Page 814 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Shepherdess −
A fair one are you − well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.

PERDITA
Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer’s death nor on the birth [80]

Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ th’ season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind

Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.

POLIXENES
Wherefore, gentle maiden, [85]
Do you neglect them?

PERDITA
For I have heard it said
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares

With great creating nature.

POLIXENES
Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art, [90]

Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art [95]
Which does mend nature − change it rather − but
The art itself is nature.

PERDITA
So it is.