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; 880
Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds
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,
Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud,
Finding their enemy to be so curst,
They all strain court’sy who shall cope him first. 888
This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,
Through which it enters to surprise her heart;
Who overcome by doubt and bloodless fear,
With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part; 892
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. 900
Whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red,
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 naught at all respecting,
In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.
Here kennel’d in a brake she finds a hound, 913
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.
When he hath ceas’d his ill-resounding noise,
Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim, 920
Against the welkin volleys out his voice;
Another and another answer him,
Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,
Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.