To take advantage on presented joy:

Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee.
O, learn to love; the lesson is but plain;
And, once made perfect, never lost again.'

'I know not love,' quoth he, 'nor will not know it,
Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it:

'Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it; My love to love is love but to disgrace it ;* For 1 have heard it is a life in death,

That laughs, and weeps, and all but with a breath. 'Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinished? Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?† If springing things be any jot diminished, They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth. The colt that's backed and burthened being young, Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong. 'You hurt my hand with wringing; let us part, And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: Remove your siege from my unyielding heart; To love's alarm it will not ope the gate.

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery; For where a heart is hard, they make no battery.' 'What! canst thou talk?' quoth she; 'hast thou a tongue?

O, would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing!
Thy mermaid's voice hath done me double wrong;
I had
my load before, now pressed with bearing:

My inclination towards love is only a desire to render it contemptible.-MALONE.

I am now too young
To be won by beauty;
Tender are my years,

I am yet a bud.

Sheepheard's Song of Venus and Adonis.

Wind thee from me, Venus,

I am not disposed;

Thou wringest me too hard,

Prythee let me go.—Ib.

Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding, Ear's deep-sweet music, and heart's deep-sore wounding.

'Had I no eyes, but ears, my ears would love That inward beauty and invisible;

Or, were I deaf, thy outward parts would move
Each part in me that were but sensible:

Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,
Yet should I be in love, by touching thee.

Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me,
And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,
And nothing but the very smell were left me,
Yet would my love to thee be still as much;
For from the stillatory of thy face excelling
Comes breath perfumed, that breedeth love by
smelling.

*

'But, O, what banquet wert thou to the taste,
Being nurse and feeder of the other four!
Would they not wish the feast might ever last,
And bid Suspicion double-lock the door;

Lest Jealousy, that sour, unwelcome guest,
Should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast?'
Once more the ruby-coloured portal opened,
Which to his speech did honey passage yield;
Like a red morn, that ever yet betokened,
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flawst to herdmen and to herds.

* Laboratory; also used for alembic. The word is obsolete :Go to the privy garden, and in the walk,

Next to the stillatory, stay for me.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.-Faithful Friends, iv. 3.

† Sudden gusts of wind. Thus, in several places:

O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,

Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw.-Hamlet, v. i.

The word is in common use amongst sailors.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh:
Even as the wind is hushed before it raineth,
Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,
Or as the berry breaks before it staineth;
Or, like the deadly bullet of a gun,

His meaning struck her ere his words begun;

And at his look she flatly falleth down;
For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth:
A smile recures the wounding of a frown;
But blessed bankrupt, that by love so thriveth!
The silly boy, believing she is dead,

Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red;

And all-amazed brake off his late intent,
For sharply he did think to reprehend her,
Which cunning love did wittily prevent:
Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!
For on the grass she lies as she were slain,
Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

I do not fear the flaw [applied to a tempest.]

What flaws, and whirles of weather,

Pericles, iii. 1.

Or rather storms, have been aloft these three days. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.-Pilgrim, iii. 6. In the Cornish dialect flaw signifies a cut, and is applied in that sense to sharp gusts of wind. The parish church of Denmichen is dedicated to St. Causlan, whose festival is held in March, and snow showers are there locally called St. Causlan's flaws.' The word, in addition to its primary meaning of crack or splinter, is metaphorically applied to quarrels, disorder, uproar.

Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.

2 Henry VI. iii. 1.

And deluges of armies from the town
Came pouring in; I heard the mighty flaw.-Dryden.

It also means sparks; and Mr. Halliwell, in his Archaic Dictionary, suggests that this is probably the sense in which it is used in the following perplexing passage :

A gentlewoman of mine

Who, falling in the flawes of her own youth,

Hath blistered her report.-Meas. for Meas. ii. 3.

Warburton proposed to read flames; but Mr. Halliwell's interpretation removes the difficulty.

Her wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks,
He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard;
He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks
To mend the hurt that his unkindness marred:
He kisses her; and she, by her good will,
Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

The night of sorrow now is turned to day:
Her two blue windows* faintly she upheaveth,
Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array
He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth:
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
So is her face illumined with her eye;

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fixed,
As if from thence they borrowed all their shine.†
Were never four such lamps together mixed,
Had not his clouded with his brows' repine;

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,
Shone like the moon, in water seen by night.

'O, where am I?' quoth she; 'in earth or heaven,
Or in the ocean drenched, or in the fire?
What hour is this? or morn, or weary even?
Do I delight to die, or life desire?

* Other instances occur in which Shakspeare applies this image to the eyelids:

-

To thee I do commend my watchful soul,
Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes.

Richard III. v. 3.

Downy windows, close.-Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2.
the enclosed lights now canopied
Cymbeline, ii. 2.

Under these windows.

Like death.

Thy eyes' windows fall

Romeo and Juliet, iv. 1.

Used as a substantive, in the sense of lustre or brightness. In this form it was commonly used by Chaucer, and by the Elizabethan poets and their successors, down to the last century:

I to my chimney's shine

Brought him, as love professes.-HORRIEL.

Be it fair or foul, rain or shine.-DRYDEN.

Fair opening to some court's propitious shine.-POPE.

But now I lived, and life was death's annoy;
But now I died, and death was lively joy.

'O, thou didst kill me ;-kill me once again;
Thy eyes' shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,
Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain,
That they have murdered this poor heart of mine;
And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,
But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.
'Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
And, as they last, their verdure still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year!

That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
May say, the plague is banished by thy breath.*
'Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,
What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?
To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing:
Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,†
Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.

'A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;
And pay them at thy leisure, one by one.
What is ten hundred touches unto thee?
Are they not quickly told, and quickly gone?
Say, for non-payment that the debt should double,
Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?'

'Fair queen,' quoth he, 'if any love you owe me,
Measure my strangeness with my unripe years;
Before I know myself, seek not to know me;
No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears:

* Alluding to the custom of using fragrant herbs and flowers to prevent infection.

+ Counterfeit coins, made of brass washed over with silver, were called slips. They are frequently alluded to in the plays of this period. See note, ante, p. 48.