That cedar tops and hills seem burnished 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 sucked 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.

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;

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,

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 all dismayed,

She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy

And childish error that they are afraid;

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 murder.

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 respects, yet naught at all respecting;

In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.

Here kennelled in a brake she finds a hound,

And asks the weary caitiff for his master;

And there another licking of his wound,

’Gainst venomed sores the only sovereign plaster.

And here she meets another, sadly scowling,

To whom she speaks; and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,

Another flap-mouthed 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 scratched 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-favoured 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 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.

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 ruined with thy rigour.’

Here overcome, as one full of despair,

She vailed her eyelids, who like sluices stopped

The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair

In the sweet channel of her bosom dropped.

But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,

And with his strong course opens them again.

O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!

Her eye seen in the tears, tears in her eye,

Both crystals, where they viewed 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.