Читать книгу The Complete Works of Shakespeare онлайн

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And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye:

A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d.

Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.

Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.

For valor, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtile as Sphinx, as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were temp’red with Love’s sighs:

O then his lines would ravish savage ears

And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world,

Else none at all in aught proves excellent.