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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 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.

When he hath ceas'd 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 below,
Shaking their scratch'd ears, bleeding as they go.

Look, how the world's poor people are amaz'd
At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gaz'd,
Infusing them with dreadful prophecies:

So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,
And, sighing it again, exclaims on Death.

Mated-confounded.

b

Respect-circumspection.

"Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,

Hateful divorce of love," (thus chides she Death,)

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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— it may; thou hast no eyes to see,

O yes,

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 a 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."

Here overcome, as one full of despair,
She vail'de her eyelids, who, like sluices, stopp'd
The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair
In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp'd;

a His for its.

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b Boswell has quoted a passage from Massinger's Virgin Martyr,' alluding, as Shakspere here does, to the beautiful fable of ‘Cupid and Death' exchanging ar

rows:

"Strange affection!

Cupid once more hath chang'd his shafts with Death,
And kills, instead of giving life."

Vail'd-lowered.

But through the floodgates breaks the silver rain,
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.

Variable passions throng her constant woe,
As striving who should best become her grief;
All entertain'd, each passion labours 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 huntsmen hollo :a
A nurse's song ne'er pleas'd her babe so well:
The dire imagination she did follow
This sound of hope doth labour 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;
Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass,
To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown'd.

O hard-believing love, how 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.

a Hollo, or hollow, is not quite the same word as holla, which we have already noticed, although the usual spelling of this word in the passage before us is holla.

Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought;
Adonis lives, and Death is not to blame;

It was not she that call'd him all-toa naught;
Now she adds honours to his hateful name;

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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 knows no pity, but is still severe;

Then, gentle shadow (truth I must confess),
I rail'd on thee, fearing my love's decease.

""T is not my fault: the boar provok'd my tongue;
Be wreak'd on him, invisible commander;
"T is 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."

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.b

a All-to. Mr. Dyce explains this as entirely, altogether.

b Shakspere in his greater works was not ashamed to recur to the treasury of his

early thoughts:

"Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,
But I do love thee! and when I love thee not
Chaos is come again."

"Fie, fie, fond love, thou art so full of fear

As one with treasure laden, hemm'd with thieves;
Trifles, unwitnessed 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;
Which seen, her eyes, as murder'd with the view,
Like stars asham'd 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;

So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled
Into the deep dark cabins of her head;

Where they resign their office and their light
To the disposing of her troubled brain;
Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
And never wound the heart with looks again;
Who, like a king perplexed 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 for passage, earth's foundation shakes,
Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound,

The mutiny each part doth so surprise,

That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes;

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 drench'd:

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