"The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
And did him service; he touched the ports desired,"
And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
"He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."
So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:
"O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;
Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
O'erbear the shores of my mortality."
The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is this line:
"Eyes that do mislead the morn."
Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.
In that marvellous play, the "Midsummer Nights Dream," is one of the most extravagant things in literature:
"Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music."