Page images
PDF
EPUB

HERO AND LEANDER.

THE ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH SESTYAD.

Hero, in sacred habit deck'd,
Doth private sacrifice effect.

Her scarf's description wrought by Fate.
Ostents, that threaten her estate.
The strange, yet physical events,
Leander's counterfeit presents.
In thunder, Cyprides descends,
Presaging both the lovers' ends:
Ecte, the goddess of Remorse,
With vocal and articulate force
Inspires Leucote, Venus' swan,
T excuse the beauteous Sestián.
Venus, to wreak her rites' abuses,
Creates the monster Eronusis;
Enflaming Hero's sacrifice,

With lightning darted from her eyes:
And thereof springs the painted beast,
That ever since taints every breast.

HERO AND LEANDER.

THE FOURTH SESTYAD.

Now from Leander's place she rose, and found
Her hair and rent robe scatter'd on the ground:
Which taking up, she every piece did lay
Upon the altar; where in youth of day
She us❜d t'exhibit private sacrifice:
Those would she offer to the deities
Of her fair Goddess, and her powerful son,
As relics of her late-felt passion:

And in that holy sort she vow'd to end them;
In hope her violent fancies, that did rend them,
Would as quite fade in her love's holy fire,
As they should in the flames she meant t' inspire.
Then put she on all her religious weeds,

That deck'd her in her secret sacred deeds:

A crown of icicles, that sun nor fire
Could ever melt, and figur'd chaste desire.
A golden star shin'd in her naked breast,
In honour of the queen-light of the east.
In her right hand she held a silver wand,
On whose bright top Peristera did stand,
Who was a nymph, but now transform'd a dove,
And in her life was dear in Venus' love:

And for her sake she ever since that time

Choos'd doves to draw her coach through Heav'n's

blue clime:

Her plenteous hair in curled billows swims
On her bright shoulder: her harmonious limbs
Sustain'd no more but a most subtile veil,
That hung on them, as it durst not assail
Their different concord: for the weakest air
Could raise it swelling from her beauties fair;
Nor did it cover, but adumbrate only

Her most heart-piercing parts, that a bless'd eye
Might see, as it did shadow, fearfully,
All that all-love-deserving paradise:

It was as blue as the most freezing skies;
Near the sea's hue, for thence her goddess came:
On it a scarf she wore of wondrous frame;
In midst whereof she'd wrought a virgin's face,
From whose each cheek a fiery blush did chase
Two crimson flames, that did two ways extend,
Spreading the ample scarf to either end,
Which figur'd the division of her mind,
Whiles yet she rested bashfully inclin'd,
And stood not resolute to wed Leander;
This serv'd her white neck for a purple sphere,
And cast itself at full breadth down her back,
There since the first breath that begun the wrack
Of her free quiet from Leander's lips,

She wrought a sea in one flame full of ships:
But that one ship where all her wealth did pass,
Like simple merchants' goods, Leander was:

For in that sea she naked figur'd him :
Her diving needle taught him how to swim,
And to each thread did such resemblance give,
For joy to be so like him it did live.

Things senseless live by art, and rational die
By rude contempt of art and industry.

Scarce could she work but in her strength of thought,
She fear'd she prick'd Leander as she wrought:
And oft would shriek so, that her guardian, frighted,
Would staring haste, as with some mischief cited.
They double life that dead things' grief sustain :
They kill that feel not their friends' living pain.
Sometimes she fear'd he sought her infamy;
And then as she was working of his eye,

She thought to prick it out to quench her ill,
But as she prick'd, it grew more perfect still.
Trifling attempts no serious acts advance;
The fire of love is blown by dalliance.

In working his fair neck she did so grace it,
She still was working her own arms t' embrace it:
That, and his shoulders, and his hands were seen
Above the stream, and with a pure sea green
She did so quaintly shadow every limb,
All might be seen beneath the waves to swim.

In this conceited scarf she wrought beside
A moon in change, and shooting stars did glide
In number after her with bloody beams,
Which figur'd her affects in their extremes,
Pursuing nature in her Cynthian body,

And did her thoughts running on change imply;

« PreviousContinue »