Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,

And now his woven girths he breaks asunder.

The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,

Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder.

The iron bit he crusheth ‘tween his teeth,

Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-pricked, his braided hanging mane

Upon his compassed crest now stand on end;

His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,

As from a furnace, vapours doth he send.

His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire,

Shows his hot courage and his high desire.

Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps,

With gentle majesty and modest pride.

Anon he rears upright, curvets, and leaps,

As who should say, ‘Lo, thus my strength is tried,

And this I do to captivate the eye

Of the fair breeder that is standing by.’

What recketh he his rider’s angry stir,

His flattering ‘Holla’, or his ‘Stand, I sayl’?

What cares he now for curb or pricking spur,

For rich caparisons or trappings gay?

He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,

For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.

Look when a painter would surpass the life

In limning out a well proportioned steed,

His art with nature’s workmanship at strife,

As if the dead the living should exceed:

So did this horse excel a common one

In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing

strong;

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide—

Look what a horse should have he did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Sometime he scuds far off, and there he stares;

Anon he starts at stirring of a feather.

To bid the wind a base he now prepares,

And whe’er he run or fly they know not whether;

For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,

Fanning the hairs, who wave like feathered wings.

He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her;

She answers him as if she knew his mind.

Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her,

She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind,

Spurns at his love, and scorns the heat he feels,

Beating his kind embracements with her heels.

Then, like a melancholy malcontent,

He vails his tail that, like a falling plume,

Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent.

He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume.

His love, perceiving how he was enraged,

Grew kinder, and his fury was assuaged.

His testy master goeth about to take him,

When lo, the unbacked breeder, full of fear,

Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him,

With her the horse, and left Adonis there.

As they were mad unto the wood they hie them,

Outstripping crows that strive to overfly them.

All swoll’n with chafing, down Adonis sits,

Banning his boist’rous and unruly beast;

And now the happy season once more fits

That lovesick love by pleading may be blessed;

For lovers say the heart hath treble wrong

When it is barred the aidance of the tongue.

An oven that is stopped, or river stayed,

Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage.

So of concealed sorrow may be said

Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage.

But when the heart’s attorney once is mute,

The client breaks, as desperate in his suit.

He sees her coming, and begins to glow,

Even as a dying coal revives with wind,

And with his bonnet hides his angry brow,

Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind,

Taking no notice that she is so nigh,

For all askance he holds her in his eye.

O, what a sight it was wistly to view

How she came stealing to the wayward boy,

To note the fighting conflict of her hue,

How white and red each other did destroy!

But now her cheek was pale; and by and by

It flashed forth fire, as lightning from the sky.

Now was she just before him as he sat,

And like a lowly lover down she kneels;

With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat;

Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels.

His tend’rer cheek receives her soft hand’s print

As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.

O, what a war of looks was then between them,

Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing!

His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them;

Her eyes wooed still; his eyes disdained the wooing;

And all this dumb play had his acts made plain

With tears which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain.

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,

A lily prisoned in a jail of snow,

Or ivory in an alabaster band;

So white a friend engirds so white a foe.

This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling,

Showed like two silver doves that sit a-billing.

Once more the engine of her thoughts began:

‘O fairest mover on this mortal round,

Would thou wert as I am, and I am an,

My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound;

For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee,

Though nothing but my body’s bane would cure

thee.’

‘Give me my hand,’ saith he. ‘Why dost thou feel it?’

‘Give me my heart,’ saith she, ‘and thou shalt have it.

O, give it me, lest thy hard heart do steel it,

And, being steeled, soft sighs can never grave it;

Then love’s deep groans I never shall regard,

Because Adonis’ heart hath made mine hard.’

‘For shame,’ he cries, ‘let go, and let me go!

My day’s delight is past; my horse is gone,

And ‘tis your fault I am bereft him so.

I pray you hence, and leave me here alone;

For all my mind, my thought, my busy care

Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.’

Thus she replies: ‘Thy palfrey, as he should,

Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire.

Affection is a coal that must be cooled,

Else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire.

The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;

Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone.

‘How like a jade he stood tied to the tree,

Servilely mastered with a leathern rein!

But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee,

He held such petty bondage in disdain,

Throwing the base thong from his bending crest,

Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast.

‘Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,

Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,

But when his glutton eye so full hath fed

His other agents aim at like delight?

Who is so faint that dares not be so bold

To touch the fire, the weather being cold?

‘Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy;

And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee,

To take advantage on presented joy.

Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee.

O, learn to love! The lesson is but plain,

And, once made perfect, never lost again.’

‘I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it,

Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it.

’Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it.

My love to love is love but to disgrace it;

For I have heard it is a life in death,

That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

‘Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinished?

Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?

If springing things be any jot diminished,

They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth.

The colt that’s backed and burdened being young,

Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong.

‘You hurt my hand with wringing. Let us part,

And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat.

Remove your siege from my unyielding heart;

To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate.

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your

flatt‘ry;

For where a heart is hard they make no batt’ry.’

‘What, canst thou talk?’ quoth she. ‘Hast thou a tongue?

O, would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing!

Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong.

I had my load before, now pressed with bearing:

Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh sounding,

Ears’ deep-sweet music, and heart’s deep-sore

wounding.

‘Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love

That inward beauty and invisible;

Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move

Each part in me that were but sensible.

Though neither eyes nor ears to hear nor see,

Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

‘Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me,

And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,

And nothing but the very smell were left me,

Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

For from the stillitory of thy face excelling

Comes breath perfumed, that breedeth love by

smelling.

‘But O, what banquet wert thou to the taste,

Being nurse and feeder of the other four!

Would they not wish the feast might ever last

And bid suspicion double-lock the door

Lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,

Should by his stealing-in disturb the feast?’

Once more the ruby-coloured portal opened

Which to his speech did honey passage yield,

Like a red morn that ever yet betokened

Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh.

Even as the wind is hushed before it raineth,

Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,

Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,

Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,

His meaning struck her ere his words begun,

And at his look she flatly falleth down,

For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth;

A smile recures the wounding of a frown,

But blessed bankrupt that by loss so thriveth!

The silly boy, believing she is dead,

Claps her pale cheek till clapping makes it red,

And, all amazed, brake off his late intent,

For sharply he did think to reprehend her,

Which cunning love did wittily prevent.

Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!

For on the grass she lies as she were slain,

Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks,

He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard;

He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks

To mend the hurt that his unkindness marred.

He kisses her; and she, by her good will,

Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

The night of sorrow now is turned to day.

Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth,

Like the fair sun when, in his fresh array,

He cheers the morn, and all the earth relieveth;

And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

So is her face illumined with her eye,

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fixed,

As if from thence they borrowed all their shine.

Were never four such lamps together mixed,

Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine.

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,

Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

‘O, where am I?’ quoth she; ‘in earth or heaven,

Or in the ocean drenched, or in the fire?

What hour is this: or morn or weary even?

Do I delight to die, or life desire?

But now I lived, and life was death’s annoy;

But now I died, and death was lively joy.

‘O, thou didst kill me; kill me once again!

Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,

Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain

That they have murdered this poor heart of mine,

And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,

But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.

‘Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!

O, never let their crimson liveries wear,

And as they last, their verdure still endure

To drive infection from the dangerous year,

That the star-gazers, having writ on death,

May say the plague is banished by thy breath!

‘Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,

What bargains may I make still to be sealing?

To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing;

Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips

Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips.

‘A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;

And pay them at thy leisure, one by one.

What is ten hundred touches unto thee?

Are they not quickly told, and quickly gone?

Say for non-payment that the debt should double,

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?’

‘Fair queen,’ quoth he, ‘if any love you owe me,

Measure my strangeness with my unripe years.

Before I know myself, seek not to know me.

No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears.

The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,

Or, being early plucked, is sour to taste.

‘Look, the world’s comforter with weary gait

His day’s hot task hath ended in the west.

The owl, night’s herald, shrieks ’tis very late;

The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,

And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven’s light,

Do summon us to part and bid good night.

‘Now let me say good night, and so say you.

If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.’

‘Good night,’ quoth she; and ere he says adieu

The honey fee of parting tendered is.

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace.

Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face,

Till breathless he disjoined, and backward drew

The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,

Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,

Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drought.

He with her plenty pressed, she faint with dearth,

Their lips together glued, fall to the earth.

Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,

And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth.

Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,

Paying what ransom the insulter willeth,

Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high

That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry,

And, having felt the sweetness of the spoil,

With blindfold fury she begins to forage.

Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,

And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,

Planting oblivion, beating reason back,

Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.

Hot, faint, and weary with her hard embracing,

Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling,

Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tired with chasing,

Or like the froward infant stilled with dandling,

He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,

While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with temp‘ring

And yields at last to every light impression?

Things out of hope are compassed oft with vent’ring,

Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission.

Affection faints not, like a pale-faced coward,

But then woos best when most his choice is froward.

When he did frown, O, had she then gave over,

Such nectar from his lips she had not sucked.

Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover.

What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis plucked!

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,

Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him.

The poor fool prays her that he may depart.

She is resolved no longer to restrain him,

Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,

The which, by Cupid’s bow she doth protest,

He carries thence encagèd in his breast.

‘Sweet boy,’ she says, ‘this night I’ll waste in sorrow,

For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch.

Tell me, love’s master, shall we meet tomorrow?

Say, shall we, shall we? Wilt thou make the match?’

He tells her no, tomorrow he intends

To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.

‘The boar!’ quoth she; whereat a sudden pale,

Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,

Usurps her cheek. She trembles at his tale,

And on his neck her yoking arms she throws.

She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck.

He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love,

Her champion mounted for the hot encounter.

All is imaginary she doth prove.

He will not manage her, although he mount her,

That worse than Tantalus’ is her annoy,

To clip Elysium, and to lack her joy.

Even so poor birds, deceived with painted grapes,

Do surfeit by the eye, and pine the maw;

Even so she languisheth in her mishaps

As those poor birds that helpless berries saw.

The warm effects which she in him finds missing

She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.

But all in vain, good queen ! It will not be.

She hath assayed as much as may be proved;

Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee:

She’s Love; she loves; and yet she is not loved.

‘Fie, fie,’ he says, ‘you crush me. Let me go.

You have no reason to withhold me so.’

‘Thou hadst been gone,’ quoth she, ‘sweet boy, ere

this,

But that thou told’st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.

O, be advised; thou know’st not what it is

With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes, never sheathed, he whetteth still,

Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.

‘On his bow-back he hath a battle set

Of bristly pikes that ever threat his foes.

His eyes like glow-worms shine; when he doth fret

His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes.

Being moved, he strikes, whate’er is in his way,

And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay.

‘His brawny sides with hairy bristles armed

Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter.

His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed.

Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,

As fearful of him, part; through whom he rushes.

‘Alas, he naught esteems that face of thine,

To which love’s eyes pays tributary gazes,

Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne,

Whose full perfection all the world amazes;

But having thee at vantage—wondrous dread!—

Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

‘O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still.

Beauty hath naught to do with such foul fiends.

Come not within his danger by thy will.

They that thrive well take counsel of their friends.

When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble,

I feared thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.

‘Didst thou not mark my face? Was it not white?

Sawest thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye?

Grew I not faint, and fell I not downright?

Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie,

My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest,

But like an earthquake shakes thee on my breast.

‘For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy

Doth call himself affection’s sentinel,

Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny,

And in a peaceful hour doth cry, “Kill, kill”,

Distemp’ring gentle love in his desire,

As air and water do abate the fire.

‘This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy,

This canker that eats up love’s tender spring,

This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy,

That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring,

Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear

That if I love thee, I thy death should fear;

‘And, more than so, presenteth to mine eye

The picture of an angry chafing boar,

Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie

An image like thyself, all stained with gore,

Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed

Doth make them droop with grief, and hang the

head.

‘What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,

That tremble at th’imagination?

The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,

And fear doth teach it divination.

I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,

If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow.

‘But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me:

Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,

Or at the roe which no encounter dare.

Pursue these fearful creatures o’er the downs,

And on thy well-breathed horse keep with thy

hounds.

‘And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,

Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles,

How he outruns the wind, and with what care

He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles.

The many musits through the which he goes

Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

‘Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,

And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,

To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;

And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer.

Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear.

‘For there his smell with others being mingled,

The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,

Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled,

With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out.

Then do they spend their mouths. Echo replies,

As if another chase were in the skies.

‘By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,

Stands on his hinder legs with list’ning ear,

To hearken if his foes pursue him still.

Anon their loud alarums he doth hear,

And now his grief may be compared well

To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

‘Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch

Turn, and return, indenting with the way.

Each envious brier his weary legs do scratch;

Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay;

For misery is trodden on by many,

And, being low, never relieved by any.

‘Lie quietly, and hear a little more;

Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise.

To make thee hate the hunting of the boar

Unlike myself thou hear’st me moralize,

Applying this to that, and so to so,

For love can comment upon every woe.

‘Where did I leave?’ ‘No matter where,’ quoth he;

‘Leave me, and then the story aptly ends.

The night is spent.’ ‘Why what of that?’ quoth she.

‘I am,’ quoth he, ‘expected of my friends,

And now ‘tis dark, and going I shall fall.’

‘In night,’ quoth she, ‘desire sees best of all.

‘But if thou fall, O, then imagine this:

The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,

And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips

Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn

Lest she should steal a kiss, and die forsworn.

‘Now of this dark night I perceive the reason.

Cynthia, for shame, obscures her silver shine

Till forging nature be condemned of treason

For stealing moulds from heaven, that were divine,

Wherein she framed thee, in high heaven’s despite,

To shame the sun by day and her by night.

‘And therefore hath she bribed the destinies

To cross the curious workmanship of nature,

To mingle beauty with infirmities,

And pure perfection with impure defeature,

Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances and much misery;

‘As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,

Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood,

The marrow-eating sickness whose attaint

Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;

Surfeits, impostumes, grief, and damned despair

Swear nature’s death for framing thee so fair.

‘And not the least of all these maladies

But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under.

Both favour, savour, hue, and qualities,

Whereat th’impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thawed, and done,

As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.

‘Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity,

Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns,

That on the earth would breed a scarcity

And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,

Be prodigal. The lamp that burns by night

Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

‘What is thy body but a swallowing grave,

Seeming to bury that posterity

Which, by the rights of time, thou needs must have

If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,

Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

‘So in thyself thyself art made away,

A mischief worse than civil, home-bred strife,

Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,

Or butcher sire that reaves his son of life.

Foul cank‘ring rust the hidden treasure frets,

But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.’

‘Nay, then,’ quoth Adon, ‘You will fall again

Into your idle, over-handled theme.

The kiss I gave you is bestowed in vain,

And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For, by this black-faced night, desire’s foul nurse,

Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

‘If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,

And every tongue more moving than your own,

Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs,

Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;

For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,

And will not let a false sound enter there,

‘Lest the deceiving harmony should run

Into the quiet closure of my breast,

And then my little heart were quite undone,

In his bedchamber to be barred of rest.

No, lady, no. My heart longs not to groan,

But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

‘What have you urged that I cannot reprove?

The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger.

I hate not love, but your device in love,

That lends embracements unto every stranger.

You do it for increase—O strange excuse,

When reason is the bawd to lust’s abuse!

‘Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled

Since sweating lust on earth usurped his name,

Under whose simple semblance he hath fed

Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves,

As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

‘Love comforteth, like sunshine after rain,

But lust’s effect is tempest after sun.

Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain;

Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done.

Love surfeits not; lust like a glutton dies.

Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.

‘More I could tell, but more I dare not say;

The text is old, the orator too green.

Therefore in sadness now I will away;

My face is full of shame, my heart of teen.

Mine ears that to your wanton talk attended

Do burn themselves for having so offended.’

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace

Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,

And homeward through the dark laund runs apace,

Leaves love upon her back, deeply distressed.

Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,

So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye,

Which after him she darts, as one on shore

Gazing upon a late-embarkèd friend

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,

Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend.

So did the merciless and pitchy night

Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware

Hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood,

Or stonished, as night wand’rers often are,

Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood:

Even so, confounded in the dark she lay,

Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,

That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,

Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled.

‘Ay me,’ she cries, and twenty times ‘Woe, woe!’

And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She, marking them, begins a wailing note,

And sings extemporally a woeful ditty,

How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote,

How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty.

Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,

And still the choir of echoes answer so.

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night;

For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short.

If pleased themselves, others, they think, delight

In such-like circumstance, with such-like sport.

Their copious stories oftentimes begun

End without audience, and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal

But idle sounds resembling parasites,

Like shrill-tongued tapsters answering every call,

Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?

She says ‘’Tis so’; they answer all ‘’Tis so’,

And would say after her, if she said ‘No’.

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty,

Who doth the world so gloriously behold

That cedar tops and hills seem burnished gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow:

‘O thou clear god, and patron of all light,

From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow

The beauteous influence that makes him bright:

There lives a son that sucked an earthly mother

May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.’

This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,

Musing the morning is so much o’erworn

And yet she hears no tidings of her love.

She hearkens for his hounds, and for his horn.

Anon she hears them chant it lustily,

And all in haste she coasteth to the cry.

And as she runs, the bushes in the way

Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face,

Some twine about her thigh to make her stay.

She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,

Like a milch doe whose swelling dugs do ache,

Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake.

By this she hears the hounds are at a bay,

Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder

Wreathed up in fatal folds just in his way,

The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder;

Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds

Appals her senses, and her spirit confounds.

For now she knows it is no gentle chase,

But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud,

Because the cry remaineth in one place,

Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud.

Finding their enemy to be so curst,

They all strain court’sy who shall cope him first.

This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,

Through which it enters to surprise her heart,

Who, overcome by doubt and bloodless fear,

With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part;

Like soldiers when their captain once doth yield,

They basely fly, and dare not stay the field.

Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy,

Till, cheering up her senses all dismayed,

She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy

And childish error that they are afraid;

Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more;

And with that word she spied the hunted boar,

Whose frothy mouth, bepainted all with red,

Like milk and blood being mingled both together,

A second fear through all her sinews spread,

Which madly hurries her, she knows not whither.

This way she runs, and now she will no further,

But back retires to rate the boar for murder.

A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways.

She treads the path that she untreads again.

Her more than haste is mated with delays,

Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,

Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting;

In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.

Here kennelled in a brake she finds a hound,

And asks the weary caitiff for his master;

And there another licking of his wound,

’Gainst venomed sores the only sovereign plaster.

And here she meets another, sadly scowling,

To whom she speaks; and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,

Another flap-mouthed mourner, black and grim,

Against the welkin volleys out his voice.

Another, and another, answer him,

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,

Shaking their scratched ears, bleeding as they go.

Look how the world’s poor people are amazed

At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,

Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies:

So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,

And, sighing it again, exclaims on death.

‘Hard-favoured tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,

Hateful divorce of love’—thus chides she death;

‘Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm: what dost thou mean

To stifle beauty, and to steal his breath

Who, when he lived, his breath and beauty set

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?

‘If he be dead—O no, it cannot be,

Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it.