"Long may they kiss each other for this cure!
O never let their crimson liveries wear!
And as they last their verdure still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year!
That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
May say the plague is banished by thy breath.

"Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make still to be sealing? To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy and pay, and use good dealing; Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.

"A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;
And pay them at thy leisure, one by one.
What is ten hundred touches unto thee?
Are they not quickly told and quickly gone?
Say for non-payment that the debt should double
Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?"

"Fair queen," quoth he, "if any love you owe me,
Measure my strangeness with my unripe years;
Before I know myself seek not to know me;
No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears:
The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,
Or being early plucked is sour to taste.

"Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait,
His day's hot task hath ended in the west :
The owl, night's herald, shrieks, 't is very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest;
And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven's light.
Do summon us to part and bid good night.

"Now let me say 'good-night,' and so say you; If you will say so you shall have a kiss." "Good-night," quoth she; and ere he says "adieu," The honey fee of parting tendered is :

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace;
Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.
Till, breathless, he disjoined, and backward drew
The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,
Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,
Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drought:
He with her plenty pressed, she faint with dearth
(Their lips together glewed), fall to the earth.

Now quick Desire hath caught the yielding prey,
And glutton-like she feeds yet never filleth ;
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey.
Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;
Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high
That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,
With blind-fold fury she begins to forage:
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,
And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage;
Planting oblivion, beating reason back,
Forgetting shame's pure blush and honour's wreck.

Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing,
Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling
Or as the fleet-foot roe that's tired with chasing,
Or like the froward infant stilled with dandling,
He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,
While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering,
And yields at last to every light impression;
Things out of hope arecompassed oft with venturing,
Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission:
Affection faints not like a pale-faced coward,
But then woos best when most his choice is froward.
When he did frown, O had she then gave over,
Such nectar from his lips she had not sucked.
Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;
What though the rose have prickles, yet 't is plucked :
Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,
Yet love breaks through and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him;
The poor fool prays her that he may depart:
She is resolved no longer to restrain him;
Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,
The which, by Cupid's bow she doth protest,
He carries thence incagéd in his breast.

"Sweet boy," she says, "this night I'll waste in sorrow,
For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch.
Tell me, Love's master, shall we meet to-morrow?
Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match ?"
He tells her no; to-morrow he intends,
To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.

"The boar !" quoth she: whereat a sudden pale,
Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,
Usurps her cheek; she trembles at his tale,
And on his neck her yoking arms she throws:
She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck,
He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love,
Her champion mounted for the hot encounter :
All is imaginary she doth prove,

He will not manage her although he mount her;
That worse than Tantalus' is her annoy,
To clip Elysium, and to lack her joy,

Even as poor birds, deceived with painted grapes,
Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw,
Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,
As those poor birds that helpless berries saw:
The warm effects which she in him finds missing,
She seeks to kindle with continual kissing:

But all in vain; good queen, it will not be:
She hath assayed as much as may be proved;
Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee;
She's Love, she loves, and yet she is not loved.
"Fie, fie," he says, "you crush me; let me go;
You have no reason to withhold me so."

"Thou hadst been gone,"quoth she, "sweet boy, ere this,
But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.
O be advised: thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never-sheathed he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.

"On his bow-back he hath a battle set

Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;

His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret;
His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes;
Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way,
And whom he strikes his cruel tushes slay.

"His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed,
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed;
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:
The thorny brambles, and embracing bushes,
As fearful of him, part; through whom he rushes.

"Alas, he nought esteems that face of thine,
To which love's eyes pay tributary gazes;
Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne,
Whose full perfection all the world amazes;
But having thee at vantage, (wond'rous dread!)
Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

"O let him keep his loathsome cabin still; Beauty hath nought to do with such foul fiends: Come not within his danger by thy will;

They that thrive well take counsel of their friends: When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble, I feared thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.

"Didst thou not mark my face: was it not white? Saw'st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye? Grew I not faint: and fell I not downright? Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie,

My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest,
But, like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast.

"For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy
Doth call himself affection's centinel;
Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny,
And in a peaceful hour doth cry "kill, kill;"
Distemp'ring gentle love in his desire,
As air and water do abate the fire.

"This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy, This canker that eats up love's tender spring, This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy.

That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear. That if I love thee I thy death should fear:

"And more than so, presenteth to mine eye
The picture of an angry chafing boar,
Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie
An image like thyself all stained with gore:
Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed,
Doth make them droop with grief and hang the head.

"What should I do, seeing thee so indeed, That tremble at the imagination?

The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed, And fear doth teach it divination :

I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,

If thou encounter with the boar to-morrow.

"But if thou needs will hunt, be ruled by me :
Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox, which lives by subtilty,
Or at the roe, which no encounter dare:
Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,
And on thy well-breathed horse keep with thy hounds

"And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshut his troubles,
How he out-runs the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musits through the which he goes,
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

"Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear :

"For there his smell with others being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt;
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;
Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.

"By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing bell.

"Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn and re-turn, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay :
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low never relieved by any.

"Lie quietly, and hear a little more;
Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise:
To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,
Unlike myself thou hear'st me moralize,
Applying this to that, and so to so;

For love can comment upon every woe.

"But if thou fall, O then imagine this,
The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,
And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips
Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,

Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn.

"Now, of this dark night I perceive the reason:
Cynthia, for shame, obscures her silver shine,
Till forging Nature be condemned of treason,
For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine,
Wherein she framed thee in high heaven's despite,
To shame the sun by day and her by night.

"And therefore hath she bribed the Destinies,
To cross the curious workmanship of nature;
To mingle beauty with infirmities,

And pure perfection with impure defeature;
Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances and much misery.

"As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood,
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damned despair,
Swear nature's death for framing thee so fair.

"And not the least of all these maladies,
But in one minute's fight brings beauty under:
Both favour, savour, hue, and qualities,
Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,
Are on the sudden wasted, thawed, and done,
As mountain snow melts with the mid-day sun.

"Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity, Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, That on the earth would breed a scarcity And barren dearth of daughters and of sons, Be prodigal the lamp that burns by night Dries up his oil, to lend the world his light.

"What is thy body but a swallowing grave,
Seeming to bury that posterity

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?
If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

"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-sire 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 is bestowed in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream;
For by this black-faced night, desire's foul nurse,
Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

"If love have 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 arméd in mine 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 barred of rest.
No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
But soundly sleeps while now it sleeps alone.

"What have you urged 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.
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 usurped 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 sunshine 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; lust 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 talk attended,
Do burn themselves for having so offended."

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark lawn runs apace;
Leaves Love upon her back, deeply distressed.
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 embarkéd 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.

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood.
Or 'stonished, 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:

"Ah me!" she cries, and twenty times "woe, woe!" And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

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 answer so.

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, though seeming short;
If pleased themselves, others, they think, delight
In such like circumstance, with such like sport,
Their copious stories, oftentimes begun,
End without audience and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal,
But idle sounds resembling parasites;
Like shrill-tongued tapsters answering every call,
Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?

She says "'t is so!" they answer all "'t is 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,
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnished gold.

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 sucked 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 chaunt 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 twined 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
Wreathed up in fatal folds just in his way,

The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder;
Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds
Appals her senses and her spright 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,
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;
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,
Till, cheering up her senses sore-dismayed,
She tells them 't is 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,

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,
But 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;
Full of respect, yet nought at all respecting:
In hand with all things, nought at all affecting.

Here kennelled in a brake she finds a hound,
And asks the weary caitiff for his master;
And there another licking of his wound,
'Gainst venomed sores the only sovereign plaster;
And here she meets another sadly scowling,
To whom she speaks; and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouthed mourner, black and grim,
Against the welkin vollies out his voice;
Another and another answer him;

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below, Shaking their scratched ears, bleeding as they go.

Look, how the world's poor people are amazed
At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,
Infusing them with dreadful prophecies;
So she at these sad sighs draws up her breath,
And, sighing it again, exclaims on death.

"Hard-favoured 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 lived, his breath and beauty set

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?