William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (366 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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17
My flocks feed not, my ewes breed not,
My rams speed not, all is amiss.
Love is dying, faith’s defying,
Heart’s denying causer of this.
All my merry jigs are quite forgot,
All my lady’s love is lost, God wot.
Where her faith was firmly fixed in love,
There a nay is placed without remove.
One seely cross wrought all my loss—
O frowning fortune, cursed fickle dame!
For now I see inconstancy
More in women than in men remain.
 
In black mourn I, all fears scorn I,
Love hath forlorn me, living in thrall.
Heart is bleeding, all help needing—
O cruel speeding, freighted with gall.
My shepherd’s pipe can sound no deal,
My wether’s bell rings doleful knell,
My curtal dog that wont to have played
Plays not at all, but seems afraid,
With sighs so deep procures to weep
In howling wise to see my doleful plight.
How sighs resound through heartless ground,
Like a thousand vanquished men in bloody fight!
 
Clear wells spring not, sweet birds sing not,
Green plants bring not forth their dye.
Herd stands weeping, flocks all sleeping,
Nymphs back peeping fearfully.
All our pleasure known to us poor swains,
All our merry meetings on the plains,
All our evening sport from us is fled,
All our love is lost, for love is dead.
Farewell, sweet lass, thy like ne’er was
For a sweet content, the cause of all my moan.
Poor Corydon must live alone,
Other help for him I see that there is none.
 
18
Whenas thine eye hath chose the dame
And stalled the deer that thou shouldst strike,
Let reason rule things worthy blame
As well as fancy, partial might.
Take counsel of some wiser head,
Neither too young nor yet unwed,
 
And when thou com‘st thy tale to tell,
Smooth not thy tongue with filed talk
Lest she some subtle practice smell:
A cripple soon can find a halt.
But plainly say thou lov’st her well,
And set her person forth to sale,
 
And to her will frame all thy ways.
Spare not to spend, and chiefly there
Where thy desert may merit praise
By ringing in thy lady’s ear.
The strongest castle, tower, and town,
The golden bullet beats it down.
 
Serve always with assured trust,
And in thy suit be humble-true;
Unless thy lady prove unjust,
Press never thou to choose anew.
When time shall serve, be thou not slack
To proffer, though she put thee back.
 
What though her frowning brows be bent,
Her cloudy looks will calm ere night,
And then too late she will repent
That thus dissembled her delight,
And twice desire, ere it be day,
That which with 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 nought?
 
Think women still to strive with men,
To sin and never for to saint.
There is no heaven; be holy then
When time with age shall them attaint.
Were kisses all the joys in bed,
One woman would another wed.
 
But soft, enough—too much, I fear,
Lest that my mistress hear my song
She will not stick to round me on th’ear
To teach my tongue to be so long.
Yet will she blush (here be it said)
To hear her secrets so bewrayed.
The Phoenix and Turtle
 
Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree
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 troupe come thou not near.
 
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing
Save the eagle, feathered king.
Keep the obsequy so strict.
 
Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
 
And thou treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak‘st
With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st,
’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.
 
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 this 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 mine.
 
Property was thus appalled
That the self was not the same.
Single nature’s double name
Neither two nor one was called.
 
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 threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.
Threnos
 
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.
 
Verses upon the Stanley Tomb at Tong
Written upon the east end of the tomb
 
Ask who lies here, but do not weep.
He is not dead; he doth but sleep.
This stony register is for his bones;
His fame is more perpetual than these stones,
And his own goodness, with himself being gone,
Shall live when earthly monument is none.
Written upon the West end thereof
 
Not monumental stone preserves our fame,
Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our name.
The memory of him for whom this stands
Shall outlive marble and defacers’ hands.
When all to time’s consumption shall be given,
Stanley for whom this stands shall stand in heaven.
 
On Ben Jonson
Master Ben Jonson and Master William Shakespeare
being merry at a tavern, Master Jonson having begun
this for his epitaph:
Here lies Ben Jonson
That was once one,
 
he gives it to Master Shakespeare to make up who
presently writes:
Who while he lived was a slow thing,
And now, being dead, is nothing.
 
 
An Epitaph on Elias James
 
When God was pleased, the world unwilling yet,
Elias James to nature paid his debt,
And here reposeth. As he lived, he died,
The saying strongly in him verified:
‘Such life, such death’. Then, a known truth to tell,
He lived a godly life, and died as well.
An extemporary epitaph on John Combe, a noted usurer
Ten in the hundred here lies engraved;
A hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If anyone ask who lies in this tomb,
‘O ho!’ quoth the devil, “tis my John-a-Combe.’
 
 
Another Epitaph on John Combe
 
He being dead, and making the poor his heirs, William
Shakespeare after writes this for his epitaph:
Howe’er he lived judge not,
John Combe shall never be forgot
While poor hath memory, for he did gather
To make the poor his issue; he, their father,
As record of his tilth and seed 5
Did crown him in his latter deed.
 
Upon the King
 
At the foot of the effigy of King James I, before his
Works
(1616)
Crowns have their compass; length of days, their date;
Triumphs, their tombs; felicity, her fate.
Of more than earth can earth make none partaker,
But knowledge makes the king most like his maker.

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