I am very cold, and all the stars are out too,

The little stars, and all, that look like aglets:

The sun has seen my folly. Palamon!

Alas, no; he’s in heaven. Where am I now?

Yonder’s the sea, and there’s a ship; how’t tumbles!

And there’s a rock lies watching under water,

Now, now, it beats upon it; now, now, now,

There’s a leak sprung, a sound one; how they cry!

Spoon her before the wind, you’ll lose all else:

Up with a course or two, and tack about, boys.

Good night, good night, you’re gone. I am very hungry.

Would I could find a fine frog; he would tell me

News from all parts o’th’ world, then would I make

A carrack of a cockleshell, and sail

By east and north-east to the King of Pygmies,

For he tells fortunes rarely. Now my father,

Twenty to one, is trust up in a trice

Tomorrow morning; I’ll say never a word.

[IV, ii, 1–54] As the noble cousins, Palamon and Arcite, prepare to fight a duel to the death for love of her, Emilia compares their portraits, considering the conflict raging within her own heart:

Yet I may bind those wounds up, that must open

And bleed to death for my sake else; I’ll choose,

And end their strife. Two such young handsome men

Shall never fall for me; their weeping mothers,

Following the dead cold ashes of their sons,

Shall never curse my cruelty. Good heaven,

What a sweet face has Arcite! If wise Nature

With all her best endowments, all those beauties

She sows into the births of noble bodies,

Were here a mortal woman, and had in her

The coy denials of young maids, yet doubtless

She would run mad for this man. What an eye,

Of what a fiery sparkle and quick sweetness,

Has this young prince! Here love himself sits smiling.

Just such another, wanton Ganymede

Set Jove afire with, and enforced the god

Snatch up the goodly boy, and set him by him,

A shining constellation. What a brow,

Of what a spacious majesty, he carries,

Arched like the great-eyed Juno’s, but far sweeter,

Smoother than Pelops’ shoulder! Fame and honour,

Me thinks, from hence, as from a promontory

Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings, and sing

To all the under world the loves and fights

Of gods, and such men near ’em. Palamon

Is but his foil, to him a mere dull shadow.

He’s swarth and meagre, of an eye as heavy

As if he had lost his mother; a still temper,

No stirring in him, no alacrity,

Of all this sprightly sharpness not a smile;

Yet these that we count errors may become him;

Narcissus was a sad boy, but a heavenly.

O, who can find the bent of woman’s fancy?

I am a fool, my reason is lost in me,

I have no choice, and I have lied so lewdly

That women ought to beat me. On my knees