You are no friend to innocent goblins, but abettor to house-breakers. You are conspirator in many direful deeds, attending base nocturnal councils, and tacitly arraigning yourself against the law. "Let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, ... governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress, the moon, under whose countenance we—steal." Was it not well said, not frankly?
Your gossip is the ominous owl, and not Titania.
Your inconstancy, to come on delicate ground, shineth above your other characteristics. Since we have seen your color come and go, we surmise there is no dearth of intrigue and repartee up there; and being, moreover, well acquainted with the texture of your red and your gray veil, we infer that you masquerade periodically at very unseasonable hours. Of painting your complexion we are disposed to acquit you; yet it is a severe blow to us to learn from the most trustworthy sources, that you wax.
Selene, Artemis! you are worldly beyond worldlings. We hear that you have quarters, and that you jingle them triumphantly in the ears of Orion, who is nobody but a poor hunter. Beware of the exasperation of the lower classes! whose awakening is what we call below, a French Revolution.
Who, indeed, that hath a mote in his eye, cannot still discern a huge beam in yours? You are in grievous need of a resident missionary, considering that you persist in obstinate schisms, and flaunt that exploded Orientalism, the Crescent, in the face and eyes of Christendom.
You are much more distant and reserved, O beguiler! than you pretend. Your temper is said to be volcanic.
You that were Diana! who is this Falstaffian, Toby Belchian, Kriss Kringlish person we see about your premises? He hangeth his great, ruddy, comfortable phiz out of your casements, and holdeth it sidewise with a wink or a leer. We look on him as an officious rascal. He peereth where you only, by privilege, have permission to enter. He hath the evil eye. He thinketh himself a proper substitute for you, and King of the Illuminari; he reproduceth your smile, and scattereth your largesses; he maketh faces—we say it shudderingly—at your worshippers below. Frequently hath he appropriated kisses that were blown to you personally, or consigned to you for delivery from one sweetheart to another.
O Lady, O Light-dispenser! think, we hereby beseech you, of the danger of his being taken for you! Picture the discomfiture of your minstrel, who, intoning a rapturous recital of your charms, and casting about for a sight of your delectable loveliness, is confronted instead with that broad, ingenuous vagabond! In some such despairing rage as the minstrel's must have been the inventor of the German tongue, who discarded all other chances of observation after once beholding this thing ycleped your Man, and angrily insisted on "Der Mond"—the Moon, he—as the proper mode of speech.
Get you straightway a more acceptable minion, one of more chivalric habit, of more spare and ascetic exterior. Your credit and our comfort demand it. "Pray you, remember."