DUKE ORSINO:
If music be the food of
love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The
appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a
dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That
breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O
spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That,
notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters
there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into
abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is
fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night,
1601:
