“If you do love me, you will find me out. Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof. Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music: that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream, And watery death-bed for him. He may win; And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch: such it is As are those dulcet sounds in break of day That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear And summon him to marriage.” In the sad ending, too, of the _Moor of Venice_ (act v. sc. 2, l. 146, vol. viii. p. 581), after Othello had said of Desdemona,— “Nay, had she been true, If heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I’d not have sold her for it:” and the full proof of innocence having been brought forward, Emilia desires to be laid by her dead “Mistress’ side,” and inquires mournfully (l. 249, p. 586),— “What did thy song bode, lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan, And die in music. [_Singing._] Willow, willow, willow. Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor, So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true; So speaking as I think, I die, I die. [_Dies._]” After this long dissertation _anent_ swans, there may be readers who will press hard upon me with the couplet from Coleridge,— “Swans sing before they die: ’twere no bad thing, Should certain persons die before they sing.” From Heraldry itself the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act iii. sc. 2, l. 201, vol. ii. p. 239) borrows one of its most beautiful comparisons; it is in the passage where Helena so passionately reproaches Hermia for supposed treachery,— “O, is all forgot? All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted; But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.”