Page 2245 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

«For shame», he cries, «let go, and let me go:
My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone, [380]
And ’tis your fault I am bereft him so.
I pray you hence, and leave me here alone,

For all my mind, my thought, my busy care,
Is how to get my palfrey from the mare».

Thus she replies: «Thy palfrey as he should, [385]
Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire.

Affection is a coal that must be cool’d;
Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire.
The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;
Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone. [390]

«How like a jade he stood tied to the tree,

Servilely master’d with a leathern rein!
But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee,
He held such petty bondage in disdain,
Throwing the base thong from his bending crest, [395]
Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast.

«Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,
Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,
But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,
His other agents aim at like delight? [400]

Who is so faint that dares not be so bold
To touch the fire, the weather being cold?

«Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy,
And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee,
To take advantage on presented joy; [405]

Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee.
O learn to love, the lesson is but plain,
And once made perfect, never lost again».

«I know not love», quoth he, «nor will not know it,
Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it. [410]