“Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:
Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine 728
Till forging nature be condemn’d of treason,
For stealing moulds from heaven, that were divine;
Wherein she fram’d thee, in high heaven’s despite,
To shame the sun by day and her by night. 732
“And therefore hath she brib’d the destinies,
To cross the curious workmanship of nature,
To mingle beauty with infirmities,
And pure perfection with impure defeature, 736
Making it subject to the tyranny
Of mad mischances and much misery.
“As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood, 740
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn’d despair,
Swear nature’s death, for framing thee so fair. 744
“And not the least of all these maladies
But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under:
Both favour, savour, hue and qualities,
Whereat th’impartial gazer late did wonder, 748
Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done,
As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.
“Therefore despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns, 752
That on the earth would breed a scarcity
And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,
Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night
Dries up his oil to lend the world his light. 756
“What is thy body but a swallowing grave,
Seeming to bury that posterity,
Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity? 760
If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.
“So in thyself thyself art made away;
A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife, 764
Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,
Or butcher sire that reeves his son of life.
Foul cank’ring rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.” 768
“Nay then,” quoth Adon, “you will fall again
Into your idle over-handled theme;
The kiss I gave you is bestow’d in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream; 772
For by this black-fac’d night, desire’s foul nurse,
Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.
“If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
And every tongue more moving than your own, 776
Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs,
Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;
For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,
And will not let a false sound enter there. 780
“Lest the deceiving harmony should run
Into the quiet closure of my breast,
And then my little heart were quite undone,
In his bedchamber to be barr’d of rest. 784
No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.