The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  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 farther 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 know’st 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 swear 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’ eyes.

  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 re-worded

  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,

  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

  The carcass of a beauty spent and done.

  Time had not scythèd 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,

  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

  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’orbèd earth; sometimes they do extend

  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;

  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.

  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 margin she was set;

  Like usury applying wet to wet,

  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,

  Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;

  Found yet more 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,

  And often kissed, and often ‘gan to tear;

  Cried ‘O false blood, thou register of lies,

  What unapprovèd witness dost thou bear!

  Ink would have seemed more black and damned

  here!’

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

  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,

  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,

  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.

  ‘Father,’ she says, ‘though in me you 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.

  I might as yet have been a spreading flower,

  Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied

  Love to myself, and to no love beside.

  ‘But, woe is me, too early I attended

  A youthful suit—it was to gain my grace—

  O, one by nature’s outwards so commended

  That maidens’ eyes stuck over all his face.

  Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place,

  And when in his fair parts she did abide

  She was new-lodged and newly deified.

  ‘His browny locks did hang in crooked curls,

  And every light occasion of the wind

  Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls. />
  What’s sweet to do, to do will aptly find.

  Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind,

  For on his visage was in little drawn

  What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.

  ‘Small show of man was yet upon his chin;

  His phoenix down began but to appear,

  Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin

  Whose bare outbragged the web it seemed to wear;

  Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear,

  And nice affections wavering stood in doubt

  If best were as it was, or best without.

  ‘His qualities were beauteous as his form,

  For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free.

  Yet if men moved him, was he such a storm

  As oft twixt May and April is to see

  When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.

  His rudeness so with his authorized youth

  Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.

  ‘Well could he ride, and often men would say

  “That horse his mettle from his rider takes;

  Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,

  What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop

  he makes!”

  And controversy hence a question takes,

  Whether the horse by him became his deed,

  Or he his manège by th’ well-doing steed.

  ‘But quickly on this side the verdict went:

  His real habitude gave life and grace

  To appertainings and to ornament,

  Accomplished in himself, not in his case.

  All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,

  Came for additions; yet their purposed trim

  Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

  ‘So on the tip of his subduing tongue

  All kind of arguments and question deep,

  All replication prompt, and reason strong,

  For his advantage still did wake and sleep.

  To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,

  He had the dialect and different skill,

  Catching all passions in his craft of will,

  ‘That he did in the general bosom reign

  Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted,

  To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain

  In personal duty, following where he haunted.

  Consents bewitched, ere he desire, have granted,

  And dialogued for him what he would say,

  Asked their own wills, and made their wills obey.

  ‘Many there were that did his picture get

  To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind,

  Like fools that in th’imagination set

  The goodly objects which abroad they find

  Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned,

  And labour in more pleasures to bestow them

  Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.

  ‘So many have, that never touched his hand,

  Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.

  My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,

  And was my own fee-simple, not in part,

  What with his art in youth, and youth in art,

  Threw my affections in his charmed power,

  Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

  ‘Yet did I not, as some my equals did,

  Demand of him, nor being desired yielded.

  Finding myself in honour so forbid,

  With safest distance I mine honour shielded.

  Experience for me many bulwarks builded

  Of proofs new bleeding, which remained the foil

  Of this false jewel and his amorous spoil.

  ‘But ah, who ever shunned by precedent

  The destined ill she must herself assay,

  Or forced examples ’gainst her own content

  To put the by-past perils in her way?

  Counsel may stop a while what will not stay,

  For when we rage, advice is often seen,

  By blunting us, to make our wills more keen.

  ‘Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood

  That we must curb it upon others’ proof,

  To be forbod the sweets that seems so good

  For fear of harms that preach in our behoof.

  O appetite, from judgement stand aloof!

  The one a palate hath that needs will taste,

  Though reason weep, and cry it is thy last.

  ‘For further I could say this man’s untrue,

  And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;

  Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew,

  Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling,

  Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling,

  Thought characters and words merely but art,

  And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.

  ‘And long upon these terms I held my city

  Till thus he gan besiege me: “Gentle maid,

  Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,

  And be not of my holy vows afraid.

  That’s to ye sworn to none was ever said;

  For feasts of love I have been called unto,

  Till now did ne’er invite nor never woo.

  ‘ “All my offences that abroad you see

  Are errors of the blood, none of the mind.

  Love made them not; with acture they may be,

  Where neither party is nor true nor kind.

  They sought their shame that so their shame did find,

  And so much less of shame in me remains

  By how much of me their reproach contains.

  ‘ “Among the many that mine eyes have seen,

  Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed

  Or my affection put to th’ smallest teen,

  Or any of my leisures ever charmed.

  Harm have I done to them, but ne’er was harmed;

  Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,

  And reigned commanding in his monarchy.

  ‘ “Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me

  Of pallid pearls and rubies red as blood,

  Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me

  Of grief and blushes, aptly understood

  In bloodless white and the encrimsoned mood—

  Effects of terror and dear modesty,

  Encamped in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

  ‘ “And lo, behold, these talents of their hair,

  With twisted mettle amorously impleached,

  I have received from many a several fair,

  Their kind acceptance weepingly beseeched,

  With th’annexations of fair gems enriched,

  And deep-brained sonnets that did amplify

  Each stone’s dear nature, worth, and quality.

  ‘ “The diamond?—why, ’twas beautiful and hard,

  Whereto his invised properties did tend;

  The deep-green em’rald, in whose fresh regard

  Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;

  The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend

  With objects manifold; each several stone,

  With wit well blazoned, smiled or made some moan.

  ‘ “Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,

  Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,

  Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,

  But yield them up where I myself must render—

  That is to you, my origin and ender;

  For these of force must your oblations be,

  Since I their altar, you enpatron me.

  ‘ “O then advance of yours that phraseless hand

  Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise.

  Take all these similes to your own command,

  Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise.

  What me, your minister for you, obeys,

&nbs
p; Works under you, and to your audit comes

  Their distract parcels in combined sums.

  ‘ “Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,

  A sister sanctified of holiest note,

  Which late her noble suit in court did shun,

  Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;

  For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,

  But kept cold distance, and did thence remove

  To spend her living in eternal love.

  ‘ “But O, my sweet, what labour is’t to leave

  The thing we have not, mast’ring what not strives,

  Planing the place which did no form receive,

  Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves!

  She that her fame so to herself contrives

  The scars of battle scapeth by the flight,

  And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

  ‘ “O, pardon me, in that my boast is true!

  The accident which brought me to her eye

  Upon the moment did her force subdue,

  And now she would the caged cloister fly.

  Religious love put out religion’s eye.

  Not to be tempted would she be immured,

  And now, to tempt, all liberty procured.

  ‘ “How mighty then you are, O hear me tell!

  The broken bosoms that to me belong

  Have emptied all their fountains in my well,

  And mine I pour your ocean all among.

  I strong o’er them, and you o’er me being strong,

  Must for your victory us all congest,

  As compound love to physic your cold breast.

  ‘ “My parts had power to charm a sacred nun,

  Who disciplined, ay dieted in grace,

  Believed her eyes when they t’ assail begun,

  All vows and consecrations giving place.