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“The course of true love never did run smooth”

(William Shakespeare)

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Extracted from Act I, Scene i

William Shakespeare

LYSANDER.
How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HERMIA.
Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Between them from the tempest of my eyes.

LYSANDER.
Ah me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth:
But either it was different in blood,--

HERMIA.
O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low!

LYSANDER.
Or else misgrafted in respect of years;--

HERMIA.
O spite! too old to be engag’d to young!

LYSANDER.
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends:

HERMIA.
O hell! to choose love by another’s eye!

LYSANDER.
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

HERMIA.
If then true lovers have ever cross’d,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross;
As due to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.

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