God knows when we shall meet
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me:
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
No, no; this shall forbid it: lie thou there.
(Laying down a dagger.
What if it be poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonor'd
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is; and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
I will not entertain so bad a thought.
How if, when I am laid in the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort:
Alack, alack! is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears,
And madly play with my forefathers' joints,
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point. Stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
(She falls upon her bed within the curtains.
Romeo and Juliet-Act IV. Scene III.
Woman, you are indeed a false alarm;
You offer trips to heaven at tourists' rates, And publish fairy tales about the dates. You're going to keep (not meaning any harm), Then get some poor old Rube fresh from the farm, As graceful as a kangaroo on skates, Trying to transfer at the Pearly Gates.
For instance, note this jolt that smashed the charm: "P. S.-You are all right, but you won't do.
You may be up a hundred in the shade,
But there are cripples livelier than you,
And my man Murphy's strictly union-made.
You are a bargain, but it seems a shame
That you should drink so much.
* From "Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum." Copyright, 1901,
Upon a barricade, across the streets,
Where blood of criminal and hero meets,
Ta'en with the men, a child of twelve or less!
"Were you one of them-you?" The boy said, "Yes." "Well," said the officer, "then you'll be shot;
Wait for your turn." The child saw on the spot
All his companions 'neath the wall fall low.
To the officer he cried, "Sir, let me go,
And take this watch to mother, who's at home."
"You wish to 'scape."-"No! I'll come back.”—“This
Are cowards.-Where do you live?"—"There, by the
And, Captain, I'll return-the truth I tell."
"Be off, young scamp." The child ran off, and then
At the plain trick laughed officer and men.-
Death's rattle mingling with their laugh was heard;
But the laugh ceased when suddenly appeared
The child, with bloodless cheek but dauntless eye,
And, leaning 'gainst the wall, said, "Here am I!"
Death fled ashamed.-The Captain said, "Be free.
Child! I know not in storms, where mingled be
All things right, wrong, knave, hero-in this fray,
What made you take a part:-But this I say,
Your soul, untaught, was yet sublimely great,
Good, brave-who in the very jaws of fate,
First to your mother walked-then to the grave!
Children have candor-men remorse may have.
No fault of yours to march where others led;
But noble, valiant thou! who chose instead
Of safety, life, spring, dawn, and boyish play,
The black blank wall where slain thy comrades lay."
The Uses of Adversity
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath that old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference; as, the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say:
"This is no flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am."
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
As You Like It-Act II. Scene I.
King Richard's Despondency
No matter where. Of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth;
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so for what ean we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humor'd thus
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?
King Richard II.—Act III. Scene II.
Trying to make the world better and doing nothing to destroy the saloon is a good deal like trying to kill a snake by pinching the end of its tail.
It is the moderate drinkers who keep the saloons going. The devil will never be chained while the saloonkeeper is loose.
On one hand it may be conceded that the saloon is the place in which vast numbers of laboring men find their only enjoyment. On the other it is no less evident that it is the presence of the saloon that makes better social life impossible. Harry S. Warner.
|