NOBLE PATRONAGE OF LEARNING.
You mighty lords, that with respected grace
Do at the stern of fair example stand,
And all the body of this populace
Guide with the turning of your hand;
Keep a right course; bear up from all disgrace;
Observe the point of glory to our land:
Hold up disgraced Knowledge from the ground;
Keep Virtue in request; give Worth her due;
Let not Neglect with barbarous means confound
So fair a good, to bring in night a-new;
Be not, O be not accessory found
Unto her death, that must give life to you.
Where will you have your virtuous name safe laid?—
In gorgeous tombs, in sacred cells secure?
Do you not see those prostrate heaps betrayed
Your fathers' bones, and could not keep them sure?
And will you trust deceitful stones fair laid,
And think they will be to your honour truer !
No, no; unsparing Time will proudly send
A warrant unto Wrath, that with one frown
Will all these mockeries of vainglory rend,
And make them (as before) ungraced, unknown:
Poor idle honours, that can ill defend
Your memories, that cannot keep their own!
THE quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
"Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above the sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice.
FROM you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Had put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet, nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and you away.
As with your shadow I with these did play.
No matter where; of comfort no man speak :
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so-for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all, are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:-
How some have been deposed, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives; some sleeping killed;
All murdered:-for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit-
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and-farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while;
I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?
SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair some time declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
SHAKSPEARE.
FULL many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath marked him from me now.
Yet him for this iny love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth. SHAKSPEARE.
HOTSPUR'S DESCRIPTION OF A FINICAL FOP.
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, trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reaped,
Showed 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, wherewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff:-and still he smiled and talked ;
And, as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He questioned me; among the rest demanded
My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds, being cold
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