at bauble, love, my friend:
That glist'ning toy of listless laziness,
Fit only for green girls and growing boys
T' amuse themselves withal. Can an inconstant,
A fickle changeling, move a man like Percy?
PERCY. Cold youth, how can you speak of that you feel not?
You never lov'd.
ROLFE. Hum! yes, in mine own way;
Marry, 'twas not with sighs and folded arms;
For mirth I sought in it, not misery.
Sir, I have ambled through all love's gradations
Most jollily, and seriously the whilst.
I have sworn oaths of love on my knee, yet laugh'd not;
Complaints and chidings heard, but heeded not;
Kiss'd the cheek clear from tear-drops, and yet wept not;
Listen'd to vows of truth, which I believed not;
And after have been jilted--
PERCY. Well!
ROLFE. And car'd not.
PERCY. Call you this loving?
ROLFE. Aye, and wisely loving.
Not, sir, to have the current of one's blood
Froz'n with a frown, and molten with a smile;
Make ebb and flood under a lady Luna,
Liker the moon in changing than in chasteness.
'Tis not to be a courier, posting up
To the seventh heav'n, or down to the gloomy centre,
On the fool's errand of a wanton--pshaw!
Women! they're made of whimsies and caprice,
So variant and so wild, that, ty'd to a God,
They'd dally with the devil for a change.--
Rather than wed a European dame,
I'd take a squaw o' the woods, and get papooses.
PERCY. If Cupid burn thee not for heresy,
Love is no longer catholic religion.
ROLFE. An' if he do, I'll die a sturdy martyr.
And to the last preach to thee, pagan Percy,
Till I have made a convert. Answer me,
Is not this idol of thy heathen worship
That sent thee hither a despairing pilgrim;
Thy goddess, Geraldine, is she not false?
PERCY. Most false!
ROLFE. For shame, then; cease adoring her;
Untwine the twisted cable of your arms,
Heave from your freighted bosom all its charge,
In one full sigh, and puff it strongly from you;
Then, raising your earth-reading eyes to Heaven,
Laud your kind stars you were not married to her,
And so forget her.
PERCY. Ah! my worthy Rolfe,
'Tis not the hand of infant Resolution
Can pluck this rooted passion from my heart:
Yet what I can I will; by heaven! I will.
ROLFE. Why, cheerly said; the baby Resolution
Will grow apace; time will work wonders in him.
PERCY. Did she not, after interchange of vows--
But let the false one go, I will forget her.
Your hand, my friend; now
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