Serenade to Music

Text by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

From Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1

Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams

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 that 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,

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted... Music! hark!

Nerissa:

It is your music of the house.

Portia:

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

Nerissa:

Silence bestows that virtue on it.

Portia:

How many things by season season'd are.

To their right praise and true perfection!

Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion,

And would not be awak'd.

(Soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.)

Image attributions:

The moon shines bright (1859); watercolor on paper by John Edmund Buckley (1820–1884). Folger Shakespeare Library via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain (Scene from The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1. Jessica and Lorenzo stroll in the moonlit gardens of Belmont.)

Photograph of Ralph Vaughan Williams by E. O. Hoppé (published in The Bookman, Oct. 1921). Public Domain