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The fairies

An opera
  
  
  
  
  
  

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SCENE IV.
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SCENE IV.

Enter HELENA.
HERMIA.
Good speed, fair Helena, whither away?

HELENA.
Call you me fair? that fair again unsay,
Demetrius loves you,
AIR.
O Hermia fair, O happy, happy fair,
Your eyes are load-stars, and your tongue's sweet air;
More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear:
O teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of your lover's heart.


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HERMIA.
I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.

HELENA.
Oh that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!

HERMIA.
Take comfort; he no more shall see my face,
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
AIR.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem'd Athens like a paradise to me:
O then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn'd a heaven into a hell!

LYSANDER.
Helen, to you our minds we will unfold;
To-morrow night, when Phœbe doth behold
Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
(A time that lovers flights doth still conceal)
Through Athens' gate have we devis'd to steal.

HERMIA.
And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsels sweet;

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There my Lysander and myself shall meet,
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,
To seek new friends and strange companions.
Farewel, sweet play-fellow.

LYSANDER.
Helen adieu,
As you on him, Demetrius doat on you.

[Exeunt Lys. and Her.