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And therefore little shall I grace my

cause

In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,

I will a round unvarnished tale deliver

Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,

What conjuration, and what mighty magic,

(For such proceeding I am charged withal,)

I won his daughter with.

Her father loved me, oft invited me; Still questioned me the story of my life,

From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents, by flood and field;

Of hairbreadth scapes in the imminent deadly breach;

Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery; of my redemp-* tion thence,

And portance in my travel's history:

Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle.

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak, such was the process:

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.
These things to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house affairs would
draw her thence:

Which ever as she could with haste despatch,

She'd

come again, and with a greedy ear

Devour up my discourse: which, I observing,

Took once a pliant hour, and found good means

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But not intentively: I did consent; And often did beguile her of her tears,

When I did speak of some distressful stroke

That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:

She swore,

in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:

She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished

That heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me;

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint, I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used:

Here comes the lady, let her witness it.

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Do likewise. Starting at the random word,

And dumb with trepidation, there I stood

Some seconds as bewitched; then I looked up,

And in her face beheld an orient flush

Of half-bewildered pleasure: from which trance

She with an instant ease resumed herself,

And frankly, with a pleasant laugh, held out

Her arrowy hand.

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WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up to

rest

The violet's declining head,

Sate we on one another's breast. Our hands were firmly cemented By a fast balm which thence did

spring,

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes upon one double string, So to ingraft our hands as yet

Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation. As 'twixt two equal armies Fate Suspends uncertain victory, Our souls (which to advance our

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And whilst our souls negotiate there,

We like sepulchral statues lay: All day the same our postures were, And we said nothing all the day. If any, so by love refined,

That he soul's language understood,

And by good love were grown all mind,

Within convenient distance stood, He, (though he knew not which soul spoke,

Because both meant, both spoke the same,)

Might thence a new concoction take, And part far purer than he came. This ecstasy doth unperplex,

We said, and tell us what we love; We see by this it was not sex,

We see, we saw not what did

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I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched

What stirred it so. Alas! I found it love.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER:

Philaster.

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