Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/75

Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii Courses as swift as thought in every power,

And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye:

A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;

A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:

Love's feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:

Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.

For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs;

O! then his lines would ravish savage ears,

And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world;

Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

Then fools you were these women to forswear,

Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.

For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love,

Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men,

Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;

Or women's sake, by whom we men are men,

Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,

 336 Cf. n.

338 cockled: inclosed in a shell

341 Hesperides: i.e. the garden of the Hesperides

344 voice: i.e. responsive voice

358 loves: cherishes, benefits

