Applying this to that, and so to so;

For love can comment upon every woe.

"Where did I leave ?"—"No matter where," quoth he; "Leave me, and then the story aptly ends:

The night is spent.”—“ Why, what of that?” quoth she.

"I am," quoth he, "expected of my friends;

And now 'tis dark, and going I shall fall.”
"In night," quoth she, "desire sees best of all.

"But if thou fall, O, then imagine this,
The earth in love with thee thy footing trips,
And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips
Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,

Lest she should steal a kiss, and die forsworn.

"Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:
Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine,
Till forging nature be condemn'd of treason,
For stealing mounds from heaven that were divine,
Wherein she framed thee in high heaven's despite,
To shame the sun by day, and her by night.

"And therefore hath she bribed the Destinies, To cross the curious workmanship of nature, To mingle beauty with infirmities,

And

pure perfection with impure defeature; Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances and much misery;

"As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood,1

1 Wood, mad.

The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:

Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damned despair,
Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair.

"And not the least of all these maladies,
But in one minute's fight brings beauty under:
Both favor, savor, hue, and qualities,
Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thawed, and done,1
As mountain-snow melts with the midday sun.

"Therefore despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking vestals, and self-loving nuns,
That on the earth would breed a scarcity
And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,
Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night
Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

"What is thy body but a swallowing grave, Seeming to bury that posterity

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

"So in thyself thyself art made away;

A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife,

Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,

Or butcher-sire, that reaves his son of life

Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.'

1 Done, destroyed.

"Nay, then," quoth Adon, "you will fall again
Into your idle, over-handled theme;

The kiss I gave you is bestowed in vain,
And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For by this blacked-faced night, desire's foul

nurse,

Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

"If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
And every tongue more moving than your own,
Bewitching like the wanton mermaid's songs,
Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;
For know, my heart stands arméd in mine ear,
And will not let a false sound enter there;

"Lest the deceiving harmony should run
Into the quiet closure of my breast;
And then my little heart were quite undone,
In his bedchamber to be barred of rest.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

"What have you urged that I cannot reprove
The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger;
I hate not love, but your device in love,
That lends embracements unto every stranger.

You do it for increase; O strange excuse!
When reason is the bawd to lust's abuse.

?

"Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled,
Since sweating lust on earth usurped his name;
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But lust's effect is tempest after sun;

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not; lust like a glutton dies:
Love is all truth; lust full of forgéd lies.

"More I could tell, but more I dare not say;
The text is old, the orator too green.
Therefore in sadness, now I will away;
My face is full of shame, my heart of teen;
Mine ears that to your wanton talk attended
Do burn themselves for having so offended."

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund 2 runs
a pace;

Leaves Love upon her back deeply distressed.

Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye;

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late-embarkéd friend,

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend;
So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

1 Teen, grief.

2 Laund, lawn. Camden describes a lawn as a plain among trees, and the epithet dark confirms this explanation. We have such a scene in Henry VI. Part III. Act III. :—

"Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves,
For through this laund anon the deer will come."

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood,
Or 'stonished as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood;
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,
That all the neighbor-caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:

"Ah me!" she cries, and twenty times, "woe, Woe!"

And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She, marking them, begins a wailing note,

And sings extemp'rally a woful ditty;

How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote ;
How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty :

Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,
And still the choir of echoes answer1 so.

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, though seeming short:

1 Answer. So the original. Mr. Dyce, who is a careful collator of copies, prints answers. No doubt, according to the rules of modern construction, answers is more correct, and Malone talks of Shakspeare having fallen into the error of " hasty writers, who are deceived by the noun immediately preceding the verb being in the plural number." We hold that to be a false refinement which destroys the landmarks of an age's phraseology. Ben Jonson, in his "English Grammar," lays down as a rule that "nouns signifying a multitude, though they be of the singular number, require a verb plural." The rule would appear still more reasonable when the plural is more apparently expressed in the noun of multitude, as in the form before us—“the choir of echoes."