PALAMON. Our stars must glister with new fire, or be Today extinct. Our argument is love, Which, if the goddess of it grant, she gives Victory too. Then blend your spirits with mine, You whose free nobleness do make my cause Your personal hazard. To the goddess Venus Commend we our proceeding, and implore Her power unto our party. [_Here they kneel as formerly._] Hail, sovereign queen of secrets, who hast power To call the fiercest tyrant from his rage And weep unto a girl; that hast the might Even with an eye-glance to choke Mars’s drum And turn th’ alarm to whispers; that canst make A cripple flourish with his crutch, and cure him Before Apollo; that mayst force the king To be his subject’s vassal, and induce Stale gravity to dance. The polled bachelor, Whose youth, like wanton boys through bonfires, Have skipped thy flame, at seventy thou canst catch, And make him, to the scorn of his hoarse throat, Abuse young lays of love. What godlike power Hast thou not power upon? To Phœbus thou Add’st flames hotter than his; the heavenly fires Did scorch his mortal son, thine him. The huntress, All moist and cold, some say, began to throw Her bow away and sigh. Take to thy grace Me, thy vowed soldier, who do bear thy yoke As ’twere a wreath of roses, yet is heavier Than lead itself, stings more than nettles. I have never been foul-mouthed against thy law, Ne’er revealed secret, for I knew none—would not, Had I kenned all that were. I never practised Upon man’s wife, nor would the libels read Of liberal wits. I never at great feasts Sought to betray a beauty, but have blushed At simpering sirs that did. I have been harsh To large confessors, and have hotly asked them If they had mothers—I had one, a woman, And women ’twere they wronged. I knew a man Of eighty winters, this I told them, who A lass of fourteen brided; ’twas thy power To put life into dust. The aged cramp Had screwed his square foot round; The gout had knit his fingers into knots, Torturing convulsions from his globy eyes Had almost drawn their spheres, that what was life In him seemed torture. This anatomy Had by his young fair fere a boy, and I Believed it was his, for she swore it was, And who would not believe her? Brief, I am To those that prate and have done, no companion; To those that boast and have not, a defier; To those that would and cannot, a rejoicer. Yea, him I do not love that tells close offices The foulest way, nor names concealments in The boldest language. Such a one I am, And vow that lover never yet made sigh Truer than I. O, then, most soft sweet goddess, Give me the victory of this question, which Is true love’s merit, and bless me with a sign Of thy great pleasure. [_Here music is heard; doves are seen to flutter. They fall again upon their faces, then on their knees._]