A Midsummer Night’s Dream - страница 5

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favors;

In those freckles live their savors.

I must go seek some dewdrops here

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits. I’ll be gone.

Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

ROBIN

The King doth keep his revels here tonight.

Take heed the Queen come not within his sight,

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath

Because that she, as her attendant, hath

A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king;

She never had so sweet a changeling.

And jealous Oberon would have the child

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild.

But she perforce withholds the loved boy,

Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her

joy.

And now they never meet in grove or green,

By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen,

But they do square, that all their elves for fear

Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.

FAIRY

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery,

Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern

And bootless make the breathless huswife churn,

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,

Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that “Hobgoblin” call you and “sweet Puck,”

You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

Are not you he?

ROBIN Thou speakest aright.

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.

And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob

And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she

And “Tailor!” cries and falls into a cough,

And then the whole choir hold their hips and loffe

And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

But room, fairy. Here comes Oberon.

FAIRY

And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Enter Oberon the King of Fairies at one door, with his

train, and Titania the Queen at another, with hers.

OBERON

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA

What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence.

I have forsworn his bed and company.

OBERON

Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy lord?

TITANIA

Then I must be thy lady. But I know

When thou hast stolen away from Fairyland

And in the shape of Corin sat all day

Playing on pipes of corn and versing love

To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,

Come from the farthest steep of India,

But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

Your buskined mistress and your warrior love,

To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

To give their bed joy and prosperity?

OBERON

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering

night

From Perigouna, whom he ravished,

And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,

With Ariadne and Antiopa?

TITANIA

These are the forgeries of jealousy;

And never, since the middle summer’s spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge have sucked up from the sea

Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land,

Hath every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents.

The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,

The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.

The nine-men’s-morris is filled up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,

For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.

The human mortals want their winter here.

No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.