LITMIR.BIZ

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Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love

       To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,

       Come from the farthest steep of India,

       But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

       Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love,

       To Theseus must be wedded; and you come

       To give their bed joy and prosperity.

       OBERON

       How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,

       Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

       Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

       Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night

       From Perigenia, whom he ravish’d?

       And make him with fair Aegle break his faith,

       With Ariadne and Antiopa?

       TITANIA

       These are the forgeries of jealousy:

       And never, since the middle summer’s spring,

       Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

       By pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook,

       Or on the beachèd margent of the sea,

       To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

       But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.

       Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

       As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea

       Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,

       Hath every pelting river made so proud

       That they have overborne their continents:

       The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,

       The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn

       Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard:

       The fold stands empty in the drownèd field,

       And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

       The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud;

       And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,

       For lack of tread, are undistinguishable:

       The human mortals want their winter here;

       No night is now with hymn or carol blest:—

       Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

       Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

       That rheumatic diseases do abound:

       And thorough this distemperature we see

       The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

       Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;

       And on old Hyem’s thin and icy crown

       An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

       Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

       The childing autumn, angry winter, change

       Their wonted liveries; and the maz’d world,

       By their increase, now knows not which is which:

       And this same progeny of evils comes

       From our debate, from our dissension:

       We are their parents and original.

       OBERON

       Do you amend it, then: it lies in you:

       Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

       I do but beg a little changeling boy

       To be my henchman.

       TITANIA

       Set your heart at rest;

       The fairyland buys not the child of me.

       His mother was a vot’ress of my order:

       And, in the spicèd Indian air, by night,

       Full often hath she gossip’d by my side;

       And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,

       Marking the embarkèd traders on the flood;

       When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive,

       And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

       Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

       Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,—

       Would imitate; and sail upon the land,

       To fetch me trifles, and return again,

       As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

       But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;

       And for her sake do I rear up her boy:

       And for her sake I will not part with him.

       OBERON

       How long within this wood intend you stay?

       TITANIA

       Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day.

       If you will patiently dance in our round,

       And see our moonlight revels, go with us;

       If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

       OBERON

       Give me that boy and I will go with thee.

       TITANIA

       Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away:

       We shall chide downright if I longer stay.

       [Exit TITANIA with her Train.]

       OBERON

       Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove

       Till I torment thee for this injury.—

       My gentle Puck, come hither: thou remember’st

       Since once I sat upon a promontory,

       And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back,

       Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

       That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

       And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

       To hear the sea-maid’s music.

       PUCK

       I remember.

       OBERON

       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, thronèd 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.

       Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

       It fell upon a little western flower,—

       Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,—

       And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

       Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once:

       The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

       Will make or man or woman madly dote

       Upon the next live creature that it sees.

       Fetch me

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