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05-24-2005, 06:07 PM
Act 2. Scene III<br> <br>SCENE III. Friar Laurence's cell.<br><br>Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with a basket <br>FRIAR LAURENCE <br>The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,<br>Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,<br>And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels<br>From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:<br>Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,<br>The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,<br>I must up-fill this osier cage of ours<br>With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.<br>The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;<br>What is her burying grave that is her womb,<br>And from her womb children of divers kind<br>We sucking on her natural bosom find,<br>Many for many virtues excellent,<br>None but for some and yet all different.<br>O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies<br>In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:<br>For nought so vile that on the earth doth live<br>But to the earth some special good doth give,<br>Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use<br>Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:<br>Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;<br>And vice sometimes by action dignified.<br>Within the infant rind of this small flower<br>Poison hath residence and medicine power:<br>For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;<br>Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.<br>Two such opposed kings encamp them still<br>In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;<br>And where the worser is predominant,<br>Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.<br><br><br>