DESCRIPTION OF A MELANCHOLY VALLEY.
A barren detested vale, you see, it is:
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O'ercome with moss, and baleful misletoe.
Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven.
And, when they show'd me this abhorred pit,
They told me, here, at dead time of night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins*,
Would make such fearful and confused cries,
As any mortal body, hearing it,
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.
DESCRIPTION OF A RING,
Upon his bloody finger he doth wear A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, Which, like a taper in some monument, Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks, And shows the ragged entrails of this pit.
Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sew'd her mind:
But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;
A craftier Tereus hast thou met withal,
And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,
That could have better sew'd than Philomel.
O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute,
And make the silken strings delight to kiss them;
He would not then have touch'd them for his life:
Or, had he heard the heavenly harmony,
Which that sweet tongue hath made,
He would have dropp'd his knife, and fell asleep, As Cerberus at the Thracian poet's† feet.
LAVINIA'S Loss of her TONGUE DESCRIBED.
O, THAT delightful engine of her thoughts,
That blab'd them with such pleasing eloquence,
Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage:
Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung
Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear!
For now I stand as one upon a rock, Environ'd with a wilderness of sea;
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.
When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears Stood on her cheeks; as doth the honey dew Upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd.
Mar. Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly. Tit. But how, if that fly had a father and mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buz lamenting doings in the air?
That with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry; and thou hast kill'd
Lo, by thy side where Rape, and Murder, stands;
Now give some 'surance that thou art Revenge,
Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels;
And then I'll come, and be thy waggoner,
And whirl along with thee about the globe.
Provide the proper palfries, black as jet,
To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away,
And find out murderers in their guilty caves:
And, when thy car is loaden with their heads,
I will dismount, and by the waggon wheel
Trot, like a servile footman, all day long;
Even from Hyperion's rising in the east,
Until his very downfal in the sea.
TAKE but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere* oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, (Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf.
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself.
Call here my varlet*, I'll unarm again:
Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan, that is master of his heart,
Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.
The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;
But I am weaker than a woman's tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder+ than ignorance;
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skill-less as unpractis'd infancy.
O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,
When I do tell thee, There my hopes lie drown'd,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie indrench'd. I tell thee, I am mad
In Cressid's love: Thou answer'st, She is fair;
Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,
Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seisure
The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of ploughmen! This thou tell'st mc,
As true thou tell'st me, when I say-I love her;
But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,
Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.
SUCCESS NOT EQUAL TO OUR HOPES.
The ample proposition, that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below,
Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd:
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant* from his course of growth.
ADVERSITY THE TRIAL OF MAN.
Why then, you princes,
Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works;
And think them shames, which are, indeed, nought
But the protractive trials of great Jove,
To find persistive constancy in men?
The fineness of which metal is not found
In fortune's love: for, the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin'd† and kin:
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass, or matter, by itself
Lies, rich in virtue, and unmingled.
ACHILLES DESCRIBED BY ULYSSES.
The great Achilles,-whom opinion crowns The sinew and the forehand of our host,Having his ear full of his airy fame,
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