O hard-believing love, how strange it seems 985
Not to believe, and yet too credulous;
Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;
Despair and hope make thee ridiculous, 988
The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,
In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.
Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought,
Adonis lives, and death is not to blame; 992
It was not she that call’d him all to naught;
Now she adds honours to his hateful name.
She clepes him king of graves, and grave for kings,
Imperious supreme of all mortal things. 996
“No, no,” quoth she, “sweet death, I did but jest;
Yet pardon me, I felt a kind of fear
Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast,
Which knows no pity, but is still severe; 1000
Then, gentle shadow,—truth I must confess—
I rail’d on thee, fearing my love’s decease.
“’Tis not my fault, the boar provok’d my tongue;
Be wreak’d on him, invisible commander; 1004
’Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong;
I did but act, he’s author of my slander.
Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet,
Could rule them both, without ten women’s wit.”
Thus hoping that Adonis is alive, 1009
Her rash suspect she doth extenuate;
And that his beauty may the better thrive,
With death she humbly doth insinuate; 1012
Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs and stories
His victories, his triumphs and his glories.
“O love!” quoth she, “how much a fool was I,
To be of such a weak and silly mind, 1016
To wail his death who lives, and must not die
Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind;
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And beauty dead, black Chaos comes again. 1020
“Fie, fie, fond love, thou art as full of fear
As one with treasure laden, hemm’d with thieves,
Trifles unwitnessed with eye or ear,
Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.” 1024
Even at this word she hears a merry horn,
Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.
As falcon to the lure, away she flies;
The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light, 1028
And in her haste unfortunately spies
The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight;
Which seen, her eyes, as murder’d with the view,
Like stars asham’d of day, themselves withdrew.
Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, 1033
Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain,
And there all smother’d up, in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again: 1036
So at his bloody view her eyes are fled
Into the deep dark cabins of her head.
Where they resign their office and their light
To the disposing of her troubled brain, 1040
Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
And never wound the heart with looks again;
Who like a king perplexed in his throne,
By their suggestion gives a deadly groan. 1044