PUCK.
Fairy king, attend and mark.
I do hear the morning lark.
OBERON.
Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after night’s shade.
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand’ring moon.
TITANIA.
Come, my lord, and in our flight,
Tell me how it came this night
That I sleeping here was found
With these mortals on the ground.
[Exeunt. Horns sound within.]
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus and Train.
THESEUS.
Go, one of you, find out the forester;
For now our observation is perform’d;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go.
Dispatch I say, and find the forester.
[Exit an Attendant.]
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
HIPPOLYTA.
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear
With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem’d all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
THESEUS.
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee’d and dewlap’d like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match’d in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.
Judge when you hear.—But, soft, what nymphs are these?