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.
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 basely 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.