Imatges de pàgina
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As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning peftilence, and frenzies wood,
The marrow-eating fickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:
Surfeits, impoftumes, grief, and damn'd defpair,
Swear nature's death for framing thee so fair.

And not the leaft of all these maladies,
But in one minute's fight brings beauty under:
Both favour, favour, hue, and qualities,
Whereat th' imperial gazer late did wonder,
Are on the fudden wafted, thaw'd and done,
As mountain-fnow melts with the mid-day fun.

Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking veftals, and felf-loving nuns,
That on the earth would breed a scarcity,
And barren dearth of daughters and of fons,
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 pofterity

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,

If thou destroy them not in their obscurity?

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is flain.

So in thyself thyfelf art made away;

A mifchief worfe than civil home-bred ftrife,
Or their's, whose desperate hands themselves do flay,
Or butcher-fire, that reaves his fon 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 idle over-handled theme;

Into

your

The kiss I gave you is bestow'd in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For by this black-fac'd night, defire'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 fongs,
Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;
For know, my heart ftands armed in my ear,
And will not let a falfe found enter there;

Left the deceiving harmony should run
Into the quiet closure of my breaft ;
And then my little heart were quite undone,
In his bedchamber to be barr'd of reft.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
But foundly fleeps, while now it fleeps alone.

What have you urg'd that I cannot reprove?
The path is smooth that leadeth unto danger;
I hate not love, but your device in love,
That lends embracements unto every ftranger.
You do it for increase: O ftrange excufe!
When reason is the bawd to luft's abuse.

Call it not love, for love to heaven is "fled,
Since sweating luft on earth ufurps his name ;
Under whofe fimple femblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;
Which the hot tyrant ftains, and foon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

Love comforteth, like fun-fhine after rain,
But luft's effect is tempeft after fun,

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Luft's winter comes ere fummer half be done.
Love furfeits not; luft like a glutton dies:
Love is all truth; luft full of forged lies.

More I could tell, but more I dare not fay;
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 fo offended.

With this, he breaketh from the fweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark lawns runs apace;
Leaves Love upon her back deeply distress'd.

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 fhore
Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,

Till the wild waves will have him feen no more,
Whofe ridges with the meeting clouds contend;
So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her fight.

Whereat amaz'd, as one that unaware
Hath dropp'd a precious jewel in the flood,
Or 'stonish'd as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in fome miftruftful wood;
Even fo confounded in the dark she lay,
Having loft the fair discovery of her way.

And now the beats her heart, whereat it groans,
That all the neighbour-caves, as feeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Paffion on paffion deeply is redoubled:

Ab me! the cries, and twenty times, woe, woe!
And twenty echoes twenty times cry fo.

She marking them, begins a wailing note,
And fings extemp'rally a woeful ditty;

How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote ;
How love is wife in folly, foolish-witty :

Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,
And ftill the choir of echoes answers fo.

Her fong was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, though feeming fhort:
If pleas'd themselves, others, they think, delight
In fuch like circumftance, with fuch like sport:
Their copious ftories, oftentimes begun,
End without audience, and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal,
But idle founds, refembling parasites,
Like fhrill-tongu'd tapfters answering every call,
Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?

She faid, 'tis fo: they answer all, 'tis fo;
And would fay after her, if she said no.

Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moift cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose filver breast
The fun ariseth in his majesty;

Who doth the world fo gloriously behold,

That cedar-tops and hills feem burnish'd gold.

Venus falutes 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 fon, that fuck'd an earthly mother,
May lend thee light, as thou doft lend to other.

This faid, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,
Mufing the morning is fo 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 chaunt it luftily,
And all in hafte fhe coafteth to the cry.

And as she runs, the bushes in the way
Some catch her by the neck, fome kiss her face,
Some twine about her thigh to make her stay;
She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,
Like a milch doe, whofe fwelling dugs do ake,
Hafting to feed her fawn hid in fome brake.

By this, the hears the hounds are at a bay,
Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder
Wreath'd up in fatal folds, just in his way,

The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder:
Even fo the timorous yelping of the hounds
Appals her fenfes, and her spright 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 fo curst,

They all strain court'fy who shall cope him first.

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