LOVE-IN-IDLENESS, Thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory, That very time I saw (but thou could'st not), And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, In maiden meditation, fancy free.* Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before, milk-white; now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. TIME. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. A FATHER'S AUTHORITY. To you your father should be as a god; One that composed your beauties; yea, and one *Exempt from love. DEW IN FLOWERS. And that same dew, which sometime on the buds I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, FAIRY COURTESIES. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; HUNTING. We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, Of hounds and echo in conjunction. Hip. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. HOUNDS. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn † Sound. *Gooseberries. The flews are large chaps of a hound. THE POWER OF IMAGINATION. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen NIGHT. Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. DAYBREAK. Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Are made of mere imagination. † Overcome. This can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne.* -They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her affections have their full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love *Seriously carried on. |