Page 2429 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

(He sings) Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. - Under pardon, sir, what are the
contents? Or, rather, as [100] Horace says in his - What, my soul, verses?

NAT HANIEL

Ay, sir, and very learned.

HOLOFERNES

Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse. Lege, domine.

NAT HANIEL

(reading)
If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? [105]
Ah, never faith could hold if not to beauty vowed!
Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove;
Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.
Study his bias leaves and makes his book thine eyes,
Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend.
[110]
If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice:
Well learnèd is that tongue that well can thee commend,
All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;
Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire.
Thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, [115]
Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.
Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong,
That sings heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue!

HOLOFERNES

You find not the apostrophus, and so miss the accent. Let me supervise the
canzonet. [120]

He takes the letter.
Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden
cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man; and why indeed ‘Naso’
but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention?
Imitari is nothing. So doth the hound his [125] master, the ape his keeper,
the tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you?

JAQUENET T A

Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange Queen’s lords.