Page 2259 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,
That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled, [830]
Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:
«Ay me», she cries, and twenty times, «Woe, woe»,
And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She marking them, begins a wailing note, [835]
And sings extemporally a woeful ditty:

How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote,
How love is wise in folly, foolish witty.
Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,

And still the quire of echoes answer so. [840]

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short.
If pleas’d themselves, others they think delight
In such like circumstance, with such like sport.

Their copious stories oftentimes begun, [845]
End without audience, and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal,
But idle sounds resembling parasites,
Like shrill-tongu’d tapsters answering every call,

Soothing the humour of fantastic wits? [850]
She says «’Tis so», they answer all «’Tis so»,
And would say after her, if she said «No».

Lo here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast [855]
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.