The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 112

(5) _Ophelia_ (sings).

White his shroud as the mountain snow Larded with sweet flowers, Which bewept to the grave did go With true-love showers.

_Hamlet_, act iv, sc. 5 (35).

(6) _Queen._

Whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather those flowers.

_Cymbeline_, act i, sc. 5 (1).

(7) _Song._

Hark! hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings, And Phbus 'gins to rise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies.

_Ibid._, act ii, sc. 3 (21).

(8) _Arviragus._

With fairest flowers, While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 2 (218).

(9) _Belarius._

Here's a few flowers; but 'bout midnight, more; The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night Are strewings fitt'st for graves. Upon their faces.

You were as flowers, now withered; even so These herblets shall, which we upon you strew.

_Ibid._ (283).

(10) _Juliet._

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

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 2 (121).

(11) _t.i.tania._

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer-buds.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act ii, sc. 1 (110).

(12) _Friar Laurence._

I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers.

The earth that's Nature's mother is her tomb; What is her burying grave that is her womb, And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find, Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some and yet all different.

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give, Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometimes by action dignified.

Within the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence and medicine power: For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 3 (7).

(13) _Iago._

Though other things grow fair against the sun, Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.

_Oth.e.l.lo_, act ii, sc. 3 (382).

(14) _Dumain._

Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom, pa.s.sing fair Playing in the wanton air; Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, can pa.s.sage find.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act iv, sc. 3 (102).

(15)

Fair flowers that are not gathered in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time.

_Venus and Adonis_ (131).

(16)

The flowers are sweet, the colours fresh and trim, But true-sweet beauty lived and died with him.

_Venus and Adonis_ (1079).

(17)

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

_Sonnet_ xviii.

(18)

With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare, That Heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.