Puslapio vaizdai
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SCENE VI. Violent Delights, not lafting.
Thefe violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
Which as they meet, confume.

Lovers, light of Foot.

O fo light of foot

Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint;
A lover may bestride the goffamour,
That idles in the wanton fummer air,
And yet not fall, fo light is vanity

ACT III. SCENE IV.

A Lover's Impatience.

Gallop apace, you fiery footed fleeds, To Phoebus' manfion; fuch a waggoner As Phaeton, would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy clofe curtain, love-performing night, That (5) th' run-aways eyes may wink; and Romeo Leap to thefe arms, untalkt of, and unseen, Lovers can fee to do their am'rous rites By their own beauties: or, if love be blind; It beft agrees with night..

(5) The run-aways, &c.] that is, the fun: whom he elegantly calls the run-away, in reference to the poetical account of the fun driving his chariot of light thro' the heavens, and running down to the weft from the eyes of mortals to the arms of his celeftial mistress.

SCENE

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SCENE V. Romeo, on his Banifoment.

SCENE, The monastry.

Romeo and the Friar.

Rom. (6) Ha, banishment! be merciful, fay death; For exile hath more terror in his look Than death itself. Do not fay banishment. Fri. Here from Verona art thou banished: Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

Rom. There is no world without Verona's walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.

Hence banished, is banish'd from the world,
And world-exil'd is death; that banished,
Is death mis-term'd calling death banishment,
Thou cut'ft my head off with a golden ax,
And fmil'ft upon the ftroke that murthers me.
Fri. O deadly fin! O rude unthankfulness!
Thy fault our law calls death, but the kind prince
Taking thy part, hath rusht afide the law,
And turn'd that black word death to banishment;
This is dear mercy, and thou feeft it not.

Rom. 'Tis torture, and not mercy: heav'n is here
Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
And little moufe, every unworthy thing
Lives here in heaven, and may look on her,
But Romeo may not. More validity,
More honourable ftate, more courtship lives
In carrion flies, than Romeo: they may feize.
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand,
And fteal immortal bleffings from her lips;
But Romeo may not, he is banished!

O father, hadst thou no strong poison mixt,

(6) Ha, &c.] The reader will find in the 131ft page of the firft volume, a paffage or two, that well deferve to be compar'd with this before us.

No

No fharp-ground knife, no prefent means of death,
But banishment to torture me withal?

O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
Howlings attend it: how haft thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghoftly confeffor,
A fin-abfolver, and my friend profest,
To mangle me with that word, banishment?
Fri. Fond mad-man, hear me fpeak

Rom. O thou wilt fpeak again of banishment.
Fri. I'll give thee armour to bear off that word,
Adversity's sweet milk, philofophy,
To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
Rom. Yet banished? hang up philofophy;
Unless philofophy can make a Juliet,
Difplant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
It helps not, it prevails not, talk no more-
Fri. O then I fee that mad-men have no ears.
Rom. How fhould they, when that wife men have
no eyes?

Fri. Let me difpute with thee of thy eftate.

Rom. Thou canst not fpeak of what thou dost not feel:

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Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
An hour but married, Tibalt murthered,
Doting like me, and like me banished;

Then might'st thou fpeak, then might'it thou tear thy hair,

And fall upon the ground as I do now,
Taking the measure of an un-made grave."

J

SCENE

SCENE VII.

Juliet's Chamber, looking to the
Garden.

Enter Romeo and Juliet above at a window; a ladder of ropes fet.

Jul. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
(7) It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly fhe fings on yond pomgranate tree;
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale. (8) Look, love, what envious ftreaks

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(7) It was, &c. The poets abound with numberlefs fimilies and frequent mention of the nightingale: fhe. as well at the clofe of the evening when the fings, feems to have been a favorite of Milton: the paffages in his works are well known; the following fine fimile, tho' perhaps not fo apt to our prefent purpose, yet as little known, I cannot help recommending :

I have heard

Two emulous philomels beat the ear of night

With their contentious throats, now one the higher,
Anon the other, then again the firft,

And by and by out-breafted, that the fenfe,
Could not be judge between them: fo, &c.

See Two noble Kinsmen, A. 5. Sc. 3.

(8) Look, &c.] The poets in general feem to have exerted themfelves in their defcription of the morning: the English may juftly claim the preference over the Greeks and Romans, and Shakespear I think over all the prefent paffage is fufficient to fet in competition with all we can produce and the reader by referring to the index will find many others, equally beautiful. However, according to my promife, (fee vol. 1. p. 86. n.12.) I must remember to quote fome defcriptions, the better to fet forth Shakespear's fuperior excellence: Hamer has led the way, and in almoft innumerable places, fpoken of the morning" as a goddess or divine perfon flying in the air unbarring the gates of light, and opening the day. She is drawn by him in a faffron robe, and with rofy hands (gododaxrun which is the epithet he almost conftantly bestows upon her. and perhaps may vie with any other however beautiful) fprinkling light thro' the earth. She arifes out of the waves of the fea, leaves the bed of Tithon her lover, afcends

the

Do lace the fevering clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain tops,
I'must be gone and live, or stay and dye.

Jul.

the heavens, appears to gods and men, and gives notice of the fun's rifing. She is placed by the father of the poets fometimes on a throne of gold; now in a chariot drawn by fwift horfes, and bearing along with her the day; and at other times the is ufhered in by the ftar, which is her harbinger, and which gives the fignal of the morning's approach,---On this as a ground. the poets following Homer, have run their divifions of fancy: this will appear by the following instances, &c. See Lay Monastery, p. 229. See Dryden's Virgil for the enfuing;

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Aurora now had left her faffron-bed,

And beams of early light the heav'ns o'erfpread.
And now the rofy morn began to rise,
And wav'd her faffron-ftreamer thro' the fkies.
Now rofe the ruddy morn from Tithon's bed,
And with the dawn of day the fkies o'erfpread:
Nor long the fun his daily courfe witheld
But added colours to the world reveal'd.

The morn enfuing from the mountains height,
Had fcarcely spread the skies with rofy light:
Th' etherial courfers bounding from the fea,
From out their flaming noftrils breath'd the day.

Quid by Trap,

Lo from the rofy Eaft her purple doors,

The morn unfolds adorn'd with blufhing flowers,
The leffen'd ftars draw off and disappear,
Whose bright battalions, laftly Lucifer,
Brings up, and quits his ftation in the rear.
Tafo, by Fairfax.

The purple morning left her crimson bed,
And donn'd her robes of pure vermilion hue:
Her amber locks fhe crown'd with roses red,
In Edens flow'ry gardens gather'd new.

Spenfer, in his Faerie Queene.

Now when the rofy-finger'd morning fair,
Weary of aged Tithons faffron bed,

Had feread her purple robes thro' dewy air,
And the high hills Titan discovered,

The royal virgin, &c.

At laft the golden oriental gate

Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair

And Phabus fresh as bridegroom to his mate

Came

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