"You hurt my hand with wringing; let us part,
And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat:
Remove your siege from my unyielding heart;
To love's alarm it will not ope the gate.

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flat

tery;

For where a heart is hard, they make no battery."

"What! canst thou talk," quoth she, "hast thou a tongue?

O, would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing!
Thy mermaid's voice1 hath done me double wrong;
I had my load before, now pressed with bearing:
Melodious discord, heavenly tine harsh sound-
ing,

Ear's deep-sweet music, and heart's deep-sore wounding.

"Had I no eyes, but ears, my ears would love
That inward beauty and invisible;

Or, were I deaf, thy outward parts would move
Each part in me that were but sensible :

Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,
Yet should I be in love, by touching thee.

"Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me,
And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,
And nothing but the very smell were left me,
Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

1 Mermaid's voice. Mermaid and siren were formerly used as synonymous. So in The Comedy of Errors, Act III. Scene II.:

"O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,

To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote."

For from the still'tory of thy face excelling Comes breath perfumed, that breedeth love by smelling.

"But O, what banquet wert thou to the taste,
Being nurse and feeder of the other four!
Would they not wish the feast might ever last,
And bid Suspicion double-lock the door?

Lest Jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,
Should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast."

Once more the ruby-colored portal opened,
Which to his speech did honey passage yield;
Like a red morn, that ever yet betokened
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh :
Even as the wind is hushed before it raineth,
Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,
Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,
Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,
His meaning struck her ere his words begun.

And at his look she flatly falleth down,
For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth:
A smile recures the wounding of a frown,
But blessed bankrupt, that by love so thriveth!
The silly boy, believing she is dead,

Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it

red;

1 Flaws is here used in the sense of violent blasts

And all-amazed brake off his late intent,
For sharply he did think to reprehend her,
Which cunning love did wittily prevent:
Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!
For on the grass she lies as she were slain,
Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks
He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard;
He chafes her lips, a thousand ways he seeks
To mend the hurt that his unkindness marred ;
He kisses her; and she, by her good will,
Will never rise so he will kiss her still.

The night of sorrow now is turned to day :
Her two blue windows' faintly she upheaveth,
Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array
He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth:
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
So is her face illumined with her eye;

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fixed,
As if from thence they borrowed all their shine.
Were never four such lamps together mixed,
Had not his clouded with his brows' repine;

2

1 The windows are doubtless the eyelids, but the epithet blue is somewhat startling. We must remember that Shakspeare has described violets as

"Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes."

The propriety of this epithet is fully noticed by us in Cymbeline Act II. Scene II.

2 Repine. Used as a substantive. Chaucer employs pine in the

same manner.

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,
Shone like the moon in water seen by night.'

O, where am I?" quoth she, " in earth or heaven, Or in the ocean drenched, or in the fire?

What hour is this? or morn or weary even?
Do I delight to die, or life desire?

But now I lived, and life was death's annoy;
But now I died, and death was lively joy.

"O, thou didst kill me; kill me once again:
Thy eyes' shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,
Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain
That they have murdered this poor heart of mine ;
And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,
But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.

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Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
And as they last, their verdure still endure,
To drive infection2 from the dangerous year!
That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
May say the plague is banished by thy breath

"Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?

1 In Shakspeare's early plays we frequently meet the same image that is found in these early poems. Thus in Love's Labor's Lost:

"Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright
Through the transparent bosom of the deep

As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;
Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep."

2 The custom of strewing houses with fragrant herbs was universal at a period when the constant recurrence of the plague habitnated families to the use of what they considered preventives. It

To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing,
Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,
Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.

"A thousand kisses buys my heart from me; And pay them at thy leisure, one by one. What is ten hundred touches unto thee? Are they not quickly told, and quickly gone? Say, for non-payment that the debt should dou ble,1

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?”

"Fair queen," quoth he, "if any love you owe me,
Measure my strangeness2 with my unripe years;
Before I know myself seek not to know me;
No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears:

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The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or, being early plucked, is sour to taste.

Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait,
His day's hot task hath ended in the west :
The owl, night's herald, shrieks, - 'tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest;

And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven's light
Do summon us to part, and bid good night.

"Now let me say 'good night,' and so say you; If you will say so, you shall have a kiss."

was this cause which rendered Bucklersbury at simpling time such a crowded mart.

1 Here is one of the many traces of Shakspeare's legal studies an allusion to the penalty for non-payment which formed the condition of a money-bond.

2 Strangeness, coyness or bashfulness