Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear ; "Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, By this the love-sick queen began to sweat, With burning eye did hotly overlook them; And now Adonis, with a lazy spright, Souring his cheeks, cries, "Fie, no more of love! "Ah me," quoth Venus, "young, and so unkind! 1 'Tired, attired. "The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm, "Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind." “What am I, that thou shouldst contemn2 me this? And one for interest, if thou wilt have twain. "Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, Thing like a man, but of no woman bred; Thou art no man, though of a man's complexion, This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, 1 Unkind. Milton applies the same epithet, in the same way, in his "Doctrine of Divorce :" "The desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitariness by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul, to his, in the cheerful society of wedlock." 2 Contemn is here used in the sense of throw aside; as Malone explains it, "contemptuously refuse this favor." Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong; Sometimes she shakes her head, and then his hand, ' "Fondling," she saith, "since I have hemmed thee here, Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: "Within this limit is relief enough, Then be my deer, since I am such a park ; At this Adonis smiles as in disdain, That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple : 1 Intendments, intentions. So in Othello, Act Iv. Sc. II. : 66 I have said nothing but what I protest intendment of doing "" The word continued to be used long after the time of Shakspeare. Foreknowing well if there he came to lie, These lovely caves, these round-enchanting pits, Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say? Her words are done, her woes the more increasing, And from her twining arms doth urge releasing: Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse. But lo, from forth a copse that neighbors by, And forth she rushes, snorts, and neighs aloud: The strong-necked steed, being tied unto a tree, Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, His ears up pricked; his braided hanging mane His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, 3 As who should say, Lo!3 thus my strength is tried; Of the fair breeder that is standing by. What recketh he his rider's angry stir, 4 His flattering "holla," or his "Stand, I say "? He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, 1 Compassed, arched. 2 Mane is here used as a plural noun. In a note on Othello, Act 11. Sc. 1., Knight justifies the adoption of a new reading "The wind-shaked serge, with high and monstrous mane upon the belief that in this line we have a picture which was probably suggested in the noble passage of Job," Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? The passage before us shows that the image was familiar to the mind of Shakspeare, of the majesty of the war-horse erecting his mane under the influence of passion. 3 This is a faint echo of the wonderful passage in Job, "He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha!" 4 Holla. Ho is the ancient interjection, giving notice to stop. The word before us is certainly the same as the French hola, and is explained in Cotgrave's French Dictionary as meaning "enough, soft, soft, no more of that." |