These golden flies into his mug I’ll throw,
And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow.
Shakespeare, too, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, alludes to the love philtre:
Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell,
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it Love-in-Idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I show’d thee once,
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote