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Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure33 open
To his unmastered importunity34.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep within the rear36 of your affection,
Out of the shot37 and danger of desire.
The chariest38 maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty to the moon39:
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes40:
The canker galls the infants of the spring41
Too oft before the buttons be disclosed42,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments44 are most imminent.
Be wary then: best safety lies in fear.
Youth to46 itself rebels, though none else near.
OPHELIA I shall th'effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious49 pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed51 and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede53.
LAERTES O, fear me not54.
Enter Polonius
I stay55 too long. But here my father comes.
A double blessing56 is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave57.
POLONIUS Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stayed60 for there. My blessing with you!
And these few precepts in thy memory
