Arethusa riseth.
Are. That can the river Arethusa do.
My streams you know, fair Goddess, issue forth
From Tartary by the Tenarian isles:
My head’s in Hell where Stygian Pluto reigns.
There did I see the lovely Proserpine,
Whom Pluto hath rapt hence; behold her girdle,
Which on her way dropt from her lovely waist,
And scatter’d in my streams.—Fair Queen, adieu!
Crown you my banks with flowers, as I tell true.
[From the “Golden Age,” an Historical Play, by the same Author, 1611.]
Sibilla, the Wife of Saturn, is by him enjoined to slay the new-born Jupiter. None can do it for his smiles.
Sibilla. Vesta. Nurse.
Sib. Mother, of all that ever mothers were
Most wretched! Kiss thy sweet babe ere he die,
That hath life only lent to suffer death.
Sweet Lad, I would thy father saw thee smile.
Thy beauty, and thy pretty infancy,
Would mollify his heart, were’t hew’d from flint,
Or carved with iron tools from Corsic rock.
Thou laugh’st to think thou must be kill’d in jest.
Oh! if thou needs must die, I’ll be thy murtheress,
And kill thee with my kisses, pretty knave.—
And can’st thou laugh to see thy mother weep?
Or art thou in thy chearful smiles so free,
In scorn of thy rude father’s tyranny?
I’ll kiss thee ere I kill thee: for my life
The Lad so smiles, I cannot hold the knife.
Vest. Then give him me; I am his Grandmother,
And I will kill him gently: this sad office
Belongs to me, as to the next of kin.
Sib. For heaven’s sake, when you kill him, hurt him not.
Vest. Come, little knave, prepare your naked throat
I have not heart to give thee many wounds,
My kindness is to take thy life at once.
Now—
Alack, my pretty Grandchild, smilest thou still?
I have lust to kiss, but have no heart to kill.
Nurse. You may be careless of the King’s command
But it concerns me; and I love my life
More than I do a Stripling’s. Give him me,
I’ll make him sure; a sharp weapon lend,
I’ll quickly bring the Youngster to his end.—
Alack, my pretty knave, ’twere more than sin
With a sharp knife to touch thy tender skin.
O Madam, he’s so full of angel grace,
I cannot strike, he smiles so in my face.
Sib. I’ll wink, and strike; come, once more reach him hither;
For die he must, so Saturn hath decreed:
’Las, for a world I would not see him bleed.
Vest. Ne shall he do. But swear me secrecy;
The Babe shall live, and we be dangerless.
C. L.
[196] The car of Dis.