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,

a

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 is enrag'd,
Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag'd.

His testy master goeth about to take him ;
When, lo, the unback'd 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,
Out-stripping crows that strive to over-fly them.

All swoln with chafing down Adonis sits,
Banning his boisterous and unruly beast:
And now the happy season once more fits,
That love-sick Love by pleading may be blest;
For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong
When it is barr'd the aidance of the tongue.

An oven that is stopp'd, or river stay'd,
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 attorneyd 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 flash'd 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 tenderer cheek receives her soft hand's print,

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

O, what a war of looks was there between them!
Her eyes, petitioners, to his eyes suing;
His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them;
Her eyes woo'd still, his eyes disdain'd the wooing:

He vails his tail,-] To vail is to sink, to lower. So in "The Merchant of Venice," Act I. Sc. I.: "Vailing her high-tops lower than her ribs."

b

with chafing-] The reading of all the editions before that of 1600, which substituted chasing.

e Banning-] That is, cursing.

attorney-] Advocate, pleader.

"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 steel'd, soft sighs can never grave it: 8
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 't is 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 cool'd;
Else, suffer'd, 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 master'd 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 dare not be so bold
To touch the fire, the weather being cold?

"Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish'd? Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth? If springing things be any jot diminish'd, They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth: The colt that's back'd and burden'd 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 flattery;

For where a heart is hard, they make no battery."

"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 press'd with bearing: Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding,

Ear's 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 still'tory of thy face excelling Comes breath perfum'd, 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-colour'd portal open'd,
Which to his speech did honey passage yield;

a Thy mermaid's voice-] With our early writers, mermaid and siren were synonymous.

bfoul flaws-] Violent blasts of wind.

c-blue windows-] By "windows" are meant eye-lids. So in "Cymbeline," Act II. Sc. 1,—

"To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white, and azure lac'd

Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd
Wreck 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 hush'd 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 love so thriveth!
The silly boy, believing she is dead,
Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red;

And all-amaz'd brake off his late intent,
For sharply did he 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 marr'd :
He kisses her; and she, by her good will,
Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day:
Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,
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 illumin'd with her eye;

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix'd,
As if from thence they borrow'd all their shine.
Were never four such lamps together mix'd,
Had not his clouded with his brows' repine; d
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 drench'd, or in the fire?
What hour is this? or morn or weary even?
Do I delight to die, or life desire?

But now I liv'd, 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 dis-

dain,

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 banish'd 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 kisses b 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 pluck'd 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, 't is 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 tender'd is:

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face; Till, breathless, he disjoin'd, 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 press'd, she faint with dearth,

(Their lips together glu'd,) 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 ;

a To drive infection from the dangerous year!] An allusion to the practice of strewing apartments with strong-scented herbs in the time of the plague, to prevent infection.

bten hundred kisses-] So the edition of 1600; the preceding copies read,-"ten hundred touches."

c Say, for non-payment that the debt should double,-] "The

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 tam'd with too much handling,

Or as the fleet-foot roe that's tir'd with chasing,
Or like the froward infant still'd 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 tempering,
And yields at last to every light impression?
Things out of hope are compass'd oft with
venturing,

Chiefly in love, whose leaved exceeds commission:
Affection faints not like a pale-fac'd 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 suck'd.
Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;
What though the rose have prickles, yet 't is
pluck'd:

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,
Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at

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 as poor birds, deceiv'd 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 assay'd as much as may be prov'd;
Her pleading hath deserv'd a greater fee;
She's Love, she loves, and yet she is not lov'd.
"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 advis'd! thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes never-sheath'd 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 mov'd, he strikes whate'er is in his way,
And whom he strikes his cruel tushes slay.

"His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd,
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd;
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 nought esteems that face of thine,
To which Love's eyes pay 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.

When thou didst name the boar, not to dis

semble,

I fear'd thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.

"Didst thou not mark my face? was it not white? Saw'st 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;'*
Distempering 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 stain'd 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 the 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 to-morrow.

"But if thou needs will hunt, be rul'd 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-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.

"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 listening 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 briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low never reliev'd 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

"I am," quoth he, "expected of my friends;
And now 't is 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 condemn'd of treason,
For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine,
Wherein she fram'd thee in high heaven's despite,
To shame the sun by day, and her by night.

"And therefore hath she brib'd the Destinies,
To cross the curious workmanship of nature,
To mingle beauty with infirmities,

And pure perfection with impure defeature;

B keep,-] Dwell.

b-poor Wat,-] "Wat" is an old provincial name for the hare. c-true-men—] In the language of Shakespeare's day, honest men were termed true-men. Thus in "Henry IV." Pt. I. Act II.

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,d
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd 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 the impartial gazer late did wonder,
Are on the sudden wasted, thaw'd, and done,
As mountain-snow melts with the mid-day 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-cankering 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-fac'd 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 barr'd of rest.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan, But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone. "What have you urg'd that I cannot reprove? The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger;