Life and Existence

For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace!

How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry!

O! I am Fortune’s fool.

They have made worms’ meat of me.

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.

It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens.

This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry.

My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

A pair of star-cross’d lovers.

The true beginning of our end. 10

The true beginning of our end. 10

But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigur’d so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images, And grows to something of great constancy, But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigur’d so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images, And grows to something of great constancy, But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, “Behold!” The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.

To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high, Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock: My thoughts are minutes.

When time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men’s lives.

As in a theater, the eyes of men, After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

So Judas did to Christ: but he, in twelve, Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none. God save the king! Will no man say, amen?