A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:

And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,

Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

I
do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet
comedy.

man is but a patched fool,

man is but an ass

ood morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells

Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower
Hath such force and blessed power.

Cupid is a knavish lad,
Thus to make poor females mad.

though she be but little, she is fierce.

Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! vile thing, let loose,
Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent!

If you have any pity, grace, or manners,
You would not make me such an argument.

If she cannot entreat, I can compel

miserable most, to love unloved?

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grow together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,

—O, is it all forgot?
All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?