Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/169

 of Verona,'  'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' for instance—we shall find nothing comparable for charm and sincerity of sweet and passionate fancy with such enchanting verses as these:

O happy persecution, I embrace thee With an unfettered soul! So sweet a thing It is to sigh upon the rack of love, Where each calamity is groaning witness Of the poor martyr's faith. I never heard Of any true affection, but 'twas nipt With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats The leaves off the spring's sweetest book, the rose. Love, bred on earth, is often nursed in hell: By rote it reads woe, ere it learn to spell.

Again: the 'secure tyrant, but unhappy lover,' whose prisoner and rival has thus expressed his triumphant resignation, is counselled by his friend to 'go laugh and lie down,' as not having slept for three nights; but answers, in words even more delicious than his supplanter's;

Alas, how can I? he that truly loves Burns out the day in idle fantasies; And when the lamb bleating doth bid good-night Unto the closing day, then tears begin To keep quick time unto the owl, whose voice Shrieks like the bellman in the lover's ears: Love's eye the jewel of sleep, O, seldom wears! The early lark is wakened from her bed, Being only by love's plaints disquieted; And, singing in the morning's ear, she weeps, Being deep in love, at lovers' broken sleeps: