all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lin’d
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.”
Touch. I’ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours excepted. It is the right butter-women’s rank to market.
Ros. Out, fool!
Touch. For a taste:
If a hart do lack a hind,
Let him seek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So be sure will Rosalind.
Wint’red garments must be lin’d,
So must slender Rosalind.
They that reap must sheaf and bind,
Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find,
Must find love’s prick and Rosalind.
This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you infect yourself with them?
Ros. Peace, you dull fool, I found them on a tree.
Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.
Ros. I’ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i’ th’ country; for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar.
Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.
Enter Celia with a writing.
Ros.
Peace,
Here comes my sister reading, stand aside.
Cel. [Reads.]
“Why should this [a] desert be?
For it is unpeopled? No!
Tongues I’ll hang on every tree,
That shall civil sayings show:
Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage,
That the stretching of a span
Buckles in his sum of age;
Some, of violated vows
’Twixt the souls of friend and friend;
But upon the fairest boughs,
Or at every sentence end,
Will I ‘Rosalinda’ write,
Teaching all that read to know
The quintessence of every sprite
Heaven would in little show.
Therefore heaven Nature charg’d
That one body should be fill’d
With all graces wide-enlarg’d.
Nature presently distill’d
Helen’s cheek, but not [her] heart,
Cleopatra’s majesty,
Atalanta’s better part,
Sad Lucretia’s modesty.
Thus Rosalind of many parts
By heavenly synod was devis’d,
Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,
To have the touches dearest priz’d.
Heaven would that she these gifts should have,
And I to live and die her slave.”
Ros. O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, “Have patience, good people!”
Cel. How now? back, friends! Shepherd, go off a little. Go with him, sirrah.
Touch. Come, shepherd, let us make an honorable retreat, though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.
Exit [with Corin].
Cel. Didst thou hear these verses?
Ros. O yes, I heard them all, and more too, for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.
Cel. That’s no matter; the feet might bear the verses.
Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse.
Cel. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hang’d and carv’d upon these trees?
Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm tree. I was never so berhym’d since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.
Cel. Trow you who hath done this?
Ros. Is it a man?
Cel. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. Change you color?
Ros. I prithee who?
Cel. O Lord, Lord, it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be remov’d with earthquakes, and so encounter.
Ros. Nay, but who is it?
Cel. Is it possible?
Ros. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is.
Cel. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!
Ros. Good my complexion, dost thou think, though I am caparison’d like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South-sea
