What angel wakes me from my
flowery bed?
I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.
I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.
Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
It is enough I may but call her mine.
But do thy worst to steal thyself,
For term of live thou art assurèd mine;
And life no longer than thy love will stay,
for it dependent upon that love of thine.
Who stays it still withal? With lawyers in the vacation, for they sleep between term and term and then they perceive not how Time moves.
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.
I dare do all that may become a man.
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the floud, leads on to fortune ommitted, all the voyage of their lives are bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
With your image and your love, though absent, you are present every hour. Because you can't go away over the limit of my thoughts, and I am with them every hour, and they are with you.