Page:A Midsummer-Nights Dream (Rackham).djvu/140

84 The starry welkin cover thou anon

With drooping fog as black as Acheron,

And lead these testy rivals so astray

As one come not within another’s way.

Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue,

Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;

And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;

And from each other look thou lead them thus,

Till o’er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep

With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep:

Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye;

Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,

To take from thence all error with his might,

And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.

When they next wake, all this derision

Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,

And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,

With league whose date till death shall never end.

Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,

I’ll to my queen and beg her Indian boy;

And then I will her charmed eye release

From monster’s view, and all things shall be peace.

My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,