The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 19
Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,
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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.
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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, desire’s foul nurse,
Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.
‘If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
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And every tongue more moving than your own,
Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs,
Yet from my heart the tempting tune is blown;
For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,
And will not let a false sound enter there;
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‘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,
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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.
I hate not love, but your device in love
That lends embracements unto every stranger.
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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 usurp’d his name;
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
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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;
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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:
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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.’
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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 distress’d.
Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
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So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye;
Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late embarked friend,
Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:
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So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.
Whereat amaz’d, as one that unaware
Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood,
Or ’stonish’d as night-wand’rers often are,
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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,
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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,
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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 quire of echoes answer so.
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Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short.
If pleas’d themselves, others they think delight
In such like circumstance, with such like sport.
Their copious stories oftentimes begun,
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End without audience, and are never done.
For who hath she to spend the night withal,
But idle sounds resembling parasites,
Like shrill-tongu’d tapsters answering every call,
Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?
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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
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The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.
Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow,
‘Oh thou clear god, and patron of all light,
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From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influence that makes him bright:
There lives a son that suck’d an earthly mother,
May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.’
This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,
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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.
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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,
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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
Wreath’d up in fatal folds just in his way,
The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder:
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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,
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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;
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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,
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Till cheering up her senses all dismay’d,
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:
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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,
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And back retires, to rate the boar for murther.
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,
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Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting,
In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.
Here kennell’d in a brake she finds a hound,
And asks the weary caitiff for his master;
And there another licking of his wound,
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’Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster.
And here she meets another sadly scowling,
To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.
When he hath ceas’d his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim,
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Against the welkin volleys out his voice;
Another and another answer him,
Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,
Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.
Look how the world’s poor people are amazed
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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.
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‘Hard-favour’d 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 liv’d, his breath and beauty set
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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, –
O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see,
But hatefully at randon dost thou hit:
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Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart
Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart.
‘Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,
And hearing him, thy power had lost his power.
The destinies will curse thee for this stroke:
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They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower.
Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled,
And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead.
‘Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping?
What may a heavy groan advantage thee?
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Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping
Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?
Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,
Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.’
Here overcome, as one full of despair,
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She vail’d her eyelids, who like sluices stopp’d
The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair
In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d;
But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,
And with his strong course opens them again.
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O how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!
Her eye seen in the tears, tears in her eye:
Both crystals where they view’d each other’s sorrow,
Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;
But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
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Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.
Variable passions throng her constant woe,
As striving who should best become her grief;
All entertain’d, each passion labours so,
That every present sorrow seemeth chief,
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But none is best: then join they all together,
Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.
By this, far off she hears some huntsman holla:
A nurse’s song ne’er pleas’d her babe so well.
The dire imagination she did follow
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This sound of hope doth labour to expel;
For now reviving joy bids her rejoice,
And flatters her it is Adonis’ voice.
Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,
Being prison’d in her eye like pearls in glass;