Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie
An image like thyself, all stained with gore;
Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed

Doth make them droop with grief, and hang the head.

"What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,

That tremble at the imagination?

The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,
And fear doth teach it divination :

I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,

If thou encounter with the boar to-morrow.

"But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me; Uncouple at the timorous, flying hare,

Or at the fox, which lives by subtilty,

Or at the roe, which no encounter dare:

Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs,

And on thy well-breathed horse keep with thy

hounds.

"And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot1 his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care
He cranks 2 and crosses with a thousand doubles:
The many musits3 through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

1 Overshoot. The original editions read overshut. This reading is retained by Malone.

2 Cranks, winds. So in Henry IV. Part I. :

"See how this river comes me cranking in.”

3 Musits. The term is explained in Markham's "Gentlemen's Academy," 1595: "We term the place where she [the hare] sitteth her form; the place through which she goes to relief her musit."

"Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,'
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;

And sometime sorteth 2 with a herd of deer;
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

“For there his smell with others being mingled, The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;

Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies, As if another chase were in the skies.

"By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;

And now his grief may be comparéd well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

"Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low, never relieved by any.

"Lie quietly, and hear a little more;
Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise;
To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,
Unlike myself thou hear'st me moralize,3

1 Keep, dwell.

2 Sorteth, consorteth.

3 Moralize, comment.

Applying this to that, and so to so;

For love can comment upon every woe.

"Where did I leave ?"-"No matter where," quoth he;

“Leave me, and then the story aptly ends:

The night is spent."

she.

"I am," quoth he, "expected of my friends;
And now 'tis dark, and going I shall fall."
"In night," quoth she, "desire sees best of all.

"But if thou fall, O, then imagine this,
The earth in love with thee thy footing trips,

And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips
Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,

Lest she should steal a kiss, and die forsworn.

"Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:
Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine,
Till forging nature be condemn'd of treason,
For stealing mounds from heaven that were divine,
Wherein she framed thee in high heaven's despite,
To shame the sun by day, and her by night.

"And therefore hath she bribed the Destinies,
To cross the curious workmanship of nature,
To mingle beauty with infirmities,
And pure perfection with impure defeature ;
Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances and much misery;

"As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood,1

1 Wood, mad.

The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:

Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damned despair,
Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair.

"And not the least of all these maladies,
But in one minute's fight brings beauty under:
Both favor, savor, hue, and qualities,
Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thawed, and done,1
As mountain-snow melts with the midday sun.

"Therefore despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking vestals, and self-loving nuns,
That on the earth would breed a scarcity
And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,
Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night
Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

"What is thy body but a swallowing grave, Seeming to bury that posterity

1

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,

If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

"So in thyself thyself art made away ;

A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife,

Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do

slay,

Or butcher-sire, that reaves his son of life

Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.'

1 Done, destroyed.

"Nay, then," quoth Adon, "you will fall again
Into your idle, over-handled theme;

The kiss I gave you is bestowed in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For by this blacked-faced night, desire's foul

nurse,

Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

"If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
And every tongue more moving than your own,
Bewitching like the wanton mermaid's songs,
Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown ;
For know, my heart stands arméd in mine ear,
And will not let a false sound enter there;

"Lest the deceiving harmony should run
Into the quiet closure of my breast;
And then my little heart were quite undone,
In his bedchamber to be barred of rest.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

"What have you urged that I cannot reprove?
The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger;
I hate not love, but your device in love,
That lends embracements unto every stranger.
You do it for increase; O strange excuse!
When reason is the bawd to lust's abuse.

"Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled, Since sweating lust on earth usurped his name;

Under whose simple semblance he hath fed

Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.