FullReads

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,
Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend: . . 820
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, . . . 824
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. . . .828

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: . . . . 832
‘Ay me!’ she cries, and twenty times, ‘Woe, woe!’
And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She marking them, begins a wailing note,
And sings extemporally a woeful ditty; . . . . .836
How love makes young men thrall and old men dote;
How love is wise in folly foolish-witty:
Her heavy anthem stili concludes in woe,
And still the choir of echoes answer so. . . . 840

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: . 844
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; . . . . . 848
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’. . . .852
. .
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; . . . . . . . 856
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, . . . 860
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, . . . .865
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: . . 868
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, . .872
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. . . 876

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 . . .881
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, . . 884
Because the cry remaineth in one place,
Wilere fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud:
Finding their enemy to be so curst,
They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first.