"Methinks, in thee some blessed spirit doth speak His powerful sound within an organ weak: And what impossibility would slay In common sense, sense saves another way. Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate Worth name of life, in thee hath estimate, Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, honor, all That happiness and prime can happy call." So this ennobled daughter of a doctor aspires to wed the noble son of a countess. Shakspeare attacks the social etiquette of his own age and of all secluded circles. Helena should be filled with grief for the father lately dead; but her "imagination carries no favor in it, but only Bertram's." "I am undone: there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. It were all one, That I should love a bright, particular star, And think to wed it, he is so above me: In his bright radiance and collateral light Must I be comforted, not in his sphere." Then she gives a touch of woman's petulance at being so ensnared:-- "'Twas pretty, though a plague, To see him every hour; to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, In my heart's table,--heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favor." How frank and strong is the expression of her love! The lines are chiselled by a delicate distinctness: they suggest her profile. The verse has the high instep of a woman who can be haughty enough to crush the blossoms of this new, surprising sentiment. She does not half listen to the gossip of Parolles. It is the absent Bertram who is drawing her thoughts to wander in the distance, to be in imagination for him "A thousand loves, His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, His faith, his sweet disaster." It is a pity "that wishing well had not a body in 't."