In her love's beauties, she had confidence
Jove loved him too, and pardoned her offense:
Beauty in heaven and earth this grace doth win,
It supples rigor, and it lessens sin.
Thus, her sharp wit, her love, her secrecy,
Trooping together, made her wonder why
She should not leave her bed, and to the temple;
Her health said she must live; her sex, dissemble.
She viewed Leander's place, and wished he were 190
Turned to his place, so his place were Leander.
"Ah me," said she, "that love's sweet life and sense
Should do it harm! my love had not gone hence,
Had he been like his place: oh, blessèd place,
Image of constancy! Thus my love's grace
Parts nowhere, but it leaves something behind
Worth observation: he renowns his kind:
His motion is, like heaven's, orbicular,
For where he once is, he is ever there.
This place was mine; Leander, now 'tis thine;200
Thou being myself, then it is double mine,
Mine, and Leander's mine, Leander's mine,
Oh, see what wealth it yields me, nay, yields him!
For I am in it, he for me doth swim.
Rich, fruitful love, that, doubling self estates,
-Elixir-like contracts, though separates!
Dear place, I kiss thee, and do welcome thee,
As from Leander ever sent to me."
THE ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH SESTIAD.
Hero, in sacred habit deckt,
Doth private sacrifice effect.
Her scarf's description, wrought by Fate;
Ostents that threaten her estate;
The strange, yet physical, events,
Leander's counterfeit presents.
In thunder Cyprides descends,
Presaging both the lover's ends:
Este, the goddess of remorse,
With vocal and articulate force
Inspires Lencote, Venus' swan,
T'excuse the beauteous Sestian.
Venus, to wreak her rites' abuses,
Creates the monster Eronusis,
Inflaming Hero's sacrifice
With lightning darted from her eyes;
And thereof springs the painted beast,
That ever since taints every breast.
Now from Leander's place she rose, and found
Her hair and rent robe scattered on the ground;
Which taking up, she every piece did lay
Upon an altar, where in youth of day
She used t'exhibit private sacrifice:
Those would she offer to the deities
Of her fair goddess and her powerful son,
As relics of her late-felt passion;
And in that holy sort she vowed to end them,
In hope her violent fancies, that did rend them,
Would as quite fade in her love's holy fire,
As they should in the flames she meant t' inspire,
Then put she on all her religious weeds,
That decked her in her secret sacred deeds;
A crown of icicles, that sun nor fire
Could ever melt, and figured chaste desire;
A golden star shined on her naked breast,
In honor of the queen-light of the east.
In her right hand she held a silver wand,
On whose bright top Peristera did stand,
Who was a nymph, but now transformed a dove,
And in her life was dear in Venus' love;
And for her sake she ever since that time
Choosed doves to draw her coach through heaven's blue clime.
Her plenteous hair in curlèd billows swims
On her bright shoulder: her harmonious limbs
Sustained no more but a most subtile veil,
That hung on them, as it durst not assail
Their different concord; for the weakest air
Could raise its swelling from her beauties fair;
Nor did it cover, but adumbrate only
Her most heart-piercing parts, that a blest eye /240 Might see, as it did shadow, fearfully,
All that all-love-deserving paradise:
It was as blue as the most freezing skies;
Near the sea's hue, for thence her goddess came:
On it a scarf she wore of wondrous frame;
In midst whereof she wrought a virgin's face,
From whose each cheek a fiery blush did chase
Two crimson flames, that did two ways extend,
Spreading the ample scarf to either end;
Which figured the division of her mind,
Whiles yet she rested bashfully inclined,
And stood not resolute to wed Leander;
This served her white neck for a purple sphere,
And cast itself at full breadth down her back:
There, since the first breath that begun the wrack
Of her free quiet from Leander's lips,
She wrought a sea, in one flame, full of ships;
But that one ship where all her wealth did pass,
Like simple merchants' goods, Leander was;
For in that sea she naked figured him;
Her diving needle taught him how to swim,
And to each thread did such resemblance give,
For joy to be so like him it did live:
Things senseless live by art, and rational die
By rude contempt of art and industry.
Scarce could she work, but, in her strength of thought,
She feared she pricked Leander as she wrought,
And oft would shriek so, that her guardian, frighted,
Would staring haste, as with some mischief cited:
They double life that dead things' grief sustain;
They kill that feel not their friends' living pain.
Sometimes she feared he sought her infamy;
And then, as she was working of his eye,
She thought to prick it out to quench her ill;
But, as she pricked, it grew more perfect still:
Trifling attempts no serious acts advance;
The fire of love is blown by dalliance.
In working his fair neck she did so grace it,
She still was working her own arms t' embrace it:
That, and his shoulders, and his hands were seen
Above the stream; and with a pure sea-green
She did so quaintly shadow every limb,
All might be seen beneath the waves to swim.
In this conceited scarf she wrought beside
A moon in change, and shooting stars did glide
In number after her with bloody beams;
Which figured her affects in their extremes,
Pursuing Nature in her Cynthian body,
And did her thoughts running on change imply;
For maids take more delight, when they prepare,
And think of wives' states, than when wives they are.
Beneath all these she wrought a fisherman,
Drawing his nets from forth that ocean;*
Who drew so hard, ye might discover well,
The toughened sinews in his neck did swell:
His inward strains drave out his bloodshot eyes,
And springs of sweat did in his forehead rise;
Yet was of nought but of a serpent sped,
That in his bosom flew and stung him dead:
And this by Fate into her mind was sent,
Not wrought by mere instinct of her intent.
At the scarf's other end her hand did frame,
Near the forked point of the divided flame,
A country virgin keeping of a vine,
Who did of hollow bulrushes combine
Snares for the stubble-loving grasshopper,
And by her lay her scrip that nourished her.
Within a myrtle shade she sate and sung;
And tufts of waving reeds about her sprung,
* Ocean, as may be seen in several instances in this poem, was generally pronounced Ocean, as in Chaucer,
Where lurked two foxes, that, while she applied 10-
Her trifling snares, their thieveries did divide,
One to the vine, another to her scrip,
That she did negligently overslip;
By which her fruitful vine and wholesome fare
She suffered spoiled, to make a childish snare.
These ominous fancies did her soul express,
And every finger made a prophetess,
To show what death was hid in love's disguise,
And make her judgment conquer Destinies.
Oh, what sweet forms fair ladies' souls do shroud,
Were they made seen and forced through their blood;
If through their beauties, like rich work through lawn,
They would set forth their minds with virtues drawn,
In letting graces from their fingers fly,
To still their eyas* thoughts with industry;
That their plied wits in numbered silks might sing
Passion's huge conquest, and their needles leading
Affection prisoner through their own-built cities,
Pinioned with stories and Arachnean ditties
Proceed we now with Hero's sacrifice:
She odors burned, and from their smoke did rise
Unsavory fumes, that air with plagues inspired;
And then the consecrated sticks she fired,
On whose pale flame an angry spirit flew,
And beat it down as it upward grew;
The virgin tapers that on th' altar stood,
When she inflamed them, burned as red as blood;
* Eyas is a young hawk that has left the eyerie or nest, but has not yet mewed or moulted. It is used here, and by Spenser, in the Hymn of Heavenly Love, as an adjective, and means, not unfledged, as Mr. Dyce supposes, but untried, inexperienced :
"Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas wings."
The adjective use of a substantive is common in our language, as when we say crocodile tears, meaning such tears as a crocodile is supposed to shed over its prey before devouring it. Mr. Dyce suggests that eyas in the text may be intended to signify restless; but there is no necessity to strain the metaphor. The poet proposes that young maidens should still, or quiet, their thoughts, which are eager and inexperienced, like an eyas, by com. mitting them to embroidery
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