In the spring time, the only pretty ring Love doth to her eyes repair, time,

To help him of his blindness; When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, And, being help’d, inhabits there. Sweet lovers love the Spring.

Then to Silvia let us sing, And therefore take the present time,

That Silvia is excelling; With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonino, She excels each mortal thing For love is crowned with the prime

Upon the dull earth dwelling: In the spring time, the only pretty ring To her let us garlands bring.

time, When birds do sing, hye ding a ding, Sweet lovers love the Spring.

FANCY

From MERCHANT OF VENICE
O MISTRESS MINE

Tell me where is fancy bred,
From TWELFTH NIGHT

Or in the heart or in the head?
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming? How begot, how nourished?
O, stay and hear, your true love's coming, Reply, reply.

That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,

It is engendered in the eyes,
Journeys end in lovers meeting,

With gazing fed; and fancy dies
Every wise man's son doth know. In the cradle where it lies :

Let us all ring fancy's knell;
What is love? 't is not hereafter;

I'll begin it, — Ding, dong, bell.
Present mirth hath present laughter;

Ding, dong, bell.
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

AUBADE
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

From CYMBELINE TAKE, O TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY HARK! hark! the lark at heaven's gate

sings, From MEASURE FOR MEASURE

And Phoebus 'gins arise, TAKE, O take those lips away,

His steeds to water at those springs That so sweetly were forsworn;

On chaliced flowers that lies; And those eyes, the break of day,

And winking Mary-buds begin Lights that do mislead the morn!

To ope their golden eyes :
But my kisses bring again,

With everything that pretty bin,
Bring again;

My lady sweet, arise!
Seals of love, but seal'd in vain,

Arise, arise!
Seal'd in vain !

WHERE THE BEE SUCKS

From THE TEMPEST

SILVIA
From TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
Who is Silvia? What is she?

That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.

WHERE the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the

bough.

Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness:

ICE

SONNETS

LIKE as the waves make towards the peb

bled shore, XXX

So do our minutes hasten to their end; WHEN to the Sessions of sweet silent

Each changing place with that which goes thought

before, I summon up remembrance of things past, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, Nativity, once in the main of light, And with old woes new wail my dear Crawls to maturity, wherewith being time's waste:

crowned, Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, For precious friends hid in death's dateless And Time that gave doth now his gift night,

confound.
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd Time doth transfix the flourish set on

youth
woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow, sight:

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

mow: The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan, And yet to times in hope my verse shall Which I new pay as if not paid before.

stand, But if the while I think on thee, dear Praising thy worth, despite his cruel friend,

hand.
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

LXXIII
XXXIII

That time of year thou may’st in me be-
FULL many a glorious morning have I

hold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign hang eye,

Upon those boughs which shake against Kissing with golden face the meadows

the cold green,

Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet
Gilding pale streams with heavenly al-
chemy;

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride As after sunset fadeth in the west,
With ugly rack on his celestial face, Which by and by black night doth take
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

away,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Death's second self, that seals up all in
Even so my sun one early morn did shine

seen

birds sang.