(from A Midsummer Night's dream, spoken by Bottom)
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is “Most fair Pyramus.” Heigh-ho! Peter Quince?
Flute the bellows-mender? Snout the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life, stol'n hence, and left me asleep?
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom. And I will sing it in the latter end of a play before the duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.Speech: Bottom's Dream
S
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Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
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Come on the zephyr's wing,
And cheer the toiling clown.
Read Poem Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
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0
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Are you content, you pretty three-years’ wife?
Are you content and satisfied to live
On what your loving husband loves to give,
And give to him your life?
Are you content with work, — to toil alone,
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Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
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Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
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I
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Our God, our help in ages past,
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Before the hills in order stood
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And this is what is left of youth! . . .
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umpteen times the tenth part of a featured world
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PART I
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And hark, again! the crowing cock,
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Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
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Tu—whit! Tu—whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
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Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
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The Prisoner of Chillon by Lord Byron (George Gordon)
My hair is grey, but not with years,
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0
from The Seasons: Winter by James Thomson
See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train—
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot,
Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d
In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
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Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot,
Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d
In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
0
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