Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirril, old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers:
And in this state she gallops night by night,
Thro' lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies strait;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who strait dream on fees;
O'er ladies lips, who strait on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plague,
Because their breath with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit,
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig tail,
Tickling the parson as he lies asleep;
Then dreams he of another benefice;
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades,
Of healths fire fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a pray'r or two,
And sleeps again.
Lucretius, and Petronius in his poem on the vanity of dreams, had
preceded our immortal bard in a description of the effects of dreams on
different kinds of persons.
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