Love's labour's lost. Midsummer night's dream

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Printed for, and under the direction of, John Bell, 1788
 

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Page 68 - 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.
Page 24 - That very time I saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Page 79 - The best in this kind are but shadows ; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
Page 68 - 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.
Page 17 - Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough briar, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander every where, Swifter than the moones sphere ; And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green : The cowslips tall her pensioners be ; In their gold coats spots you see ; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours : I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Page 111 - A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it...
Page 25 - Biron they call him ; but a merrier man. Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal : His eye begets occasion for his wit : For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished ; So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
Page 69 - Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And, when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Page 49 - All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence ? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key ; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted ; But yet a union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem ; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart : Two of the first, like coats...
Page 5 - The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour, which shall bate his scythe's keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity.

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