She shall be lov'd and fear'd: her own shall bless Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, [her; And hang their heads with sorrow : good grows
In her days, every man shall eat in safety,
Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours :
God shall be truly known; and those about her,
From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.
Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new create another heir,
As great in admiration as herself,
So shall she leave her blessedness to one,
(When Heaven shall call her from this cloud of
darkness)
Who, from the sacred ashes of her honour,
Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,
And so stand fix'd: peace, plenty, love, truth, ter-
That were the servants to this chosen infant, [ror,
Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him ;
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him ;- -Our children's
Shall see this, and bless Heaven. [children
THE BEAUTIES OF SHAKSPEARE.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
ACT I.
Love the Nobleness of Life.
LET ROME in Tyber melt? and the wide arch
Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space;
Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life
Is, to do thus; when such a mutual pair,
[Embracing.
And such a twain can do't, in which, 1 bind
On pain of punishment, the world to weet,*
We stand up peerless.
Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?— I'll seem the fool I am not; Antony
Now, for the love of Love, and her soft hours
Antony's Vices and Virtues,
I must not think, there are
Evils enough to darken all his goodness:
His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night's blackness; hereditary,
Rather than purchased ; what he cannot change,
Than what he chooses.
Procured by his own fault.
Cæs. You are too iudulgent; let us grant, it is not Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy;
To give a kingdom for a mirth; to sit
And keep the turn of tippling with a slave;
To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet
With knaves that smell of sweat: say, this becomes
(As his composure must be rare indeed, [him
Whom these things cannot blemish), yet must
Antony
No way excuse his soils, when we do bear
So great weight in his lightness.* If he fill'd
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones,
Call on him fort: but, to confound‡ such time,
That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud
As his own state, and ours,-'tis to be chid
As we rate boys; who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgment.
Leave thy lascivious wassals.§ When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow; whom thou fought against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer: thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle¶
Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did
deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
§ Feastings; in the old copy it is vaissailes, i. e. vassals,
Which some did die to look on and all this
(It wounds thine honour that I speak it now)
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.
Cleopatra's Solicitude on the Absence of Antony.
O Charmian,
Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?
Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?
O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony,
Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou
The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
[mov'st?
And burgonet* of men.-He's speaking now,
Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?
For so he calls me; now I feed myself
With most delicious poison :-think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black,
And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Cæsar,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch and great Pompey
Would stand, and make his eyes grow in my brow;
There would he anchor his aspect, and die
With looking on his life.
The Vanity of Human Wishes.
We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit,
By losing of our prayers.
Description of Cleopatra sailing down the Cydnus.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that [silver; The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description; she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue),
O'er picturing that Venus, where we see,
The fancy out-work nature: on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.*
Agr.
O, rare for Antony;
Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings; at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That rarely frame† the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits, the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And make a gap in nature.
Cleopatra's infinite power in pleasiny.
Hop forty paces through the public street :
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect, perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth.
* Added to the warmth they were intended to diminish. tReadily perform.
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