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.
Look how the world’s poor people are amazed 925
At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,
Infusing them with dreadful prophecies; 928
So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,
And sighing it again, exclaims on death.
“Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, 931
Hateful divorce of love,” thus chides she death,
“Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean?
To stifle beauty and to steal his breath,
Who when he liv’d, his breath and beauty set
Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet. 936
“If he be dead, O no, it cannot be,
Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it,
O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see,
But hatefully at random dost thou hit. 940
Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart
Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart.
“Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,
And hearing him, thy power had lost his power. 944
The destinies will curse thee for this stroke;
They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower.
Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled,
And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead. 948
“Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping?
What may a heavy groan advantage thee?
Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping
Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see? 952
Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,
Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.”
Here overcome, as one full of despair,
She vail’d her eyelids, who like sluices stopp’d 956
The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair
In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d
But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,
And with his strong course opens them again. 960
O how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow;
Her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye;
Both crystals, where they view’d each other’s sorrow,
Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry; 964
But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.