Hath for your love as great a pang of heart

As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her;

You tell her so; must she not, then, be answer'd?

Duke. There is no woman's sides Can bide the beating of so strong a passion

As love doth give my heart: no woman's heart

So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.

Alas! their love may be call'd appetite,

No motion of the liver, but the palate,

That suffer forfeit, cloyment, and revolt;

But mine is all as hungry as the sea, And can digest as much: make no compare

Between that love a woman can bear

me,

And that I owe Olivia.

Vio. Ay, but I know, -
Duke.-What dost thou know?
Vio.-Too well what love women
to men may owe:

In faith, they are as true of heart as

we.

And therefore little shall I grace my

cause

In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,

I will a round unvarnished tale deliver

Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,

What conjuration, and what mighty magic,

(For such proceeding I am charged withal,)

I won his daughter with.

Her father loved me, oft invited me; Still questioned me the story of my life,

From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents, by flood and field;

Of hairbreadth scapes in the imminent deadly breach;

Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,

And portance in my travel's history:

Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak, such was the process:

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.
These things to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house affairs would
draw her thence;

Which ever as she could with haste despatch,

She'd

come again, and with а greedy ear

Devour up my discourse: which, I observing,

Took once a pliant hour, and found good means

But not intentively: I did consent; And often did beguile her of her tears,

When I did speak of some distressful stroke

That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:

She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;

'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:

She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished

That heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me;

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint, I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used:

Here comes the lady, let her witness it.

SHAKSPEARE.

ATHULF AND ETHILDA.

Athulf. Appeared The princess with that merry child Prince Guy:

He loves me well, and made her stop and sit,

And sate upon her knee, and it so

chanced

That in his various chatter he denied That I could hold his hand within

my own

So closely as to hide it: this being tried

Was proved against him; he insisted

then

I could not by his royal sister's

hand

there,

We like sepulchral statues lay: All day the same our postures were, And we said nothing all the day. If any, so by love refined,

That he soul's language understood,

And by good love were grown all mind,

Within convenient distance stood, He, (though he knew not which soul spoke,

Because both meant, both spoke the same,)

Might thence a new concoction take, And part far purer than he came. This ecstasy doth unperplex,

We said, and tell us what we love; We see by this it was not sex,

We see, we saw not what did

For soul into the soul may flow, Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labors to beget Spirits as like souls as it can,

Because such fingers need to knit That subtile knot which makes us

From you forever. I did hear you talk

Far above singing; after you were gone,

I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched

What stirred it so. Alas! I found it love.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER:

Philaster.