Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,

Slander her love, and he forgave it her.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica: Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.—

Enter Musicians.

Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn;
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.

Jes. I am never merry, when I hear sweet music.

[Music.

Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze,
By the sweet power of music: Therefore, the poet

Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature:
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

Eno. When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.

Agr. There she appeared indeed; or my reporter de

vised well for her.

Eno. I will tell you:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver;
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie

In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue),
O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see

The fancy out-work Nature: on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

Agr. O, rare for Antony!

Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible pérfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in Nature.

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,

May, in the sworn twelve, have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try: What's open made to justice,

That justice seizes. What know the laws,

That thieves do pass on thieves? "Tis very pregnant,

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it,

Because we see it; but what we do not see,

We tread upon, and never think of it. . . .

...

Mercy.

Well believe this,

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace,
As mercy does....

A Sister pleading for a Brother's Life.

Isab. So you must be the first, that gives this sentence; And he, that suffers: O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant. . . .

Could great men thunder,

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer,

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.—

Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarlèd oak,

Than the soft myrtle.-O, but man, proud man!

Dressed in a little brief authority;

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence,—like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,

As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Fear of Death.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

CYMBELINE.

POSTHUMUS, Husband to IMOGEN, Daughter of CYMBELINE, King of Britain, is banished to Italy.

IMOGEN and PISANIO.

Imogen. I would have broke mine eye-strings, cracked

them, but

To look upon him; till the diminution

Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle:

Nay, followed him, till he had melted from

The smallness of a gnat to air; and then

Have turned mine eye, and wept.-But, good Pisanio,
When shall we hear from him?

Pisanio. Be assured, madam,

With his next vantage.

Imo. I did not take my leave of him, but had Most pretty things to say; ere I could tell him, How I would think on him, at certain hours,