What dost thou? or what art thou, Angelo? Dost thou desire her foully, for those things That make her good? O, let her brother live: Thieves for their robbery have authority, When judges steal themselves. What? do I love her, That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on? O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation, that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet, With all her double vigour, art, and nature, Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid Subdues me quite.
LOVE IN A GRAVE SEVERE GOVERNOR.
When I would pray and think, I think and pray To several subjects: heaven hath my empty words; Whilst my invention hearing not my tongue, Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth, As if I did but only chew his name;
And in my heart, the strong and swelling evil Of f my conception: The state, whereon I studied, Is like a good thing, being often read,
Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity, Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride, Could I, with boot,* change for an idle plume, Which the air beats for vain. O place! O form! How often dost thou with thy case,f thy habit, Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming?
FORNICATION AND MURDER EQUALLED.
To pardon him, that hath from nature stolen A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made,
As to put mettle in restrained means, To make a false one.
Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better.
Ang. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright, When it doth tax itself.
TEMPORAL FAR BETTER THAN ETERNAL DEATH.
Better it were, a brother died at once, Than that a sister by redeeming him,
WOMEN'S FRAILTY.
Nay, women are frail too.
Isab. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
Which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women!-Help heaven! men their creation mar In profiting by them. Nay call us ten times frail; For we are soft as our complexions are, And credulous to false prints.*
The miserable have no other medicine,
REFLECTIONS ON THE VANITY OF LIFE. Reason thus with life,
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art, (Servile to all the skiey influences,)
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still: Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st, Are nurs'd by baseness: thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st: yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains That issue out of dust: Happy thou art not: For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain; For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,* After the moon: if thou art rich, thou art poor; For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo,† and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this, That bears the name of life? yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even.
THE TERRORS OF DEATH MOST IN APPREHENSION.
O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, Lest thou a ferverous life should'st entertain, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.
RESOLUTION FROM A SENSE OF HONOur.
Why give you me this shame?
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
*Affects, affections
+ Old age.
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.
THE HYPOCRISY OF ANGELO.
There my father's grave
Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die: Thou art too noble to conserve a life
In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,- Whose settled visage and deliberate word Nips youth i'the head, and follies doth enmew,* As falcon doth the fowl,-is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear A pond as deep as hell.
THE TERRORS OF DEATH.
Death is a fearful thing.
Isab. And shamed life a hateful.
Claud. 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 imprison'd in the viewless† winds, And blown with restless violence 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 loathed worldly life, That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
VIRTUE AND GOODNESS.
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
The evil that thou causest to be done, That is thy means to live: Do thou but think What 'tis to cram a maw, or clothe a back, From such a filthy vice: say to thyself,-
From their abominable and beastly touches I drink, I eat, array myself, and live. Canst thou believe thy living is a life, So stinkingly depending? Go, mend, go, mend.
Take, oh take, those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn: But my kisses bring again, Seals of love, but seal'd in vain. Hide, oh hide, those hills of snow, Which thy frozen bosom bears, On whose tops the pinks that grow Are of those that April wears: But my poor heart first set free, Bound in those icy chains by thee.
GREATNESS SUBJECT TO CENSURE.
O place and greatness, millions of false eyes, Are stuck upon thee! volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious questa Upon thy doings! thousand 'scapes* of wit Make thee the father of their idle dream, And rack thee in their fancies.
As fast lock'd up in sleep, as guiltless labour When it lies starklyf in the traveller's bones,
CHARACTER OF AN ARCH HYPOCRITE.
O prince, I conjure thee, as thou believ'st There is another comfort than this world, That thou neglect me not, with that opinion That I am touch'd with madness: make not impossible
That which but seems unlike: 'Tis not impossible
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