- George Bernard Shaw
When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column. You think that are Ann’s suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked-down quarry, the destined. - William Shakespeare
She is a woman, therefore may be woo’d; She is a woman, therefore may be won; She is Lavinia, therefore must be loved. Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But List’s effect is tempest after sun; love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done: Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies. O, how this spring of love resembleth, The uncertain glory of an April day! A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound. And when Love speaks, the voice oa all the gods, Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. A pair of star – cross’d lovers. And in this state she gallops night by night, Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love. See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? What’s in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet. At lover’s perjuries, They say, Jove laughs. O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears! Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaways’ eyes may wink, and Romeo, Leap to thesearms, untalk’d of and unseen. Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the world will be in the garish sun. For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Yet mark’d I where the bolt of cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. But love is blind and lovers cannot see, the pretty follies that themselves commit. I am bewitched with the rogue’s company. If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll hanged. Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance? Speaks low, if you speak love. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot on sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand. We that are true lovers run into strange capers. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad, Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. if ever, – as that ever may be near, – You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, Then shall you know wounds invisible, That love’s keen arrows make. Down on your knees, And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love. Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,”Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Tags: George Bernard Shaw, Love, William Shakespeare
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