Page images
PDF
EPUB

Now art thou found forsworn, for Emily;
And dar'st attempt her love, for whom I die.
So hast thou cheated Theseus with a wile,
Against thy vow, returning to beguile
Under a borrow'd name: as false to me,
So false thou art to him who set thee free:
But rest assur'd, that either thou shalt die,
Or else renounce thy claim in Emily:

For though unarm'd I am, and (freed by chance)
Am here without my sword, or pointed lance:
Hope not, base man, unquestion'd hence to go,
For I am Palamon, thy mortal foe.

So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear,
Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear,
And hears him rustling in the wood, and sees
His course at distance by the bending trees;
And thinks, here comes my mortal enemy,
And either he must fall in fight, or I:
This while he thinks, he lifts aloft his dart;
A gen'rous chillness seizes ev'ry part:

The veins pour back the blood, and fortify the heart.
Thus pale they meet; their eyes with fury burn;
None greets; for none the greeting will return:
But in dumb surliness, each arm'd with care
His foe profess'd, as brother of the war:
Then both, no moment lost, at once advance
Against each other, arm'd with sword and lance:
They lash, they foin, they pass, they strive to bore
Their corslets, and the thinnest parts explore.
Thus two long hours in equal arms they stood,

And wounded, wound; till both were bath'd in blood;
And not a foot of ground had either got,
As if the world depended on the spot.

Take your desert, the death you

have decreed;
I seal your doom, and ratify the deed:
By Mars, the patron of my arms, you die.
He said; dumb sorrow seiz'd the standers-by.
The queen above the rest, by nature good,
(The pattern form'd of perfect womanhood,)
For tender pity wept: when she began,

Through the bright quire th' infectious virtue ran.
All dropt their tears, ev'n the contended maid:
And thus among themselves they softly said:
What eyes can suffer this unworthy sight!
Two youths of royal blood, renown'd in fight,
The mastership of heav'n in face and mind,
And lovers, far beyond their faithless kind:

See their wide streaming wounds; they neither came
For pride of empire, nor desire of fame:

Kings fight for kingdoms, madmen for applause:
But love for love alone; that crowns the lover's cause.

Within these oratories might you see
Rich carvings, portraitures, and imagery:
Where ev'ry figure to the life express'd
The godhead's pow'r to whom it was address'd.
In Venus' temple on the sides were seen
The broken slumbers of enamour'd men,
Pray'rs that ev'n spoke, and pity seem'd to call,
And issuing sighs that smok'd along the wall.
Complaints, and hot desires, the lover's hell,

And scalding tears that wore a channel where they fell:
And all around were nuptial bonds, the ties
and a train of lies,

Of love's assurance,
That, made in lust, conclude in perjuries.
Beauty, and youth, and wealth, and luxury,
And sprightly hope, and short-enduring joy;
And sorceries to raise th' infernal pow'rs,
And sigils fram'd in planetary hours:

Expense, and after-thought, and idle care,
And doubts of motley hue, and dark despair;
Suspicious and fantastical surmise,

And jealousy suffus'd, with jaundice in her eyes,
Discolouring all she view'd, in tawny dress'd,
Down-look'd, and with a cuckoo on her fist.
Oppos'd to her, on t' other side advance
The costly feast, the carol, and the dance,
Minstrels and music, poetry and play,
And balls by night, and tournaments by day.
All these were painted on the wall, and more;
With acts and monuments of times before:
And others added by prophetic doom,

And lovers yet unborn, and loves to come:
For there th' Idalian mount, and Citheron,
The court of Venus, was in colours drawn:
Before the palace-gate, in careless dress,
And loose array, sat portress Idleness:
There, by the fount, Narcissus pin'd alone;
There Sampson was, with wiser Solomon;
And all the mighty names by love undone.
Medea's charms were there, Circean feasts,
With bowls that turn'd enamour'd youths to beasts;
Here might be seen that beauty, wealth, and wit,
And prowess, to the pow'r of love submit:
The spreading snare for all mankind is laid;
And lovers all betray, and are betray'd.

The goddess' self some noble hand had wrought;
Smiling she seem'd, and full of pleasing thought;
From ocean as she first began to rise,

And smooth'd the ruffled seas and clear'd the skies;
She trod the brine all bare below the breast,
And the green waves but ill conceal'd the rest;
A lute she held; and on her head was seen
A wreath of roses red, and myrtles green;
Her turtles fann'd the buxom air above;
And, by his mother, stood an infant love,

Q

With wings unfledg'd; his eyes were banded o'er;
His hands a bow, his back a quiver bore,

Supplied with arrows bright and keen, a deadly store.
But in the dome of mighty Mars the red
With diff'rent figures all the sides were spread;
This temple, less in form, with equal grace,
Was imitative of the first in Thrace:

For that cold region was the lov'd abode,
And sov'reign mansion of the warrior god.
The landscape was a forest wide and bare,
Where neither beast, nor human kind repair;
The fowl, that scent afar, the borders fly,
And shun the bitter blast, and wheel about the sky.
A cake of scurf lies baking on the ground,

And prickly stubs, instead of trees, are found;
Or woods with knots and knares deform'd and old;
Headless the most, and hideous to behold:

A rattling tempest through the branches went,
That stripp'd them bare, and one sole way they bent.
Heav'n froze above, severe; the clouds congeal,

And through the crystal vault appear'd the standing hail.
Such was the face without: a mountain stood
Threat'ning from high, and overlook'd the wood:
Beneath the low'ring brow, and on a bent,
The temple stood of Mars armipotent:
The frame of burnish'd steel, that cast a glare
From far, and seem'd to thaw the freezing air.
A strait long entry to the temple led,
Blind with high walls; and horror over head;
Thence issued such a blast, and hollow roar,
As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door;
In through that door, a northern light there shone;
'Twas all it had, for windows there were none.
The gate was adamant; eternal frame!

Which, hew'd by Mars himself, from Indian quarries

came,

The labour of a god; and all along

Tough iron plates were clench'd to make it strong,

A tun about was ev'ry pillar there;

A polish'd mirror shone not half so clear.
There saw I how the secret felon wrought,

And treason lab'ring in the traitor's thought:

And midwife time the ripen'd plot to murder brought.
There the red anger dar'd the pallid fear;
Next stood hypocrisy, with holy leer,
Soft smiling, and demurely looking down,
But hid the dagger underneath the gown:
Th' assassinating wife, the household fiend;
And far the blackest there, the traitor-friend.
On t'other side there stood destruction bare;
Unpunish'd rapine, and a waste of war.
Contest, with sharpen'd knives, in cloisters drawn,
And all with blood bespread the holy lawn.

Loud menaces were heard, and foul disgrace,

And bawling infamy, in language base;

Till sense was lost in sound, and silence fled the place. The slayer of himself yet saw I there,

The gore congeal'd was clotted in his hair;

With eyes half clos'd, and gaping mouth he lay,
And grim, as when he breath'd his sullen soul away.
In midst of all the dome, misfortune sat,

And gloomy discontent, and fell debate,
And madness laughing in his ireful mood;
And arm'd complaint on theft; and cries of blood.
There was the murder'd corpse, in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes display'd:
The city to the soldiers' rage resign'd:
Successless wars, and poverty behind:
Ships burnt in fight, or forc'd on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars:
The new-born babe by nurses overlaid;

And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.
All ills of Mars's nature, flame and steel;
The gasping charioteer, beneath the wheel
Of his own car; the ruin'd house that falls
And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls:

« PreviousContinue »