Page:Merchant of Venice (1923) Yale.djvu/66

52

Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?

There is no vice so simple but assumes

Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false

As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins

The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,

Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk;

And these assume but valour's excrement

To render them redoubted! Look on beauty,

And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight;

Which therein works a miracle in nature,

Making them lightest that wear most of it:

So are those crisped snaky golden locks

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,

Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head,

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore

To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf

Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,

The seeming truth which cunning times put on

To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold,

Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;

Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge

'Tween man and man: but thou, thou meagre lead,

Which rather threat'nest than dost promise aught,

Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,

And here choose I: joy be the consequence!

Por. [Aside.] How all the other passions fleet to air,

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair,

 81 simple: pure, unmixed

82 his: its

87 excrement: excrescence

91 lightest: i.e., most frivolous

92 crisped: curled

94 Upon supposed fairness; cf. n.

97 guiled: guileful

99 Veiling, etc.; cf. n.

102 Midas: all he touched, including food, turned to gold

109 As: such as 