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 overshut* his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles:
The many musits‡ through the which he goes,
Are like a labyrinth to anıaze his foes.
'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|| 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,
* Steevens suggests overshoots, to fly beyond his troubles, which is adopted by Mr. Dyce. To get shut meant to get rid of anything.
† Literally bends or turns. Applied sometimes to the windings of a river, hence metaphorically to turns of speech ::
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles.-MILTON.
Gaps in hedges, the places, according to the old lexicographers, through which the hare goes to relief. Muse, in French, is the term for the beginning of rutting.
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict.
The high top'd firres which on that mountain keepe.
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared 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,*
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.'-' Why, what of that?' quoth 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,
The practice of moralizing works-that is, of drawing moral applications and maxims from treatises, fables, and romances-prevailed extensively in the middle ages, and was, at first, chiefly cultivated by religious writers. Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Esop's Fables, The Romance of the Rose, and The Gesta Romanorum, may be mentioned as examples; and it was common among the clergy to illustrate moral truths from the pulpit, by interspersing their sermons with stories drawn from a variety of sources. It is to this custom Venus alludes when she says that it is unlike herself to moralize, applying this to that, and so to so.'
† An instance of one of the many ellipses common to the Eliza bethan literature. Mr. Halliwell has rendered an important service to students by collecting and arranging numerous examples of these, and other structural peculiarities, in the first volume of his edition of The Works of Shakspeare.
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 condemned of treason,
For stealing moulds 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,*
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 favour, savour, hue, and qualities,
Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,
Are on the sudden wasted, thawed, and done,
As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.
'Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking vestals, and self-loving nuns,
* Properly wode, mad-as in the old editions:
And here am I, and wode within this wood,
Because I cannot meet with Hermia.-Mid. N. Dr. ii. 2.
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,
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."
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 black-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 my ear the tempting tune is blown:
For know, my heart stands armèd 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;
When misers keep it; being put to loan
In time it will return us two for one.-MARLOWE.
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.
'Love comforteth, like sunshine after rain,
But lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not; lust like a glutton dies:
Love is all truth; lust full of forged lies.
'More I could tell, but more I dare not say:
The text is old, the orator too green.
Therefore, in sadness, now I will away;
My face is full of shame, my heart of teen :*
Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended,
Do burn themselves for having so offended.'
With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark lawnd† runs apace;
Leaves Love upon her back deeply distressed,
Look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.
† Lawn-an open space in a wood.
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