Romeo und Julia (1623)

Lady Capulet:

This night you shall behold him at our feast.

Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,

And find delight writ there with beauty's pen.

Examine every married lineament,

And see how one another lends content

And what obscured in this fair volume lies

Find written in the margent of his eyes.

This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

To beautify him only lacks a cover.

Romeo:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this.

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet:

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this.

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Romeo:

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet:

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo:

O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!

They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet:

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Romeo:

Then move not while my prayer's effect I take.

Juliet:

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,

And therefore thou mayst think my 'haviour light.

But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true

Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

But that thou overheardest, ere I was ware,

My true love-passion. Therefore pardon me,

And not impute this yielding to light love,

Which the dark night hath so discovered.

Friar Laurence:

In one respect I'll thy assistant be.

For this alliance may so happy prove

To turn to your households' rancour to pure love

Juliet:

O God, I have an ill-divining soul!

Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low,

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.

Either my eyesight fails, or thou lookest pale.

Romeo:

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead -

Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think! -

And breathed such life with kisses in my lips

That I revived and was an emperor.

Juliet:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say 'It lightens.