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VANITY OF HUMAN NATURE.

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

FAIRIES AND MAGIC.

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demy-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight-mushrooms; that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
(Weak masters though you be) I have bedimm'd
The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves, at my command,
Have waked their sleepers; oped and let them forth
By my so potent art.

TWELFTH NIGHT.

MUSIC.

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.-
That strain again; it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing, and giving odour.

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ESCAPE FROM DANGER.

I saw your brother,

Most provident in peril, bind himself

(Courage and hope both teaching him the practice)
To a strong mast, that lived upon the sea;
Where, like Arion on the dolphin's back,
I saw him hold acquaintance with the wave,
So long as I could see.

A BEAUTIFUL BOY.

Dear lad, believe it;

For they shall yet belie thy happy years
That say, thou art a man: Diana's lip

Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe
Is, as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound,
And all is semblative a woman's part.

TRUE LOVE.

Come hither, boy: if ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it remember me.
For such as I am, all true lovers are;
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved.

CONCEALED LOVE.

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought;

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

JESTER.

This fellow's wise enough to play the fool;
And, to do that well, craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,

The quality of persons, and the time;
And, like the haggard,* check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice,
As full of labour as a wise man's art:

For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit;
But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit.

* A hawk not well trained

F

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

LOVE COMMENDED AND CENSURED.

Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

And writers say, as the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly; blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.

A LOVER IN SOLITUDE.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And, to the nightingale's complaining notes,
Tune my distresses, and record* my woes.
O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,
Leave not the mansion so long tenantless;
Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall,
And leave no memory of what it was!
Repair me with thy presence, Silvia;

Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain !

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A FAITHFUL AND CONSTANT LOVER.

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart:
His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

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PRESENTS PREVAIL WITH WOMAN.

Win her with gifts, if she respect not words;
Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind,

More than quick words, do move a woman's mind.

THE POWER OF POETRY WITH FEMALES.

Say, that upon the altar of her beauty

You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart:
Write till your ink be dry; and with your tears
Moist it again, and frame some feeling line,
That may discover such integrity :-
For Orpheus' lute was strung with poet's sinews;
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

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