A Choice of Shakespeare's Verse Read online

  — I do, I will.

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  When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d

  The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;

  When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,

  And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

  When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

  Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

  And the firm soil win of the watery main,

  Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

  When I have seen such interchange of state,

  Or state itself confounded to decay;

  Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate –

  That Time will come and take my love away.

  This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

  But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

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  ‘Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,

  Guilty of perjury and subornation,

  Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,

  Guilty of incest, that abomination;

  An accessary by thine inclination

  To all sins past, and all that are to come,

  From the creation to the general doom.

  ‘Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night,

  Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,

  Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,

  Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare;

  Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are;

  O! hear me, then, injurious, shifting Time,

  Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

  ‘Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,

  Betray’d the hours thou gav’st me to repose?

  Cancell’d my fortunes, and enchained me

  To endless date of never-ending woes?

  Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes;

  To eat up errors by opinion bred,

  Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

  ‘Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

  To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

  To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

  To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

  To wrong the wronger till he render right,

  To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

  And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;

  ‘To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,

  To feed oblivion with decay of things,

  To blot old books and alter their contents,

  To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,

  To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs,

  To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel,

  And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;

  ‘To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,

  To make the child a man, the man a child,

  To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

  To tame the unicorn and lion wild,

  To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil’d,

  To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

  And waste huge stones with little water-drops.

  ‘Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,

  Unless thou couldst return to make amends?

  One poor retiring minute in an age

  Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,

  Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends:

  O! this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back,

  I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack.

  ‘Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,

  With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight:

  Devise extremes beyond extremity,

  To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:

  Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,

  And the dire thought of his committed evil

  Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

  ‘Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,

  Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;

  Let there bechance him pitiful mischances

  To make him moan, but pity not his moans;

  Stone him with harden’d hearts, harder than stones;

  And let mild women to him lose their mildness.

  Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

  ‘Let him have time to tear his curled hair,

  Let him have time against himself to rave,

  Let him have time of Time’s help to despair,

  Let him have time to live a loathed slave,

  Let him have time a beggar’s orts to crave,

  And time to see one that by alms doth live

  Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

  ‘Let him have time to see his friends his foes,

  And merry fools to mock at him resort;

  Let him have time to mark how slow time goes

  In time of sorrow, and how swift and short

  His time of folly and his time of sport;

  And ever let his unrecalling crime

  Have time to wail the abusing of his time.

  ‘O Time! thou tutor both to good and bad,

  Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill;

  At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

  Himself himself seek every hour to kill:

  Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill;

  For who so base would such an office have

  As slanderous deathsman to so base a slave?

  ‘The baser is he, coming from a king,

  To shame his hope with deeds degenerate:

  The mightier man, the mightier is the thing

  That makes him honour’d, or begets him hate;

  For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

  The moon being clouded presently is miss’d,

  But little stars may hide them when they list.

  ‘The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,

  And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away;

  But if the like the snow-white swan desire,

  The stain upon his silver down will stay.

  Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day.

  Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly,

  But eagles gaz’d upon with every eye.

  ‘Out, idle words! servants to shallow fools,

  Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!

  Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;

  Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;

  To trembling clients be you mediators:

  For me, I force not argument a straw,

  Since that my case is past the help of law.

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  Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

  So do our minutes hasten to their end;

  Each changing place with that which goes before,

  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

  Nativity, once in the main of light,

  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,

  Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,

  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

  And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,

  Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,

  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

  Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

  15

  I am amaz’d, methinks, and lose my way

  Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

  How easy dost thou take all England up!

  From forth this morsel of dead royalty,

  The life, the right and truth of all this realm

  Is fled to heaven; and England now is left

  To tug and scamble and to part by the teeth

  The unow’d interest of proud swelling state. r />
  Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty

  Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,

  And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:

  Now powers from home and discontents at home

  Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits, –

  As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast, –

  The imminent decay of wrested pomp.

  Now happy he whose cloak and ceinture can

  Hold out this tempest.

  16

  Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

  Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;

  But you shall shine more bright in these contents

  Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.

  When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

  And broils root out of the work of masonry,

  Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

  The living record of your memory.

  ’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

  Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

  Even in the eyes of all posterity

  That wear this world out to the ending doom.

  So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

  You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

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  But I remember, when the fight was done,

  When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,

  Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,

  Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress’d,

  Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap’d,

  Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home:

  He was perfumed like a milliner,

  And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held

  A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

  He gave his nose and took’t away again;

  Who therewith angry, when it next came there,

  Took it in snuff: and still he smil’d and talk’d;

  And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

  He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,

  To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse

  Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

  With many holiday and lady terms

  He question’d me; among the rest, demanded

  My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf.

  I then all smarting with my wounds being cold,

  To be so pester’d with a popinjay,

  Out of my grief and my impatience

  Answer’d neglectingly, I know not what,

  He should, or he should not; for he made me mad

  To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet

  And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman

  Of guns, and drums, and wounds, – God save the mark! –

  And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth

  Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;

  And that it was great pity, so it was,

  This villanous saltpetre should be digg’d

  Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

  Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d

  So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,

  He would himself have been a soldier.

  18

  Petruchio is coming, in a new hat and an old jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta’en out of the town-armoury, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: his horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back, and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep’s leather, which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst and now repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced, and a woman’s crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with pack-thread.

  19

  Now hear our English king;

  For thus his royalty doth speak in me.

  He is prepar’d; and reason too he should:

  This apish and unmannerly approach,

  This harness’d masque and unadvised revel,

  This unhair’d sauciness and boyish troops,

  The king doth smile at; and is well prepar’d

  To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,

  From out the circle of his territories.

  That hand which had the strength, even at your door,

  to cudgel you and make you take the hatch;

  To dive, like buckets, in concealed wells;

  To crouch in litter of your stable planks;

  To lie like pawns lock’d up in chests and trunks;

  To hug with swine; to seek sweet safety out

  In vaults and prisons; and to thrill and shake,

  Even at the crying of your nation’s crow,

  Thinking this voice an armed Englishman:

  Shall that victorious hand be feebled here

  That in your chambers gave you chastisement?

  No! Know, the gallant monarch is in arms,

  And like an eagle o’er his aiery towers,

  To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.

  And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,

  You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb

  Of your dear mother England, blush for shame:

  For your own ladies and pale-visag’d maids

  Like Amazons come tripping after drums,

  Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,

  Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts

  To fierce and bloody inclination.

  20

  That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,

  Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

  Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took

  At a fair vestal throned by the west,

  And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

  As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;

  But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

  Quench’d in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,

  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.

  Fetch me that flower; the herb I show’d thee once:

  The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

  Will make or man or woman madly dote

  Upon the next live creature that it sees.

  Fetch me this herb.

  21

  — Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers up! Is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men?

  — Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever lost. ’Tis too cold a companion: away with’t!

  — I will stand for’t a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

  — There’s little can be said in’t; ’tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, cons
umes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by’t! Out with’t! within the year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with’t!

  — How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

  — Let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne’er it likes. ’Tis a commodity that will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with’t, while ’tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek: and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears; it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, ’tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet ’tis a withered pear. Will you anything with it?

  22

  My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,

  Whilst comments of your praise, richly compil’d,

  Deserve their character with golden quill,

  And precious phrase by all the Muses fil’d.

  I think good thoughts, while others write good words,

  And, like unletter’d clerk, still cry ‘Amen’

  To every hymn that able spirit affords,

  In polish’d form of well-refined pen.

  Hearing you prais’d, I say, ‘’Tis so, ’tis true,’

  And to the most of praise add something more;

  But that is in my thought, whose love to you,

  Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.

  Then others for the breath of words respect,

  Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

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