The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.

Lore's Labour 's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2. But earthlier happy is the rose distillid Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.

A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 1. For aught that I could ever read, 2 Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. Ibid. O, hell! to choose love by another's eyes.

Ibid. Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, “ Behold ! " The jaws of darkness do devour it up: . So quick bright things come to confusion.

Ibid. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Ibid. Masters, spread yourselves.

Sc. 2. This is Ercles' vein.

Ibid. I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.

Ibid. I am slow of study.

Ibid. That would hang us, every mother's son.

Ibid. I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you, an 't were any nightingale.

Ibid. A proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day. Ibid. The human mortals.

Act ii. Sc. 1.8 The rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music.

Ibid.

1 Maidens withering on the stalk. – WORDSWORTH: Personal Talk, stanza 1.

2 "Ever I could read," — Dyce, Knight, Singer, and White. 8 Act ii. sc. 2 in Singer and Knight.

And the imperial votaress passed on,
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.

A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act ii. Sc. 1.1
I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

Ibid. My heart Is true as steel. 8

Ibid.4 I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

Ibid. A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.

Act iii. Sc. 1. Bless thee, Bottom ! bless thee! thou art translated.

Ibid. Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Sc. 2. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition.

Ibid. Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.

Ibid. I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. Act iv. Sc. 1. - I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

Ibid.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
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;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.
For never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.

Ibid. The true beginning of our end."

Ibid. The best in this kind are but shadows.

Ibid. A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience. Ibid.

This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

Ibid. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Ibid. My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, Nor to one place.

The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.

Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. Ibid. Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Ibid. You have too much respect upon the world : They lose it that do buy it with much care.

Ibid.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, –
A stage, where every man must play a part;
And mine a sad one. The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ?

Ibid.
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond.

I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark !

Ibid.
I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing.

Ibid. Fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.

Ibid. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff : you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight The selfsame way, with more advised watch, To find the other forth; and by adventuring both, I oft found both.

Ibid. They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.

Sc. 2. Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.

Ibid. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.

Ibid.

The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.

The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 2. He doth nothing but talk of his horse.

Ibid. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.

Ibid. When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

Ibid.

I dote on his very absence.

Ibid. My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.

Sc. 3. Ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be landrats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves.

Ibid. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto ?

Ibid. I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, Even there where merchants most do congregate. Ibid. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Ibid. A goodly apple rotten at the heart : 0, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Ibid. Many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me.

Ibid. For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.

Ibid. You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine.

Ibid. Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key, With bated breath and whispering humbleness. Ibid.

For when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend ?