“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, 808
Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended
Do burn themselves for having so offended.”
With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace 811
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;
Leaves love upon her back deeply distress’d.
Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye. 816
Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late embarked friend,
Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend: 820
So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.
Whereat amaz’d, as one that unaware
Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood, 824
Or ’stonish’d as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood;
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way. 828
And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,
That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;
Passion on passion deeply is redoubled: 832
“Ay me!” she cries, and twenty times, “Woe, woe!”
And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.
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 still 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:
“Oh 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.”