Love's Labour's Lost. BRAVE ACT I. SELF-DENIAL. conquerors!-for so you are, That war against your own affections, And the huge armies of the world's desires. VANITY OF PLEASURE. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain. ON STUDY. Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights, Than those that walk, and wot not what they are. Too much to know, is, to know nought but fame; And every godfather can give a name. FROST. An envious sneaping frost, That bites the first-born infants of the spring. A CONCEITED COURTIER. A man in all the world's new fashion planted, * Nipping. Ꭰ This child of fancy, that Armado hight *, ACT II. BEAUTY. My beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise; A MERRY MAN. A merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, ACT III. HUMOROUS DESCRIPTION OF LOVE. O And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip: A very beadle to a humorous sigh; A critic; nay, a night-watch constable; * Called. A domineering pedant o'er the boy, This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy; Of trotting paritors ‡.-O my little heart!— And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop! ACT IV. SONNET. DID not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye ('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,) Persuade my heart to this false perjury? Vows, for thee broke, deserve not punishment. A woman I forswore; but, I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is: Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth doth shine, Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is: If broken then, it is no fault of mine; If by me broke, What fool is not so wise, To lose an oath to win a paradise? * Hooded, veiled. + Petticoats. The officer of the spiritual courts who serve citations. SONG. On a day, (alack the day!) Through the velvet leaves the wind, That I am forsworn for thee: Thou for whom even Jove would swear, Juno but an Ethiop were; And deny himself for Jove, THE POWER OF LOVE. But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power; And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye; A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd; Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible, Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste: For valour, is not love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as sphinx; as sweet and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with hair; WOMEN'S EYES. From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academies, That show, contain, and nourish all the world; Else, none at all in aught proves excellent. ACT V. JEST AND JESTER. YOUR task shall be With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death; It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Of him that hears it, never in the tongue SONG. Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue, *Vehement. |