Who's there? My woman Helen.
Please you, madam
What hour is it?
Almost midnight, madam.
I have read three hours then: mine eyes are
weak:
Fold down the leaf where I have left: to bed:
Take not away the taper, leave it burning;
And if thou canst awake by four o' the clock,
I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seized me wholly
To your protection I commend me, gods.
From fairies and the tempters of the night
Guard me, beseech ye.
The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd
sense
Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded. Cytherea,
How bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets. That I might touch.
But kiss; one kiss!
Rubies unparagon'd,
How dearly they do't! 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' the
taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her
lids,
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure laced
With blue of heaven's own tinct. But my design,
To note the chamber: I will write all down:
Such and such pictures; there the window;
such
The adornment of her bed; figures; the arras,
Why, such and such; and the contents o' the
story.
Ah, but some natural notes about her body,
Above ten thousand meaner moveables
Would testify, to enrich mine inventory.
O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon
her.
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying.
Come off, come off:
As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard.
'Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,
As strongly as the conscience does within,
To the madding of her lord.
