Animals and Nature

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

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!

An old black ram Is tupping your white ewe.

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

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.

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

Springes to catch woodcocks.

Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird’s throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither: Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Yesterday the bird of night did sit, Even at noonday, upon the marketplace, Hooting and shrieking.

Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavor in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience: for so work the honeybees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

To hold opinion with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men. 18

Bassanio: Do all men kill the things they do not love? Shylock: Hates any man the thing he would not kill?

A harmless necessary cat.

Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause, But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.

Some men there are love not a gaping pig; Some, that are mad if they behold a cat.

Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time.

Baited like eagles having lately bath’d… As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.

And lards the lean earth as he walks along.