MARGARET.

No riddle, but a plain request.

Name it.

SIR WALTER.

MARGARET.

Free liberty of Sherwood,

And leave to take her lot with you in the forest.

SIR WALTER.

A scant petition, Margaret, but take it,

Seal'd with an old man's tears.-
Rise, daughter of Sir Rowland,

(Addresses them both.)

O you most worthy,

You constant followers of a man proscribed, Following poor misery in the throat of danger; Fast servitors to craz'd and penniless poverty, Serving poor poverty without hope of gain; Kind children of a sire unfortunate;

Green clinging tendrils round a trunk decay'd,
Which needs must bring on you timeless decay;
Fair living forms to a dead carcase join'd ;--
What shall I say?

Better the dead were gather'd to the dead,
Than death and life in disproportion meet.-
Go, seek your fortunes, children.-

SIMON.

Why, whither should we go?

SIR WALTER.

You to the Court, where now your brother John

Commits a rape on Fortune.

Luck to John!

SIMON.

A light heel'd strumpet, when the sport is done.

SIR WALTER.

You to the sweet society of your equals,

Where the world's fashion smiles on youth and

beauty.

MARGARET.

Where young men's flatteries cozen young maids'

beauty,

'There pride oft' gets the vantage hand of duty, There sweet humility withers.

Since I saw home. What new friends has John

made?

Or keeps he his first love?--I did suspect
Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know,

John has prov'd false to her, for Margaret weeps.

It is a scurvy brother.

Fie upon it.

SIR WALTER.

All men are false, I think. The date of love
Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale,
O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale
Of Hero and Leander.

SIMON.

I have known some men that are too generalcontemplative for the narrow passion. I am in some sort a general lover.

MARGARET.

In the name of the boy God, who plays at hood-man-blind with the Muses, and cares not whom he catches: what is it you love?

SIMON.

Simply, all things that live,

From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, That makes short holyday in the sun beam,

And dies by some child's hand. The feeble

bird

With little wings, yet greatly venturous

In the upper sky. The fish in th' other element, That knows no touch of eloquence. What else?

Yon tall and elegant stag,

Who paints a dancing shadow of his horns
In the water, where he drinks.

MARGARET.

I myself love all these things, yet so as with a difference :-for example, some animals better than others, some men rather than other men ; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and asinine mule. Your humour goes to confound all qualities.

What sports do you use in the forest?

SIMON.

as thus :

Not many; some few,

To see the sun to bed,

and to arise,

Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,

Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound

him,

With all his fires and travelling glories round

him.

Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast,
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep.
Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness,
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,
Go eddying round; and small birds, how they
fare,

When mother Autumn fills their beaks with

corn,

Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn;
And how the woods berries and worms provide
Without their pains, when earth has nought
beside

To answer their small wants.

To view the graceful deer come tripping by, Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why,

Like bashful younkers in society.

To mark the structure of a plant or tree,
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be.
MARGARET. (smiling)

And, afterwards them paint in simile.

SIR WALTER.

Mistress Margaret will have need of some