Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

VENUS AND ADONIS.

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's fire 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 was 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 hath 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 my 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.

D

VENUS AND ADONIS.

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 stranger.
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 usurps his name;
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame :
Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

Love comforteth like sun-shine after rain;
But lust's effect is tempest after sun:

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain;
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not; Just like a glutton dies:
Love is all truth; lust full of forged lies.

More I could tell, but more I dare not say;
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 calls attended,
Do burn themselves for having so offended.

VENUS AND ADONIS.

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms, which bound him to her breast:
And homeward thro' the dark lanes 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 shore,
Gazing upon a late embarked friend,

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

Where'at amaz'd, as one that unaware
Hath dropt a precious jewel in the flood;
Or 'tonish'd, as night-wanderers often are,
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, 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.

VENUS AND ADONIS.

She marking them, begins a wailing note,
And sings extemp'rally a woful 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 choir of echoes answers so.

Her song was tedious, and out-wore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, tho' seeming short:
If pleas'd themselves, others they think delight
In such-like circumstance, with such-like sport.

Their copious stories, oftentimes begun,
And 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.

She said, '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
The sun ariseth in his majesty :

Who doth the world so gloriously behold,

The cedar tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

VENUS AND ADONIS.

VENUS salutes 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 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,
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.

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,
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:
Ev'n so timorous yelping of the hounds,

Appals her senses, and her spirit confounds.

« AnteriorContinuar »