42 PROSERPINA. 



the least selfish of all lover's songs, the one to which the 

 Duke bids her listen : 



" Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain, 

 The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 

 And the free maids, that weave tJieir thread with bones, 

 Do use to chaunt it." 



(They, the unconscious Fates, weaving the fair vanity of 

 life with death) ; and the burden of it is 



" My part of Death, no one so true 

 Did share it." 



Therefore she says, in the great first scene, u Was not 

 this love indeed ?" and in the less heeded closing one, 

 her heart then happy with the knitters in the sun, 



" And all those sayings will I over-swear, 

 And all those swearings keep as true in soul 

 As doth that orbed continent the Fire 

 That severs day from night." 



Or, at least, did once sever day from night, and perhaps 

 does still in Illyria. Old England must seek new images 

 for her loves from gas and electric sparks, not to say 

 furnace fire. 



I am obliged, by press of other work, to set down these 

 notes in cruel shortness : and many a reader may be dis- 

 posed to question utterly the standard by which the 

 measurement is made. It will not be found, on reference 



