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, thaw'd 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 their's, 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 bestow'd 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 armed 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 bed-chamber 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.
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 usurp'd 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; 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 lawns 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 seen him 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 amaz'd, 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 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 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.

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, though seeming short:
If pleas'd 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-tongu'd tapsters answering every call,
Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?

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
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 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 twine about her thigh to make her stay;
She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,
Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ake,
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:
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-dismay'd,
She tells them, 'tis a causeless fantasy,
And childish error that they are afraid;

Bids them leave quaking, wills them fear no more ;-
And with that word she spy'd 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 effecting.

Here kennel'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.
When he had ceas'd his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouth'd 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 scratch'd 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 signs draws up her breath,
And, sighing it again, exclaims on death:-

-

Hard-favour'd 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 liv'd, 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.

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 provok'st such weeping?
What may a heavy groan advantage thee?

Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping

Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?

Now Nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,

Since her best work is ruin'd with thy rigour.