William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

MY gentle Puck, come hither, thou remember’st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid’s music.

That very time, I saw, but thou couldst not,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Cupid all armed: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal, throned by the west;

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:

But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell;

It fell upon a little western flower,—

Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,—

And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.

Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once.

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make a man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

Fetch me this herb: and be thou here again,

Ere the Leviathan can swim a league.

Puck.—I’ll put a girdle round about the earth

In forty minutes.

*****

Oberon.—Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.

Puck.—Ay, there it is.

Oberon.—I pray thee, give it me.

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania, some time of the night,

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:

And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes,

And make her full of hateful fantasies.