FullReads

This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, . . . . 889
Througll 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 basel
y fly and dare not stay the field.

Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy,
Till, cheering up her senses sore dismay’d, . . . 896
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, . . . 901
Like milk and blood being mingled both together,
A second fear through all her sinews spread,
Which madly hurries her she knows not whither: . . 904
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; . . .908
Her more than haste is mated with delays,
Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,
Full of respects, yet nought at all respecting,
In hand with all things, nought at all effecting.

Here kennel’d in a brake she finds a hound, . . . 9l3
And asks the weary caitiff for his master,
And there another licking of his wound,
Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster; . 916
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, . . 920
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 . . .925
At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gaz’d,
Infusing them with dreadful prophecies; . . . . 928
So she at these sad sighs draws up her breath,
And, sighing it again, exclaims on Death.

‘Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, . . . 931
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? . . . .936

‘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. . . . . .940
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. . .944
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 shoull have fled,
And not Death’s ebon dart, to strike him dead. . 948

‘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? . . 952
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’d her eyelids, who, like sluices, stopp’d .956
The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair
In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d
But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,
And with his strong course opens them again. . . 960