| |
A Room in the DUKE’S Palace. | |
| |
Enter DUKE, CURIO, Lords; Musicians attending. | |
| Duke. If music be the food of love, play on; | |
| Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, | |
| The appetite may sicken, and so die. | 5 |
| That strain again! it had a dying fall: | |
| O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound | |
| That breathes upon a bank of violets, | |
| Stealing and giving odour. Enough! no more: | |
| ’Tis not so sweet now as it was before. | 10 |
| O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, | |
| That, notwithstanding thy capacity | |
| Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, | |
| Of what validity and pitch soe’er, | |
| But falls into abatement and low price, | 15 |
| Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy, | |
| That it alone is high fantastical. | |
| Cur. Will you go hunt, my lord? | |
| Duke. What, Curio? | |
| Cur. The hart. | 20 |
| Duke. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have. | |
| O! when mine eyes did see Olivia first, | |
| Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence. | |
| That instant was I turn’d into a hart, | |
| And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, | 25 |
| E’er since pursue me. | |
| |
Enter VALENTINE. | |
| How now! what news from her? | |
| Val. So please my lord, I might not be admitted; | |
| But from her handmaid do return this answer: | 30 |
| The element itself, till seven years’ heat, | |
| Shall not behold her face at ample view; | |
| But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk, | |
| And water once a day her chamber round | |
| With eve-offending brine: all this, to season | 35 |
| A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh | |
| And lasting in her sad remembrance. | |
| Duke. O! she that hath a heart of that fine frame | |
| To pay this debt of love but to a brother, | |
| How will she love, when the rich golden shaft | 40 |
| Hath kill’d the flock of all affections else | |
| That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart, | |
| These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill’d | |
| Her sweet perfections with one self king. | |
| Away before me to sweet beds of flowers; | 45 |
| Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers. [Exeunt. | |
| |
