prophaned by touching it,
he was a blushing pilgrim, and would kiss it for atonement. "Good
pilgrim," answered the lady, "your devotion shews by far too mannerly
and too courtly: saints have hands, which pilgrims may touch, but kiss
not." "Have not saints lips, and pilgrims too?" said Romeo. "Aye,"
said the lady, "lips which they must use in prayer." "O then, my dear
saint," said Romeo, "hear my prayer and grant it, lest I despair." In
such like allusions and loving conceits they were engaged, when the
lady was called away to her mother. And Romeo enquiring who her mother
was, discovered that the lady whose peerless beauty he was so much
struck with, was young Juliet, daughter and heir to the lord Capulet,
the great enemy of the Mountagues; and that he had unknowingly engaged
his heart to his foe. This troubled him, but it could not dissuade
him from loving. As little rest had Juliet, when she found that the
gentleman that she had been talking with was Romeo and a Mountague,
for she had been suddenly smit with the same hasty and inconsiderate
passion for Romeo, which he had conceived for her; and a prodigious
birth of love it seemed to her, that she must love her enemy, and that
her affections should settle there, where family considerations should
induce her chiefly to hate.

It being midnight, Romeo with his companions departed; but they soon
missed him, for unable to stay away from the house where he had left
his heart, he leaped the wall of an orchard which was at the back of
Juliet's house. Here he had not been long, ruminating on his new love,
when Juliet appeared above at a window, through which her exceeding
beauty seemed to break like the light of the sun in the east; and the
moon, which shone in the orchard with a faint light, appeared to Romeo
as if sick and pale with grief at the superior lustre of this new
sun. And she leaning her hand upon her cheek, he passionately wished
himself a glove upon that hand, that he might touch her cheek. She all
this while thinking herself alone, fetched a deep sigh, and exclaimed,
"Ah me!" Romeo, enraptured to hear her speak, said softly, and unheard
by her, "O speak again, bright angel, for such you appear, being over
my head, like a winged messenger from heaven whom mortals fall back to
gaze upon." She, unconscious of being overheard, and full of the new
passion which that night's adventure had given birth to, called upon
her lover by name (whom she supposed absent): "O Ro