Page 2846 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host, [165]
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: the welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let no virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was; [170]
For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, [175]

That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object: [180]
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax,
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

Than what stirs not. The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again, [185]
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds but in these fields of late
Made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves,
And drave great Mars to faction.

ACHILLES
Of this my privacy [190]
I have strong reasons.

ULYSSES
But ’gainst your privacy
The reasons are more potent and heroical.
’Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam’s daughters −