A Midsummer Night's Dream

If you will patiently dance in our round142

And see our moonlight revels, go with us;

If not, shun me, and I will spare144 your haunts.

OBERON Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.

TITANIA Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away.

We shall chide downright147, if I longer stay.

Exeunt [Titania and her train]

OBERON Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from148 this grove

Till I torment thee for this injury.

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb'rest

Since once I sat upon a promontory151,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath153

That the rude154 sea grew civil at her song,

And certain155 stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid's music.

ROBIN I remember.

OBERON That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Cupid all armed; a certain160 aim he took

At a fair vestal161 throned by the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As163 it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.

But I might164 see young Cupid's fiery shaft

Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;

And the imperial votress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free167.

Yet marked I where the bolt168 of Cupid fell.

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple170 with love's wound,