Page 853 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

That e’er the sun shone bright on.

PAULINA
O Hermione, [95]
As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what’s seen now! Sir, you yourself

Have said, and writ so; but your writing now
Is colder than that theme: ‘She had not been, [100]
Nor was not to be equall’d; − thus your verse

Flow’d with her beauty once: ’tis shrewdly ebb’d,
To say you have seen a better.

SERVANT
Pardon, madam:
The one I have almost forgot, − your pardon, −
The other, when she has obtain’d your eye, [105]

Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,
Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else; make proselytes
Of who she but bid follow.

PAULINA

How! not women?

SERVANT

Women will love her, that she is a woman [110]
More worth than any man; men, that she is
The rarest of all women.

LEONTES
Go, Cleomenes;
Yourself, assisted with your honour’d friends,

Bring them to our embracement.
Exeunt (Cleomenes and others).
Still, ’tis strange

He thus should steal upon us.