What is still-closing but still-piecing, the silent reunion after severance? What is to wound the loud winds but to wound the air that sings with piercing?
But as to the third substitution, I beg permission through your pages to enter a caveat. If
we had no proof from the text of Shakspeare that violent is the correct reading, I fancy that any reader's common sense would tell him that it is more an appropriate and trenchant term than volant. "What judgment would stoop from this to this?" Volant, moreover, is not English, but French, and as such is used in Henry V.; but happily, in this case, we have most abundant evidence from the text of Shakspeare that he wrote violent in the above passage. In Henry VIII., Act I. Sc. 1., we have the passage,
"We may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running."
In Othello, Act III. Sc. 3., we have the passage,
"Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back."
These passages prove that violent is a true Shakspearian epithet for velocity. But how exquisitely appropriate is the epithet when applied to the velocity of a ball issuing from the mouth of a cannon: and here we have full confirmation from Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1., where we read: