I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in my error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.”
How probable do the turns of thought, “captious and intenible sieve,” “the waters of my love,” render the supposition that Perriere’s Emblem of Love and the Sieve had been seen by our dramatist. Cupid appears patient and passive, but the Lover in very evident surprise sees “the rings and rich array” flow through “le crible d’amours.” Cupid’s eyes, in the device, are bound, and the method of binding them corresponds with the lines, Romeo and Juliet(act i. sc. 4, l. 4, vol. vii. p. 23),—
“We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.”
Again, though not in reference to the same subject, there is in Much Ado About Nothing (act v. sc. 1, l. 1, vol. ii. p. 69), the comparison of the sieve to labour in vain. Antonio is giving advice to Leonato when overwhelmed with sorrows,—