Then to cart with Rosalind.
Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, lie
Such a nut is Rosalind.
He that sweetest rose will find
Must find love's prick and Rosalind.'
This is the very false gallop of verses: why do
you infect yourself with them? 121
Ros. Peace! you dull fool: I found them on
a tree.
Touch. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. 124
Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall
graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest
fruit i' the country; for you'll be rotten ere you
be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the
medlar. 129
Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or
no, let the forest judge.
Enter Celia with a writing.
Ros. Peace! 132
Here comes my sister, reading: stand aside.
Cel. 'Why should this a desert be?
For it is unpeopled? No;
Tongues I'll hang on every tree, 136
That shall civil sayings show.
Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage,
That the stretching of a span 140
Buckles in his sum of age;
Some, of violated vows
'Twixt the souls of friend and friend:
115 cart: a pun on farmer's cart which bore the harvest to market and the sheriff's cart on which female offenders were publicly disgraced
121 infect: contaminate (?)
125 graff: graft
126 medlar: a fruit, with quibble on 'meddler'
137 civil sayings; cf. n.
139 erring: wandering
140 span; cf. n.
141 Buckles in: limits
