Serenade to Music
Extraction by Elam Sprenkle from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Act V

• Lorenzo. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
  Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
  Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
  Become the touches of sweet harmony.
  Look how the floor of heaven
  Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
  There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
  But in his motion like an angel sings,
  Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
  Such harmony is in immortal souls;
  But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
  Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
  
  Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!
  With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
  And draw her home with music.

• Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
• Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
  The man that hath no music in himself,
  Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
  The motions of his spirit are dull as night
  And his affections dark as Erebus:
• Portia. Music! hark!
• Nerissa. It is your music, madam, of the house.
• Portia. Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
• Nerissa. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
• Portia. How many things by season season'd are
  To their right praise and true perfection!
  Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion

• Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony

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