Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 0

A Satire Anthology

Автор
Год написания книги
2017
<< 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ... 104 >>
На страницу:
7 из 104
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I’ll give no more, but I’ll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will no more be worth
Than gold in mines where none doth draw it forth;
And all your graces no more use shall have
Than a sundial in a grave.
Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me
Love her who doth neglect both thee and me,
To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all three.

    John Donne.

SHAKESPEAREAN SATIRE

FROM “KING HENRY IV”

MY liege, I did deny no prisoners;
But I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dress’d,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap’d,
Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.
He was perfuméd like a milliner,
And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took ’t away again;
Who, therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff: and still he smil’d and talk’d,
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He question’d me; among the rest, demanded
My prisoners in your Majesty’s behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester’d with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answer’d neglectingly I know not what,
He should, or he should not; for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman
Of guns and drums and wounds – God save the mark! —
And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
This villainous saltpetre should be digg’d
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald, unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer’d indirectly, as I said;
And I beseech you, let not this report
Come current for an accusation
Betwixt my love and your high Majesty.

    Shakespeare.

FROM “LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST”

THIS fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please.
He is wit’s pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.
He can carve, too, and lisp; why, this is he
That kiss’d his hand away in courtesy;
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at table, chides the dice
In honourable terms; nay, he can sing
A mean most meanly; and in ushering,
Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.
This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To show his teeth as white as whale’s bone;
And consciences that will not die in debt
Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet.



See where it comes! – Behaviour, what wert thou
Till this man show’d thee? and what art thou now?

    Shakespeare.

FROM “AS YOU LIKE IT”

ALL the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
<< 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ... 104 >>
На страницу:
7 из 104

Другие электронные книги автора Carolyn Wells