Monday, February 9, 2015


ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand  ~ 
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: ~
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand ~ 
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.~

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take

(lines 93-106)
Read more »

Scene. -- A wide stretch of fallow ground recently 
sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness. Three 
large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing 
the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a dull grey. 

Rook. --     Throughout the field I find no grain;
                  The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!
Starling. -- Aye: patient pecking now is vain
                  Throughout the field, I find . . .
Rook. --                                                        No grain!
Pigeon. -- Nor will be, comrade, till it rain,
                 Or genial thawings loose the lorn land
                 Throughout the field.
Rook. --                                        I find no grain:
                 The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!
Read more »