Page 2262 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,
Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.

Look how the world’s poor people are amazed [925]
At apparitions, signs and prodigies,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies:
So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,
And sighing it again, exclaims on death. [930]

«Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,
Hateful divorce of love», thus chides she death:

«Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean,
To stifle beauty and to steal his breath?
Who when he liv’d, his breath and beauty set [935]

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet.

«If he be dead, − O no, it cannot be,
Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it, −
O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see,
But hatefully at randon dost thou hit: [940]

Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart
Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart.

«Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,
And hearing him, thy power had lost his power.
The destinies will curse thee for this stroke: [945]

They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower.
Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled,
And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead.

«Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping?

What may a heavy groan advantage thee? [950]
Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping
Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?
Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,
Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour».