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Hum. Do not regard their toys;

Be but my darling, age to free thee
From her curse, shall fall a-dying;
Call me thy empress; Time to see thee
Shall forget his art of flying.

Ray. Oh, my all excellence!

Spring. Speak thou for me; I am fainting.

[TO HEALTH. Health. Leave her; take this, and travel through

the world,

I'll bring thee into all the courts of kings,
Where thou shalt stay, and learn their languages;
Kiss ladies, revel out the nights in dancing,
The day [in] manly pastimes; snatch from Time
His glass, and let the golden sands run forth
As thou shalt jog them; riot it, go brave,

Spend half a world, my queen shall bear thee out:
Yet all this while, though thou climb hills of years,
Shall not one wrinkle sit upon thy brow,

Nor

any sickness shake thee; Youth and Health, As slaves, shall lackey by thy chariot wheels: And who, for two such jewels, would not sell Th' East and West Indies? both are thine, so that

Ray. What?

Fol. All lies! gallop over the world, and not grow old, nor be sick? a lie. One gallant went but into France last day, and was never his own

• Leave her, take this, and travel through the world.] It is plain, from Folly's next speech, that this is the true reading the old copy has,--take this, and travel, tell the world.

:

man since; another stept but into the Low
Countries, and was drunk dead under the table;
another did but peep into England, and it cost
him more in good-morrows blown up to him
under his window, by drums and trumpets, than
his whole voyage; besides, he ran mad upon't."
Hum. Here's my last farewell: ride along with me;
I'll raise by art out of base earth a palace,
a crystal stream,8

Whither thyself, waving
Shall call together the most glorious spirits
Of all the kings that have been in the world;
And they shall come, only to feast with thee.
Ray. Rare!

Hum. At one end of this palace shall be heard
That music which gives motion to the heaven;
And in the midst Orpheus shall sit and weep,
For sorrow that his lute had not the charms
To bring his fair Eurydice from hell:
Then, at another end,--

7 I scarcely know how to understand this. France and the Low Countries are characterised by their well known attributes; but the greeting of strangers (if that be the poet's meaning) was never before, I believe, made the distinctive mark of England. It is sufficiently clear, however, that the streets of London were grievously infested with noises (little knots) of fiddlers, who pressed into all companies, and pestered every new-comer with their salutations. Thus, Withers :

Oh! how I scorn

Those raptures, which are free and nobly born,
Should, fiddler-like, for entertainment, scrape
At strangers' windows!-Malto.

8 Here again something is apparently lost;-perhaps a description of the palace-garden. All that can be done is to mark the omission.

Ray. I'll hear no more:

This ends your strife; you only I adore.

To HUMOUR,

Spring. Oh, I am sick at heart! unthankful man, 'Tis thou hast wounded me; farewell!

Ray. Farewell.

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[She is led in by DELIGHT.

Fol. Health, recover her; sirrah Youth, look to her.

Health. That bird that in her nest sleeps out

the spring,

May fly in summer; but with sickly wing.

[Exeunt HEALTH and YOUTH.

Ray. I owe thee for this pill, doctor.

Hum. The Spring will die sure.

Ray. Let her!

Hum. If she does,

Folly here is a kind of a foolish poet,

And he shall write her epitaph.

Ray. Against the morning

See it then writ, and I'll reward thee for it.

Fol. It shall not need.

Ray. 'Tis like it shall not need;

This is your Folly?

Hum. He shall be ever yours.

Fol. I hope ever to be mine own folly; he's one of our fellows.

Hum. In triumph now I lead thee;-no, be thou Cæsar,

And lead me.

Ray. Neither; we'll ride with equal state Both in one chariot, since we have equal fate.

Hum. Each do his office to this man, your

lord;

For though Delight, and Youth, and Health should

leave him,

This ivory-gated palace shall receive him,

[Exeunt.

ACT III. SCENE I.

The Confines of Spring and Summer.

Enter RAYBRIGHT melancholy.

Ray. Oh, my dear love the Spring, I am cheated of thee!

Thou hadst a body, the four elements
Dwelt never in a fairer; a mind, princely:
Thy language, like thy singers, musical.
How cool wert thou in anger! in thy diet,
How temperate, and yet sumptuous! thou wouldst

not waste

The weight of a sad violet in excess;

Yet still thy board had dishes numberless :
Dumb beasts even loved thee; once a young lark
Sat on thy hand, and gazing on thine eyes,
Mounted and sung, thinking them moving skies.

Enter FOLLY.

Fol. I have done, my lord; my muse has pump'd

hard for an epitaph upon the late departed Spring,

and here her lines spring up.

Ray. Read.

Fol. Read! so I will, please you to reach me your high ears.

Here lies the blithe Spring,

Who first taught birds to sing;
Yet in April herself fell a crying:
Then May growing hot,

A sweating sickness she got,
And the first of June lay a dying.

Yet no month can say,

But her merry daughter May

Stuck her coffin with flowers great plenty:
The cuckow sung in verse

An epitaph o'er her hearse,

But assure you the lines were not dainty.

Ray. No more are thine, thou idiot! hast thou

none

To poison with thy nasty jigs but mine,

My matchless frame of nature, creation's wonder? Out of my sight!

Fol. I am not in it; if I were, you'd see but scurvily. You find fault as patrons do with books, to give nothing.

Ray. Yes, bald one, beastly base one; blockish— away!

Vex me not, fool; turn out o' doors your roarer, French tailor, and that Spanish ginger-bread, And your Italian skipper; then, sir, yourself.

Fol. Myself! Carbonado me, bastinado me,

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