This last her loue, that could not liue behind him.
Her words to the asp are not without a quaint pathetic tenderness, as she contrasts the “ugly grimness” and “hideous torments” of other deaths with this that it procures:
Therefore come thou, of wonders wonder chiefe,
That open canst with such an easie key
The doore of life: come gentle cunning thiefe
That from our selues so steal’st our selues away.
And her dallying with the accepted and inevitable end is good:
Looke how a mother at her sonnes departing,
For some farre voyage bent to get him fame,
Doth entertaine him with an ydle parting