Anna. Yes, madam; I have truss’d up them, that many a proper man has been truss’d up for.
Isa. I thank thee. Take the wings of night,
Beloved secretary, and post with them to Pavia;[214]
There furnish up some stately palace
Worthy to entertain the king of love:
Prepare it for my coming and my love’s.
Ere Phœbus’ steeds once more unharness’d be, 240
Or ere he sport with his belovèd Thetis,
The silver-footed goddess of the sea,
We will set forward. Fly like the northern wind,
Or swifter, Anna,—fleet like to my mind.
Anna. I am just of your mind, madam. I am gone.
[Exit Anna.
Isa. So to the house of death the mourner goes,
That is bereft of what his soul desired,
As I to bed—I to my nuptial bed,
The heaven on earth: so to thought-slaughters went
The pale Andromeda, bedew’d with tears. 250
When every minute she expected gripes
Of a fell monster, and in vain bewail’d
The act of her creation. Sullen Night,
That look’st with sunk eyes on my nuptial bed,
With ne’er a star that smiles upon the end,
Mend thy slack pace, and lend the malcontent,
The hoping lover, and the wishing bride,
Beams that too long thou shadowest: or, if not,
In spite of thy fix’d front, when my loath’d mate
Shall struggle in due pleasure for his right, 260
I’ll think ’t my love, and die in that delight!
[Exit.
[182] Not marked in old eds.
[183] Omitted in ed. 1631.
[184] Seemingly, here, a sort of apron.—The word is used in a variety of senses: see Nares’ Glossary.