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 double,1

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?"

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

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

"Good night," quoth she; and, ere he says " adieu,” The honey fee of parting tendered is;

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.

Till, breathless, he disjoined, and backward drew
The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,
Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,
Whereon they surfeit yet complain on drouth,

He with her plenty pressed, she faint with dearth, (Their lips together glued,) fall to the earth.

Now quick Desire hath caught the yielding prey,
And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth :
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,

Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;

Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high,

That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,

With blindfold fury she begins to forage;

Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth

boil,

And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage;

Planting oblivion, beating reason back,

Forgetting shame's pure blush, and honor's wrack.

Ilot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing,
Like a wild bird being tamed with too much han-

dling,

Or as the fleet-foot roe that's tired with chasing,
Or like the froward infant stilled with dandling,
He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,
While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering,
And yields at last to every light impression ?1
Things out of hope are compassed oft with venturing,
Chiefly in love, whose leave 2 exceeds commission;
Affection faints not like a pale-faced coward,

But then woos best when most his choice is froward.

When he did frown, O, had she then gave over,
Such nectar from his lips she had not sucked.
Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;
What though the rose have prickles, yet 'tis plucked:
Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast

Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him;

The
poor fool 3 prays her that he may depart :
She is resolved no longer to restrain him ;
Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,
The which, by Cupid's bow she doth protest,
He carries thence incagéd in his breast.

"Sweet boy," she says, "this night I'll waste in sorrow, For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch. Tell me, love's master, shall we meet to-morrow? Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match? "

1 The soft wax upon which the seal attached to a legal instrument was impressed, required to be tempered before the impres sion was made upon it. So Falstaff says of Justice Shallow, "I have him already tempering between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him."

2 Leave, license.

3 No reader of Shakspeare can forget the pathos with which he has employed this expression in another place: "And my poor fool is hanged."

He tells her no; to-morrow he intends

To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.

"The boar!" quoth she; whereat a sudden pale,
Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,
Usurps her cheeks; she trembles at his tale,
And on his neck her yoking arms she throws:
She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck,
He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love,
Her champion mounted for the hot encounter:
All is imaginary she doth prove,

He will not manage her, although he mount her;
That worse than Tantalus' is her annoy,

To clip Elysium, and to lack her joy.

Even as poor birds, deceived with painted grapes,'
Do surfeit by the eye, and pine the maw,
Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,

As those poor birds that helpless 2 berries saw:
The warm effects which she in him fiuds missing,
She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.

But all in vain; good queen, it will not be :
She hath assayed as much as may be proved;
Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee ;
She's Love, she loves, and yet she is not loved.
"Fie, fie," he says, "you crush me; let me go;
You have no reason to withhold me so."

1 The allusion is to the picture of Zeuxis, mentioned by Pliny. We may observe that there was no English translation of Pliny so early as the date of this poem.

2 Helpless, that afford no help.

"Thou hadst been gone," quoth she, "sweet boy, ere

this,

But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the

boar.

O, be advised! thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never-sheathed he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal1 butcher, bent to kill.

"On his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; His eyes like glowworms shine when he doth fret: His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way, And whom he strikes, his cruel tushes slay.

"His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed,
Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter;
His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed;
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,
As fearful of him, part; through whom he rushes.

"Alas! he nought esteems that face of thine,
To which Love's eyes pay tributary gazes;
Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne,
Whose full perfection all the world amazes ;

But having thee at vantage, (wondrous dread!)
Would root these beaut.es as he roots the mead.

"O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still! Beauty hath nought to do with such foul fiends:

1 Mortal, deadly.