Haply for I am black,And have not those soft parts of conversationThat chamberers have; or for I am declinedInto the vale of years—yet that’s not much— She’s gone. I am abused, and my reliefMust be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,That we can call these delicate creatures oursAnd not their appetites! I had rather be a toadAnd live upon the vapor of a dungeonThan keep a corner in the thing I loveFor others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones;Prerogatived are they less than the base.’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.
When down her weedy trophies and herselfFell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes; As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and induedUnto that element: but long it could not beTill that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious layTo muddy death. (Ophelia)
I could a tale unfold whose lightest wordWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to stand on endLike quills upon the fretful porpentine.But this eternal blazon must not beTo ears of flesh and blood.List, list, O list!
He who the sword of heaven will bearShould be as holy as severe;Pattern in himself to know,Grace to stand, and virtue go;More nor less to others payingThan by self-offences weighing.Shame to him whose cruel strikingKills for faults of his own liking!Twice treble shame on Angelo,To weed my vice and let his grow!O, what may man within him hide,Though angel on the outward side!How may likeness made in crimes,Making practise on the times,To draw with idle spiders' stringsMost ponderous and substantial things!Craft against vice I must apply:With Angelo to-night shall lieHis old betrothed but despised;So disguise shall, by the disguised,Pay with falsehood false exacting,And perform an old contracting.
Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!
Why, that is nothing: for I tell you, father,I am as peremptory as she proud-minded;And where two raging fires meet togetherThey do consume the thing that feeds their fury:Though little fire grows great with little wind,Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all:So I to her and so she yields to me;For I am rough and woo not like a babe.