October 2011
11 posts
Romeo & Juliet II:III
- The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
- Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
- And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
- From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:
- Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
- The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
- I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
- With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
- The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
- What is her burying grave that is her womb,
- And from her womb children of divers kind
- We sucking on her natural bosom find,
- Many for many virtues excellent,
- None but for some and yet all different.
- O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
- In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
- For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
- But to the earth some special good doth give,
- Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
- Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
- Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
- And vice sometimes by action dignified.
- Within the infant rind of this small flower
- Poison hath residence and medicine power:
- For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
- Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
- Two such opposed kings encamp them still
- In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
- And where the worser is predominant,
- Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
