This did so vexe thee, Death, that thou were faine To hire an apoplexe, to shend his braine, Till thou
couldst come thyselfe, and hinder so That sprightly nectar which from it did flow; And yet his puissant witt was nere so drie, But even in midst of most infirmitie It crown'd his last worke with so faire an end, 'Twould puzzle the best witts alive to mend.
How
couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child,
Though the wane of age is mine, Though youth's brilliant flush be thine, Still I'm doom'd to sigh for thee, Blest, if thou
couldst sigh for me!
Casting these infamies in topographical terms, Chillingworth says: "[T]here was no one place so secret,--no high place nor lowly place, where thou
couldst have escaped me" (1:253).
"In the midst of the world," the creator said to Adam, "I have placed thee, so thou
couldst look around so much easier, and see all that is in it.
" Yet not to thine eternal restingplace/Shalt thou retire alone, nor
couldst thou wish/Couch more magnificent.
(22) Taylor's one-man show seems to have been of this type, a lampoon of Fennor called "A maundering Roguish creature"--"a part," he adds, "thou
couldst haue Acted well by nature." (23) Despite the clash of theatrical styles, which restores the apples-and-oranges problem, Taylor never doubts the audience's ability to judge the two performances against each other.
Besides this, he tries to show off his intellectual superiority and his masculine power over Cleopatra: "O love, / That thou
couldst see my wars today, and knew'st / The royal occupation, thou shouldst see / A workman in't" (IV.4.15-17).
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now, Will-be a totter'd weed, of small worth held: Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days: To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise, How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use, If thou
couldst answer, This fair child of mine Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse, Proving his beauty by succession thine!
IF THOU
COULDST KNOW I think if thou
couldst know, Oh soul that will complain, What lies concealed below Our burden and our pain; How just our anguish brings Nearer those longed-for things We seek for now in vain,-- I think thou wouldst rejoice, and not complain.
But I think in six months it should be long enough to hang well below my ears and in a year as long as thou
couldst ever wish.
O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,'
couldst thou only see!"
