Nature and Elements

A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d: “Give me,” quoth I: “Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries.

First Witch: When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch: When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.

The wren goes to ’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive.

How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice, and yond tall anchoring bark Diminish’d to her cock, her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge, That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.

Tigers, not daughters.

The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

But mice and rats and such small deer Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man!

It is the very error of the moon; She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad.

The enchafed flood.

Hills whose heads touch heaven.

An old black ram Is tupping your white ewe.

When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain; A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. 40

Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

Lay her i’ the earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!

Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.

Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away.

’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.

The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

The dreadful summit of the cliff That beetles o’er his base into the sea.

The air bites shrewdly.