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John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Page 144

 
 
William Shakespeare. (1564–1616) (continued)
 
1679
    Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1680
    To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till we find it stopping a bung-hole?
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1681
    ’T were to consider too curiously, to consider so.
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1682
    Imperious Cæsar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1683
    Lay her i’ the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! 1
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1684
    A ministering angel shall my sister be. 2
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1685
    Sweets to the sweet: farewell!
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1686
    I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid,
And not have strew’d thy grave.
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1687
    Though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous.
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
1688
    Forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.
          Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
 
Note 1.
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
Alfred Tennyson: In Memoriam, xviii. [back]
Note 2.
A ministering angel thou.—Sir Walter Scott: Marmion, canto vi. st. 30. [back]