Part 7

Lines 1009–1176

1009 Thus hoping that Adonis is alive,
1010 Her rash suspect sile doth extenuate;
1011 And that his beauty may the better thrive,
1012 With Death she humbly doth insinuate;
1013 Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs; and stories
1014 His victories, his triumphs, and his glories.
1015 'O Jove!' quoth she, 'how much a fool was I,
1016 To be of such a weak and silly mind
1017 To wail his death who lives and must not die
1018 Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind;
1019 For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
1020 And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.
1021 'Fie, fie, fond love! thou art so full of fear
1022 As one with treasure laden, hemm'd with thieves
1023 Trifles, unwitnessed with eye or ear,
1024 Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.'
1025 Even at this word she hears a merry horn
1026 Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.
1027 As falcon to the lure, away she flies;
1028 The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light;
1029 And in her haste unfortunately spies
1030 The foul boar's conquest on her fair delight;
1031 Which seen, her eyes, as murder'd with the view,
1032 Like stars asham'd of day, themselves withdrew:
1033 Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
1034 Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain,
1035 And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit,
1036 Long after fearing to creep forth again;
1037 So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled
1038 Into the deep dark cabills of her head;
1039 Where they resign their office and their light
1040 To the disposing of her troubled brain;
1041 Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
1042 And never wound the heart with looks again;
1043 Who, like a king perplexed in his throne,
1044 By their suggestion gives a deadly groan,
1045 Whereat each tributary subject quakes;
1046 As when the wind, imprison'd in the ground,
1047 Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes,
1048 Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound.
1049 This mutiny each part doth so surprise
1050 That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes;
1051 And, being open'd, threw unwilling light
1052 Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench'd
1053 In his soft flank; whose wonted lily white
1054 With purple tears, that his wound wept, was drench'd:
1055 No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed
1056 But stole his blood and seem'd with him to bleed.
1057 This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth,
1058 Over one shoulder doth she hang her head,
1059 Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth;
1060 She thinks he could not die, he is not dead:
1061 Her voice is stopp'd, her joints forget to bow,
1062 Her eyes are mad that they have wept till now.
1063 Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly,
1064 That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three;
1065 And then she reprehends her mangling eye,
1066 That makes more gashes where no breach should be:
1067 His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled;
1068 For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled.
1069 'My tongue cannot express my grief for one,
1070 And yet,' quoth she, 'behold two Adons dead!
1071 My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone,
1072 Mine eyes are turn'd to fire, my heart to lead:
1073 Heavy heart's lead, melt at mine eyes' red fire!
1074 So shall I die by drops of hot desire.
1075 'Alas! poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
1076 What face remains alive that's worth the viewing?
1077 Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast
1078 Of things long since, or anything ensuing?
1079 The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim;
1080 But true-sweet beauty liv'd and died with him.
1081 'Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear!
1082 Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you:
1083 Having no fair to lose, you need not fear;
1084 The sun doth scorn you, and the wind doth hiss you:
1085 But when Adonis liv'd, sun and sharp air
1086 Lurk'd like two thieves, to rob him of his fair:
1087 'And therefore would he put his bonnet on,
1088 Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep;
1089 The wind would blow it off, and, being gone,
1090 Play with his locks: then would Adonis weep;
1091 And straight, in pity of his tender years,
1092 They both would strive who first should dry his tears.
1093 'To see his face the lion walk'd along
1094 Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him;
1095 To recreate himself when he hath sung,
1096 The tiger would be tame and gently hear him;
1097 If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey,
1098 And never fright the silly lamb that day.
1099 'When he beheld his shadow in the brook,
1100 The fishes spread on it their golden gills;
1101 When he was by, the birds such pleasure took,
1102 That some would sing, some other in their bills
1103 Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries
1104 He fed them with his sight, they him with berries.
1105 'But this foul, grim, and urchin-spouted boar,
1106 Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave,
1107 Ne'er saw the beauteous livery that he wore;
1108 Witness the entertainment that he gave:
1109 If he did see his face, why then I know
1110 He thought to kiss him, and hath killed him so.
1111 ''Tis true, 'tis true; thus was Adonis slain:
1112 He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,
1113 Who did not whet his teeth at him again,
1114 But by a kiss thought to persuade him there;
1115 And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine
1116 Sheath'd unaware the tusk in his soft groin.
1117 'Had I been tooth'd like him, I must confess,
1118 With kissing him I should have kill'd him first;
1119 But he is dead, and never did he bless
1120 My youth with his; the more am I accurst.'
1121 With this she falleth in the place she stood,
1122 And stains her face with his congealed blood.
1123 Sho looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
1124 She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;
1125 She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,
1126 As if they heard the woeful words she told;
1127 She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,
1128 Where, lo! two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies;
1129 Two glasses where herself herself beheld
1130 A thousand times, and now no more reflect;
1131 Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell'd,
1132 And every beauty robb'd of his effect:
1133 'Wonder of time,' quoth she, 'this is my spite,
1134 That, you being dead, the day should yet be light.
1135 'Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy,
1136 Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:
1137 It shall be waited on with jealousy,
1138 Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;
1139 Ne'er settled equally, but high or low;
1140 That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.
1141 'It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud,
1142 Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while;
1143 The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
1144 With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:
1145 The strongest body shall it make most weak,
1146 Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.
1147 'It shall be sparing and too full of riot,
1148 Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;
1149 The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
1150 Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
1151 It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
1152 Make the young old, the old become a child.
1153 'It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
1154 It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
1155 It shall be merciful, and too severe,
1156 And most deceiving when it seems most just;
1157 Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward,
1158 Put fear to velour, courage to the coward.
1159 'It shall be cause of war and dire events,
1160 And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire;
1161 Subject and servile to all discontents,
1162 As dry combustious matter is to fire:
1163 Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy,
1164 They that love best their love shall not enjoy.'
1165 By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd
1166 Was melted like a vapour from her sight,
1167 And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd,
1168 A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white;
1169 Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
1170 Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
1171 She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,
1172 Comparing it to her Adonis' breath;
1173 And says within her bosom it shall dwell,
1174 Since he himself is reft from her by death:
1175 She drops the stalk, and in the breach appears
1176 Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

Notes

TLN 1010archaic vocab
“rash suspect sile doth extenuate”
'Extenuate' here means to lessen or excuse. Venus is trying to talk herself out of her wild fear (her 'rash suspect') that Adonis is dead, telling herself she had no real reason to think so. 'Sile' is an archaic or dialectal past tense for 'she'; some editors emend to 'she.''
TLN 1012archaic vocab
“With Death she humbly doth insinuate”
'Insinuate' means to worm one's way into the favour of; Venus is flattering Death by listing his conquests — 'trophies, statues, tombs' — to coax him into sparing Adonis. The word usually implies sly, creeping flattery.
TLN 1020classical allusion
“beauty dead, black chaos comes again”
Venus argues that Adonis's beauty is not merely personal but cosmological: if he dies, beauty itself dies, and the primordial disorder — 'black chaos' — that preceded creation returns. Chaos in classical myth was the formless void before the gods shaped the world out of it.
TLN 1027rhetorical device
“As falcon to the lure, away she flies; The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light”
A falcon flies instantly to the falconer's 'lure' — a bundle of feathers and meat swung to call the hawk back — the moment it is shown. The simile captures the speed and instinct of Venus's rush toward the sound of the horn. The second line adds a supernatural lightness: she is so swift she does not even bend the grass.
TLN 1033rhetorical device
“as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain”
Venus's eyes, overwhelmed by the sight of Adonis's wound, retract deep into her skull — and the narrator compares them to a snail that pulls its soft horns in when touched. The six-line simile extends the comparison: just as the snail hides for a long time before daring to creep out again, so her eyes stay withdrawn.
TLN 1052archaic vocab
“wide wound that the boar had trench'd In his soft flank; whose wonted lily white With purple tears, that his wound wept, was drench'd”
'Trench'd' means dug or cut — from 'trench,' a long deep cut. The boar's tusk has gouged a channel in Adonis's side. 'Purple tears' are the drops of blood: 'purple' in Elizabethan usage covers the full range from deep red to dark crimson, not merely the colour we associate with royalty today.
TLN 1059archaic vocab
“Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth”
'Passions' is used as a verb meaning to grieve or suffer intense emotion — to be seized by passion. 'Doteth' means is out of her wits with grief, behaving irrationally. Venus is speechless and wild at once.
TLN 1081cultural context
“Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear”
Venus bans bonnets and veils because they were worn partly to protect the complexion from the sun and wind — the very elements that 'lurk'd like two thieves' to steal Adonis's beauty. Now that the most beautiful face is gone, there is nothing left worth protecting; the sun will scorn other faces rather than covet them.
TLN 1099classical allusion
“When he beheld his shadow in the brook, The fishes spread on it their golden gills”
When Adonis looked at his own reflection in the brook, the fish came and spread their bright fins over the image, as if adoring it. The moment echoes the myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool — but here nature adores Adonis, not Adonis himself.
classical Narcissus
TLN 1105archaic vocab
“this foul, grim, and urchin-spouted boar, Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave”
'Urchin-spouted' means having a snout like a hedgehog's — 'urchin' was the Elizabethan word for a hedgehog. The boar's 'downward eye' (TLN 1106) means its gaze is directed to the ground, as rooting animals look down. Venus is building a picture of the boar as ugly, earth-bound, and death-seeking — the antithesis of sky-gazing, beauty-loving Adonis.
TLN 1127rhetorical device
“She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes, Where, lo! two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies”
Venus lifts Adonis's eyelids as if opening the lids of a treasure chest ('coffer-lids'), only to find not jewels but 'two lamps, burnt out, in darkness.' The image shifts from a casket of riches (suggesting the priceless worth of his eyes) to extinguished lights, in three words making the transition from hope to desolation.
TLN 1135rhetorical device
“Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy, Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend”
Venus delivers a formal curse on love itself — a prophecy that from this moment on, love will be inseparable from jealousy, sorrow, fraud, and disappointment. This seven-stanza speech (TLN 1135-1164) is a 'complaint' speech, a set rhetorical genre in which a grieving figure curses the condition that destroyed her. It also functions as an etiology — an explanation of why love is painful.
classical Venus and Adonis
TLN 1166classical allusion
“Was melted like a vapour from her sight, And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd, A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white”
Adonis's body vanishes like mist and a flower — purple with white markings, its colours matching his pale cheeks and the dark blood — springs from the spilled blood. This is the poem's central metamorphosis, taken from Ovid: the anemone that grows from Adonis's blood.
classical Venus and Adonisclassical Ovid's Metamorphoses