractive trials of great Jove,
To find persistive constancy in men?
The fineness of which metal is not found
In fortune's love; for, the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin'd† and kin:
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass, or matter, by itself
Lies, rich in virtue, and unmingled.

ON DEGREE.

Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In meret oppugnancy: The bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar justice resides)

*Twisted and rambling. † Joined by affinity. + Absolute.

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf.

So doubtedly secondly with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself.

ACHILLES DESCRIBED BY ULYSSES.

The great Achilles,-(whom opinion crowns)
The sinew and the forehand of our host,-
Having his ear full of his airy fame,

Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs: With him, Patroclus,
Upon a lazy bed the live-long day

Breaks scurril jests;

And with ridiculous and awkward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,)

He pageants* us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy toplesst deputation he puts on;

And, like a strutting player,-whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,t-
Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested§ seeming

He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,

'Tis like a chime a mending; with terms unsquair'd,||
Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,"
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff,
The large Achilles, on his prest bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
Cries-Excellent!-'tis Agamemnon just.-

Now play me Nestor;--hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being drest to some oration.

That's done;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels: as like as Vulcan and his wife:
Yet good Achilles still cries, Excellent!

'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.

* In modern language, takes us off.

+ Supreme.

§ Beyond the truth.

The galleries of the theatre.

|| Unadapted

And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
Must be the scene of mirth; to cough, and spit,
And with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet:-and at this sport,
Sir Valour dies: cries, O!-enough, Patroclus,
Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all
In pleasure of my spleen. And in this fashion,
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,
Success, or loss, what is, or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

CONDUCT IN WAR SUPERIOR TO ACTION.

The still and mental parts,

'That do contrive how many hands shall strike,
When fitness calls them on; and know, by measure,
Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight,-
Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:

They call this-bed-work, mappery, closet-war
So that the ram, that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine;
Or those, that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.

RESPECT.

I ask, that I might waken reverence, And bid the cheek be ready with a blush Modest as morning when she coldly eyes The youthful Phœbus.

ACT II.

DOUBT,

The wound of peace is surdity,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst.

PLEASURE AND REVENGE.

For pleasure, and revenge,

Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
Of any true decision.