The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows,

  Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.

  If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,

  By self-example mayst thou be denied.

  143

  Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch

  One of her feathered creatures broke away,

  Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch

  In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;

  Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,

  Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent

  To follow that which flies before her face,

  Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent:

  So run’st thou after that which flies from thee,

  Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind.

  But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,

  And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind:

  So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,

  If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

  144

  Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

  Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still:

  The better angel is a man right fair,

  The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

  To win me soon to hell my female evil

  Tempteth my better angel from my side,

  And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

  Wooing his purity with her foul pride;

  And whether that my angel be turned fiend

  Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

  But being both from me both to each friend,

  I guess one angel in another’s hell.

  Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,

  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

  145

  Those lips that love’s own hand did make

  Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’,

  To me, that languished for her sake;

  But when she saw my woeful state,

  Straight in her heart did mercy come,

  Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet,

  Was used in giving gentle doom,

  And taught it thus anew to greet:

  ‘I hate’ she altered with an end

  That followed it as gentle day

  Doth follow night, who like a fiend

  From heaven to hell is flown away.

  ‘I hate’ from ‘hate’ away she threw,

  And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.

  146

  Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

  Feeding these rebel powers that thee array,

  Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

  Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

  Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

  Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

  Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

  Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?

  Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,

  And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

  Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross,

  Within be fed, without be rich no more:

  So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

  And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

  147

  My love is as a fever, longing still

  For that which longer nurseth the disease,

  Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

  Th’uncertain sickly appetite to please:

  My reason, the physician to my love,

  Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

  Hath left me, and I, desperate, now approve

  Desire is death, which physic did except.

  Past cure I am, now reason is past care,

  And frantic mad with ever more unrest;

  My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,

  At random from the truth vainly expressed:

  For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

  Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

  148

  O me! What eyes hath love put in my head,

  Which have no correspondence with true sight?

  Or if they have, where is my judgement fled,

  That censures falsely what they see aright?

  If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,

  What means the world to say it is not so?

  If it be not, then love doth well denote,

  Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no,

  How can it? O how can love’s eye be true,

  That is so vexed with watching and with tears?

  No marvel then though I mistake my view:

  The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.

  O cunning love, with tears thou keep’st me blind,

  Lest eyes well seeing thy foul faults should find.

  149

  Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not,

  When I against myself with thee partake?

  Do I not think on thee, when I forgot

  Am of myself, all, tyrant, for thy sake?

  Who hateth thee, that I do call my friend?

  On whom frown’st thou, that I do fawn upon?

  Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend

  Revenge upon myself with present moan?

  What merit do I in myself respect

  That is so proud thy service to despise,

  When all my best doth worship thy defect,

  Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?

  But, love, hate on; for now I know thy mind:

  Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.

  150

  O from what power hast thou this powerful might,

  With insufficiency my heart to sway,

  To make me give the lie to my true sight,

  And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

  Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,

  That in the very refuse of thy deeds

  There is such strength and warrantise of skill

  That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?

  Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,

  The more I hear and see just cause of hate?

  O, though I love what others do abhor,

  With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:

  If thy unworthiness raised love in me,

  More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

  151

  Love is too young to know what conscience is:

  Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

  Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,

  Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove;

  For, thou betraying me, I do betray

  My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;

  My soul doth tell my body that he may

  Triumph in love; flesh stays no further reason,

  But rising at thy name doth point out thee

  As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride:

  He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

  To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.

  No want of conscience hold it that I call

  Her ‘love’, for whose dear love I rise and fall.

  152

  In loving thee thou knowst I am forsworn;

  But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,

  In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,

  In vowing new hate after new love bearing.

  But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,

  When I break twenty? I am perjured most,

  For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,

  And all my honest faith in thee is lost:

  For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,

  Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,

  And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,

  Or made them swe
ar against the thing they see:

  For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,

  To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

  153

  Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep;

  A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,

  And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

  In a cold valley-fountain of that ground,

  Which borrowed from this holy fire of love

  A dateless lively heat still to endure,

  And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

  Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:

  But at my mistress’ eye love’s brand new fired,

  The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

  I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

  And thither hied, a sad distempered guest,

  But found no cure; the bath for my help lies

  Where Cupid got new fire: my mistress’ eye.

  154

  The little love-god lying once asleep,

  Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

  Whilst many nymphs, that vowed chaste life to keep,

  Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

  The fairest votary took up that fire

  Which many legions of true hearts had warmed;

  And so the general of hot desire

  Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed.

  This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

  Which from love’s fire took heat perpetual,

  Growing a bath and healthful remedy

  For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,

  Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

  Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

  A Lover’s Complaint

  From off a hill whose concave womb reworded

  A plaintful story from a sist’ring vale,

  My spirits t’attend this double voice accorded,

  And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;

  Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,

  5

  Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,

  Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.

  Upon her head a plaited hive of straw,

  Which fortified her visage from the sun,

  Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw

  10

  The carcass of a beauty spent and done;

  Time had not scythed all that youth begun,

  Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven’s fell rage

  Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.

  Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,

  15

  Which on it had conceited characters,

  Laund’ring the silken figures in the brine

  That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,

  And often reading what contents it bears;

  As often shrieking undistinguished woe,

  20

  In clamours of all size, both high and low.

  Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,

  As they did batt’ry to the spheres intend;

  Sometime, diverted, their poor balls are tied

  To th’orbed earth; sometimes they do extend

  25

  Their view right on; anon their gazes lend

  To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,

  The mind and sight distractedly commixed.

  Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plait,

  Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;

  30

  For some untucked descended her sheaved hat,

  Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;

  Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,

  And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,

  Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

  35

  A thousand favours from a maund she drew,

  Of amber, crystal and of beaded jet,

  Which, one by one, she in a river threw,

  Upon whose weeping margent she was set,

  Like usury, applying wet to wet,

  40

  Or monarch’s hands, that lets not bounty fall

  Where want cries ‘Some!’, but where excess begs, ‘All!’

  Of folded schedules had she many a one,

  Which she perused, sighed, tore and gave the flood;

  Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,

  45

  Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;

  Found yet moe letters, sadly penned in blood,

  With sleided silk, feat and affectedly

  Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.

  These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,

  50

  And often kissed, and often gave to tear;

  Cried, ‘O false blood, thou register of lies,

  What unapproved witness dost thou bear!

  Ink would have seemed more black and damned here.’

  This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,

  55

  Big discontent so breaking their contents.

  A reverend man, that grazed his cattle nigh,

  Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew

  Of court, of city, and had let go by

  The swiftest hours observed as they flew,

  60

  Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,

  And, privileged by age, desires to know

  In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

  So slides he down upon his grained bat,

  And comely distant sits he by her side,

  65

  When he again desires her, being sat,

  Her grievance with his hearing to divide:

  If that from him there may be aught applied

  Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,

  ’Tis promised in the charity of age.

  70

  ‘Father,’ she says, ‘though in me ye behold

  The injury of many a blasting hour,

  Let it not tell your judgement I am old:

  Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power.