Page 815 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

POLIXENES

Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.

PERDITA
I’ll not put
The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; [100]

No more than, were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore
Desire to breed by me. Here’s flowers for you:
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,

The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ th’ sun [105]
And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age. Y’are very welcome.

(She gives them flowers)

CAMILLO
I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
And only live by gazing.

PERDITA
Out, alas! [110]
You’d be so lean that blasts of January

Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair’st friend, (To Florizel)
I would I had some flowers o’ th’ spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
(To Mopsa and the other girls)

That wear upon your virgin branches yet [115]
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall
From Dis’s waggon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, [120]
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady