When time shall serve, be thou not slack
To proffer, though she put thee pack.
What though her frowning brows be bent,
Her cloudy looks will clear ere night;
And then too late she will repent,
That she dissembled her delight;
And twice desire, ere it be day,
That with such scorn she put away.
What though she strive to try her strength, And ban, and brawl, and say thee nay; Her feeble force will yield at length, When craft hath taught her thus to say :• Had women been so strong as men. in faith, you had not had it then.
The wiles and guiles that women work,
Dissembled with an outward show,
The tricks and toys that in them lurk,
The cock that treads them shall not know.
Have you not heard it said full oft,
A woman's nay doth stand for naught?
Think, women love to match with men,
And not to live so like a saint:
Here is no heaven; they holy then
Begin, when age doth them attaint.
Were kisses all the joys in bed,
One woman would another wed.
But, soft! enough! too much I fear:
For if my lady hear my song,
She will not stick to ring mine ear,
To teach my tongue to be so long:
Yet will she blush, here be it said,
To hear her secrets so bewray'd.
Take, O, take those lips away,1
That so sweetly were forsworn ;
And those eyes, the break of day;—
Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again ;—
Seals of love, but seal'd in vain.
Hide, O, hide those hills of snow,
Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears:
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.
Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
1 The first stanza of this Sonnet will be found in Measure for Measure, vol. ii. p. 204.
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey:
But, thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,1
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right:
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender makest
With the breath thou givest and takest;
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence :-
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
1 i. e. who understands funereal music.
So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Distance, and no space was seen "Twixt the turtle and his queen : But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right Flaming in the phoenix' sight: Either was the other's raine.
Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same:
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.
Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded;
That it cried,-How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain.
Whereupon it made this threne1
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene :—
Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,
Leaving no posterity:
"Twas not their infirmity;
It was married chastity.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:
Truth and beauty buried be.
To this urn let those repair,
That are either true or fair :
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
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