am to
spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will
fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes.
O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
For parting my fair Pyramus and me!
My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.
I see a voice: now will I to the chink,
To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face. Thisby!
My love thou art, my love I think.
Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;
And, like Limander, am I trusty still.
And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.
Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.
As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.
O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!
I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.
Wilt thou at Ninny's tomb meet me straightway?
'Tide life, 'tide death, I come without delay.
Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.
Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.
No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear
without warning.
This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst
are no worse, if imagination amend them.
It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
If we imagine no worse of them than they of
themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here
come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.
You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear
The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
A lion-fell, nor else no lion's dam;
For, if I should as lion come in strife
Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.
A very gentle beast, of a good conscience.
The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er I saw.
This lion is a very fox for his valour.
True; and a goose for his discretion.
Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his
discretion; and the fox carries the goose.
His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour;
for the goose carries not the fox. It is well:
leave it to his discretion, and let us listen to the moon.
This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;--
He should have worn the horns on his head.
He is no crescent, and