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? 520
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 pluck'd is sour to taste.

530

'Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait, His day's hot task hath ended in the west: The owl, night's herald, shrieks,"Tis 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 tender'd is:

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face. 540

Till, breathless, he disjoin'd, and backward drew The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth: He with her plenty press'd, she faint with dearth,

Their lips together glued, 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,

550

That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil, With blindfold fury she begins to forage: Herface 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 honor's wrack.

Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing, Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling,

560 Or as the fleet-foot roe that's tired with chasing, Or like the froward infant still'd with dandling, He now obeys, and now no more resisteth, While she takes all she can, not all she listeth. What wax sofrozen but dissolves with tempering, And yields at last to every light impression?

When he did frown, O, had she then gave over. Such nectar from his lips she had not suck'd. Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover, What though the rose have prickles, yet 'tis pluck'd:

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, 580
The which, by Cupid's bow she doth protest,
He carries thence incaged 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, 591 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

600

She seeks to kindle with continual kissing. But all in vain; good queen, it will not be : She hath assay'd as much as may be proved; Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee; 609 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, [boar. But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the 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:

620

His

eyes, fret; His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes; Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way, And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay.

like glow-worms, shine when he doth i

'His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd, Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd; Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part, throughwhom he rushes. 'Alas, he nought esteems that face of thine, 631 To which Love's eyes pay tributary gazes; Nor thy soft hands, sweetlips and crystal eyne, Whose full perfection all the world amazes;

But having thee at vantage-wondrous dread! Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

639

'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; Theythat thrive well takecounsel of their friends. When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble.

I fear'd 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 [breast.

rest,

But, like an earthquake, shakes thee on my

650

'For where Love reigns, disturbing Jealousy
Doth call himself Affection's sentinel;
Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny,
And in a peaceful hour doth cry ** Kill, kill!”
Distempering 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, [bring, That sometime true news, sometime false doth Knocks at my heart and whispers in mine ear That if I love thee, I thy death should fear. 660

'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 stain'd with gore;
Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed
Doth make them droop with grief and hang

the head.

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs, And on thy well-breath'd horse keep with thy hounds.

And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles
How he outruns the wind and with what care 681
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musets through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to ainaze 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: 690 '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.

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 return, indenting with the way;
Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop,cach 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: 710
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. 'Where did I leave?' 'No matter where; 'quoth he, 'Leave me, and then the story aptly ends: The night is spent.' 'Why, what of that?' quoth

she.

'I am.' quoth he, 'expected of my friends; And now 'tis dark, and going I shall fall.' 'In night,'quoth she, 'desire sees best of all, 720

The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,
But if thou fall, O, then imagine this,

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 condemn'd of treason, 729 For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine; [despite, Wherein she framed thee in high heaven's 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, 740
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd de-

spair,

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 favor, savor, hue and qualities,
Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,
Are on the sudden wasted, thaw'd and done,
As mountain-snow melts with the midday sun.

751

'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? 760
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.'

nurse,

770

'Nay, then,' quoth Adon, you will fall again
Into your idle over-handled theme:
The kiss I gave you is bestow'd in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream;
For, by this black-faced night, desire's foul
[worse.
Your treatise makes me like you worse and
'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 armed in mine ear,
And will not let a false sound enter there; 780

'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.
'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.

789

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.

800

'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.' 810 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,
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.

821

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropp'd a precious jewel in the flood,
Or stonish'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 neighbor caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans; 831
Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:
'Ay me!'she cries, and twentytimes 'Woe, woe!'
And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.
She marking them begins a wailing note
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 choir of echoes answer so. 840 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 humor of fantastic wits? 850
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
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: 'O thou clear god and patron of all light, From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow

865

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. 870
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 Wreathed up in fatal folds just in his way, The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder; 885

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, Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud: Finding their enemy to be so curst, [first. They all strain courtesy who shall cope him This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, 889 Through which it enters to surprise her heart; Who, overcome by doubt and bloodless fear, With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part: (yield,

Like soldiers, when their captain once doth They basely fly and dare not stay the field. Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy; 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:

899 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, 910 Full of respects, yet nought at all respecting: In hand with all things, nought 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, 'Gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster;

And here she meets another sadly scowling, To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

921

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouth'd mourner, black and grim,
Against the welkin volleys out his voice;
Another and another answer him,
Clapping their proud tails to the ground be-
low,
[go.
Shaking their scratch'd ears, bleeding as they
Look, how the world's poor people are amazed
At apparitions, signs and prodigies, [gazed,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have
Infusing them with dreadful prophecies;

So she at these sad signs draws up her breath And sighing it again, exclaims on Death. 930 'Hard-favor'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean. Hateful divorce of love,-thus chides she Death, [thou mean 'Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost 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? '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 random dost thou hit.

940

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; 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 provokest such weeping?

What may a heavy groan advantage thee? 950
Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping
Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?
Now Nature cares not for thy mortal vigor,
Since her best work is ruin'd with thy rigor.'
Here overcome, as one full of despair,
She veil'd her eyelids, who, like sluices, stopt
The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair
In the sweet channel of her bosom dropt;

But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain, 9.59

And with his strong course opens them again. O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow! Her eyes 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, Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

970

Variable passions throng her constant woe,
As striving who should best become her grief;
All entertain ́d, each passion labors so,
That every present sorrow seemeth chief,
But none is best; then join they all together,
Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.
By this, far off she hears some huntsman hollo:
A nurse's song ne'er pleased her babe so well:
The dire imagination she did follow
This sound of hope doth labor 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: 980
Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
Which her cheekmelts, as scorning it should pass,
To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
Who is butdrunken whenshe seemethdrown'd.

O hard-believing love, now strange it seems
Not to believe, and yet too credulous!
Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;
Despair and hope make thee ridiculous:

The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,
In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

Nowshe unweaves the webthat she hathwrought;
Adonis lives, and Death is not to blame :
It was not she that call'd him all to nought;
Now she adds honors to his hateful name;
She clepes him king of graves and grave for
kings,

Imperious supreme of all mortal things.

'No, no,' quoth she, 'sweet Death, I did but jest;
Yet pardon me, I felt a kind of fear
Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast,
Which know no pity, but is still severe;

1000

Then, gentle shadow,-truth I mustconfess, I rail'd on thee, fearing my love's decease. "Tis not my fault: the boar provoked my tongue; Be wreak'd on him, invisible commander; 'Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong; I did but act, he's author of thy slander:

Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet Could rule them both without ten women's wit.'

1010

Thus hoping that Adonis is alive,
Her rash suspect she doth extenuate:
And that his beauty may the better thrive,
With Death she humbly doth insinuate;
Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs, and stories
His victories, his triumphs and his glories.
'O Jove,' quoth she, 'how much a fool was I
To be of such a weak and silly mind
To wail his death who lives and must not die
Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind!

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

QQ

'Fie, fie, fond love, thou art so full of fear 1021
As one with treasure laden, hemm'd with thieves:
Trifles, unwitness'd with eye or ear,
Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.'
Even at this word she hears a merry horn,
Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.

As falcon to the lure, away she flies;
The

grass stoops not, she treads on it so light;
And in her haste unfortunately spies
The foul boar's conquest on her fair delight: 1030
Which seen, her eyes, as murder'd with the

view,

Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew:

Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain. And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, Long after fearing to creep forth again;

1040

So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled Into the deep dark cabins of her head: To the disposing of her troubled brain; Where they resign their office and their light Who bids them still consort with ugly night, And never wound the heart with looks again; Who, like a king perplex'd in his throne, By their suggestion gives a deadly groan; Whereat each tributary subject quakes: As when the wind, imprison'd in the ground, Struggling forpassage, earth'sfoundation shakes, Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound.

This mutiny each part doth so surprise

That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes; 1050

And, being open'd, threw unwilling light Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench'd In his soft flank; whose wonted lily white With purple tears, that his wound wept, was No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or drench'd: [weed,

But stole his blood and seem'd with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth:
Over one shoulder doth she hang her head;

Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth;

She thinks he could not die, he is not dead: 1060
Her voice is stopt, her joints forget to bow:
Her eyes are mad that they have wept till now.
Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly,
That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem
three;

And then she reprehends her mangling eye. That makes more gashes where no breach should be:

His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled; [troubled.

For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being 'My tongue cannot express my grief for one, And yet, quoth she, 'behold two Adons dead! My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone, Mine eyes are turn'd to fire, my heart to lead: Heavy heart's lead, melt at mine eyes' red fire! So shall I die by drops of hot desire.