Читать книгу The Complete Works of Shakespeare онлайн

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She passes praise, then praise too short doth blot.

A wither’d hermit, fivescore winters worn,

Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:

Beauty doth varnish age, as if new born,

And gives the crutch the cradle’s infancy.

O, ’tis the sun that maketh all things shine!

King.

By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.

Ber.

Is ebony like her? O [wood] divine!

A wife of such wood were felicity.

O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?

That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,

If that she learn not of her eye to look:

No face is fair that is not full so black.

King.

O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeons, and the school of night;

And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well.

Ber.

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of

O, if in black my lady’s brows be deck’d,

It mourns that painting [and] usurping hair

Should ravish doters with a false aspect:

And therefore is she born to make black fair.

Her favor turns the fashion of the days,

For native blood is counted painting now;