Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/98

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That hid the worse, and show'd the better face.

King. We were descried: they'll mock us now downright.

Dum. Let us confess, and turn it to a jest.

Prin. Amaz'd, my lord? Why looks your highness sad?

Ros. Help! hold his brows! he'll sound. Why look you pale?

Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy.

Ber. Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.

Can any face of brass hold longer out?—

Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me;

Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout;

Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance;

Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit;

And I will wish thee never more to dance,

Nor never more in Russian habit wait.

O, never will I trust to speeches penn'd,

Nor to the motion of a schoolboy's tongue,

Nor never come in vizard to my friend,

Nor woo in rime, like a blind harper's song.

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation,

Figures pedantical; these summer flies

Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:

I do forswear them; and I here protest,

By this white glove,—how white the hand, God knows,—

Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd

In russet yeas and honest kersey noes:

And, to begin, wench,—so God help me, la!—

 393 sound: swoon

401 wish: invite

405 friend: mistress

406 blind harper; cf. n.

408 Three-pil'd: having three piles, superfine

414 russet: homespun, homely

kersey: coarse woollen, plain

