Compliment to Queen Elizabeth

From “a Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act II. Sc. 1. OBERON.—My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember’st Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid’s music. PUCK.— I remember. OBERON.—That very time I saw (but thou couldst not), Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal thronèd by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts: But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy free. Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it Love-in-idleness. Fetch me that flower.