"Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow; My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning; "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear, Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire. "Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie; These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me; That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee? "Is thine own heart to thine own face affected? And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. "Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, 66 Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty, Thou wast begot,—to get it is thy duty. Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, Unless the earth with thy increase be fed? Grey is said to be here used as blue. We have subsequently— But the eye-lids are the "blue windows." By law of Nature thou art bound to breed, That thine may live, when thou thyself art dead; And so in spite of death thou dost survive, In that thy likeness still is left alive." By this the love-sick queen began to sweat, And now Adonis, with a lazy spright, His lowering brows o'erwhelming his fair sight, Ah me," quoth Venus, "young, and so unkind! What bare excuses mak'st thou to be gone! I'll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind Shall cool the heat of this descending sun; I'll make a shadow for thee of my hairs; If they burn too, I'll quench them with my tears. The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm, And lo, I lie between that sun and thee; The heat I have from thence doth little harm, "Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel, What 't is to love? how want of love tormenteth? 'Tired-attired. 66 O had thy mother borne so hard a mind, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind." b What am I, that thou shouldst contemn me this? And one for interest, if thou wilt have twain. "Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, Thing like a man, but of no woman bred; Thou art no man, though of a man's complexion, This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak, Sometimes she shakes her head, and then his hand, a Unkind. Milton applies the same epithet, in the same way, in his Doctrine of Divorce: "The desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitariness by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul, to his, in the cheerful society of wedlock." b Contemn is here used in the sense of throw aside; as Malone explains it, "Contemptuously refuse this favour." "Intendments-intentions. So in Othello,' Act IV., Scene 2:-" I have said nothing but what I protest intendment of doing." The word continued to be used long after the time of Shakspere. 66 Fondling," she saith, "since I have hemm'd thee here, Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; "Within this limit is relief enough, Sweet bottom-grass, and high delightful plain, At this Adonis smiles as in disdain, That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple: Foreknowing well if there he came to lie, These lovely caves, these round-enchanting pits, Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say? But lo, from forth a copse that neighbours by, 99 a Remorse-tenderness. Adonis' trampling courser doth espy, And forth she rushes, snorts, and neighs aloud: The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree, Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, His ears up prick'd; his braided hanging mane Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, Of the fair breeder that is standing by. What recketh he his rider's angry stir, a Compass'd-arched. b Mane is here used as a plural noun. In a note on 'Othello,' Act II., Scene 1, we justified the adoption of a new reading— "The wind-shak'd surge, with high and monstrous mane— upon the belief that in this line we have a picture which was probably suggested in the noble passage of Job:-" Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" The passage before us shows that the image was familiar to the mind of Shakspere, of the majesty of the war-horse erecting his mane under the influence of passion. This is a faint echo of the wonderful passage in Job-" He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha!” d Holla. Ho is the ancient interjection, giving notice to stop. The word before us is certainly the same as the French hola, and is explained in Cotgrave's French Dictionary as meaning "enough, soft, soft, no more of that." |