Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/107

And flecked[C 1][E 1] darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery[C 2] wheels:[E 2] Now, ere the sun advance[E 3] his burning eye 5 The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage[E 4] of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced[C 3] flowers. The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;[E 5] What is her burying grave, that is her womb, 10 And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find, Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle[E 6] is the powerful grace that lies 15 In herbs, plants,[C 4] stones, and their true qualities: For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to[E 7] the earth some special good doth give; Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling[C 5] on abuse: 20

1. 3. flecked] Q 1, fleckeld Q, fleckled F.
2. 4. fiery] Q 1; burning, Q, F.
3. 8. precious-juiced] hyphen Pope.
4. 16. herbs, plants] Q 1; Plants, hearbes Q, F.
5. 20. from … stumbling] Q, F; to vice, and stumbles Q 1.

1. 3. flecked] dappled (not obsolete). The fleckled of F implies little streaks or spots (diminutive fleckle). Compare Much Ado, V. iii. 27.
2. 4. From … wheels] Pope read with Q in the lines erroneously printed at the close of Scene ii., and, with Ff 2–4 here, path-way, made by.
3. 5. advance] lift up, as,(of eyelids) in Tempest, I. ii. 408.
4. 7. osier cage] Steevens quotes Drayton's description, in Polyolbion, xiii., of a hermit filling his osier maund or basket with simples. Shakespeare had the suggestion for this passage from Brooke's poem; it prepares us for the friar's skill in furnishing the sleeping-potion in IV. "Osier cage of ours," possibly not merely for the rhyme's sake, but because the Franciscan had no personal property.
5. 9. her tomb] Steevens compares Lucretius (v. 259): "Omniparens eadem rerum comnune sepulchrum," and Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 911: "The womb of nature and perhaps her grave." Malone adds Pericles, II. iii. 45, 46.
6. 15. mickle] Except in Henry V. (Pistol speaking) this word occurs only in Shakespeare's early plays.
7. 18. to] Hanmer reads to't, making earth the giver. Malone explains earth as inhabitants of the earth.