Page 340 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings −
I ha’t! [155]
When in your motion you are hot and dry −
As make your bouts more violent to that end −

And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, [160]
Our purpose may hold there. But stay, what noise?

Enter Queen.

QUEEN
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES
Drown’d? O, where?

QUEEN
There is a willow grows askant the brook [165]
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them. [170]

There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, [175]
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, [180]
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.