SIMON 'Tis now nine months almost, Since I saw home. What new friends has John made? Or keeps he his first love?--I did suspect Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know, John has prov'd false to her, for Margaret weeps. It is a scurvy brother. SIR WALTER Fie upon it. All men are false, I think. The date of love Is out, expired, its stories all grown stale, O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale Of Hero and Leander. SIMON I have known some men that are too general-contemplative for the narrow passion. I am in some sort a _general_ lover. MARGARET In the name of the boy God, who plays at hood-man-blind with the Muses, and cares not whom he catches: what is it _you_ love? SIMON Simply, all things that live, From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, That makes short holyday in the sun beam, And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird With little wings, yet greatly venturous In the upper sky. The fish in th' other element, That knows no touch of eloquence. What else? Yon tall and elegant stag, Who paints a dancing shadow of his horns In the water, where he drinks. MARGARET I myself love all these things, yet so as with a difference:-- for example, some animals better than others, some men rather than other men; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and asinine mule. Your humour goes to confound all qualities. What sports do you use in the forest?-- SIMON Not many; some few, as thus:-- To see the sun to bed, and to arise, Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, With all his fires and travelling glories round him. Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn; And how the woods berries and worms provide Without their pains, when earth has nought beside To answer their small wants. To view the graceful deer come tripping by, Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why, Like bashful younkers in society. To mark the structure of a plant or tree, And all fair things of earth, how fair they be. MARGARET (_smiling_) And, afterwards them paint in simile. SIR WALTER Mistress Margaret will have need of some refreshment. Please you, we have some poor viands within. MARGARET Indeed I stand in need of them.