Page:A Midsummer-Nights Dream (Rackham).djvu/186

118 And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall,

Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.

Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,

And finds his trusty Thisby’s mantle slain:

Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,

He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast;

And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,

His dagger drew. and died. For all the rest,

Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain

At large discourse, while here they do remain.

I wonder if the lion be to speak.

No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.

In this same interlude it doth befall

That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;

And such a wall, as I would have you think,

That had in it a crannied hole or chink,

Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,

Did whisper often very secretly.

This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show

That I am that same wall; the truth is so:

And this the cranny is, right and sinister,

Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.