If beauty have a soul, this is not she; If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimony, If sanctimony be the gods' delight, If there be rule in unity itself—
This was not she. O madness of discourse, That cause sets up with and against itself! Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt Without perdition, and loss assume all reason Without revolt; this is, and is not, Cressid ! Within my soul there doth commence a fight Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate Divides more wider than the sky and earth; And yet the spacious breadth of this division Admits no orifice for a point, as subtle As is Arachne's broken woof, to enter. Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates; Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven: Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself; The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed; And with another knot, five-finger tied,"
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy reliques, Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
(The handmaids of all women, or, more truly, Woman its pretty self).
A pack of blessings lights upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.
Thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter; Or, rather, a disease that's in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil, A plague-sore, an emboss'd carbuncle,
A knot tied by giving her hand to Diomed.
In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee; Let shame come when it will, I do not call it :- Mend when thou canst; be better, at thy leisure.
There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, That shews his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies, and herself, Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up: Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes; As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be, Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.
They hurried us aboard a bark;
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared A rotten carcase of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us, To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again, Did us but loving wrong.
Thou wast, that did preserve me! Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd' the sea with drops full salt; Under my burden groan'd; which raised in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue.
As he could make me with this eye or ear Distinguish him from others, he did keep The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind Could best express how slow his soul sail'd on, How swift his ship.
Thou should'st have made him
As little as a crow, or less, ere left
To after-eye him.
I would have broke mine eye-strings; crack'd them, but
To look upon him; till the diminution
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle: Nay, follow'd him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air; and then Have turn'd mine eye, and wept.
To comfort you with chance,
Assure yourself, after our ship did split,
When you, and that poor number saved with you, Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother, Most provident in peril, bind himself
(Courage and hope both teaching him the practice) To a strong mast that lived upon the sea; Where, like Arion on the dolphin's back,
I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves, So long as I could see.
I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs; he trod the water, Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head 'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke
To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd, As stooping to relieve him.
At thy birth, dear boy,
Nature and fortune join'd to make thee great :
Of nature's gifts thou may'st with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose: but fortune, O! She is corrupted, changed, and won from thee.
Methinks, I feel this youth's perfections, With an invisible and subtle stealth, To creep in at mine eyes.
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st In these two princely boys! They are as gentle As zephyrs, blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head: and yet as rough, Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind, That by the top doth take the mountain pine, And make him stoop to the vale. 'Tis wonderful, That an invisible instinct should frame them To royalty unlearn'd; honour untaught; Civility not seen from other; valour,
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop As if it had been sow'd!
Two lads, that thought there was no more behind, But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal. ...
We were as twinn'd lambs, that did frisk i' the sun, And bleat the one at the other: What we changed, Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, no, nor dream'd That any did....
Temptations have since then been born to us.
When thou, haply, seest
Some rare note-worthy object in thy travel;
Wish me partaker in thy happiness,
When thou dost meet good hap; and, in thy danger,
If ever danger do environ thee,
Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,
For I will be thy bead's-man.
He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter: He makes a July's day short as December; And, with his varying childness, cures in me Thoughts, that would thick my blood.
We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together; And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled, and inseparable.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright, That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
Bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him, When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, And sails upon the bosom of the air.
This is the prettiest low-born lass, that ever Ran on the green sward;" nothing she does, or seems, But smacks of something greater than herself; Too noble for this place.
Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time
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