And you detested Charms constraining love!
Shun Love's stol'n sports by that these lovers prove.
By this the Sovereign of Heaven's golden fires,
And young Leander, lord of his desires,
Together from their lovers' arms arose:
Leander into Hellespontus throws
His Hero-handled body, whose delight
Made him disdain each other epithite.
And as amidst th' enamour'd waves he swims,
The god of gold of purpose gilt his limbs,
That this word gilt, including double sense,
The double guilt of his incontinence
Might be express'd, that had no stay t'employ
The treasure which the love-god let him joy
In his dear Hero, with such sacred thrift,
As had beseem'd so sanctified a gift:
But, like a greedy vulgar prodigal,
Would on the stock dispend, and rudely fall
Before his time, to that unblessed blessing,
Which for Lust's plague doth perish with possessing.
Joy graven in sense, like snow in water wastes;
Without preserve of virtue, nothing lasts.
* A conceited playing on words, very characteristic of the age.
What man is he, that with a wealthy eye,
Enjoys a beauty richer than the sky,
Through whose white skin, softer than soundest sleep,
With damask eyes, the ruby blood doth peep,
And runs in branches through her azure veins,
Whose mixture and first fire his love attains;
Whose both hands limit both love's deities,
And sweeten human thoughts like Paradise;
Whose disposition silken is and kind,
Directed with an earth-exempted mind;
Who thinks not Heaven with such a love is given? And who like earth would spend that dower of Heaven,
With rank desire to joy it all at first?
What simply kills our hunger, quencheth thirst,
Clothes but our nakedness, and makes us live,
Praise doth not any of her favours give:
But what doth plentifully minister
Beauteous apparel and delicious cheer,
So order'd that it still excites desire,
And still gives pleasure freeness to aspire;
The palm of Bounty, ever moist preserving:
To Love's sweet life this is the courtly carving.
Thus Time and all-states-ordering Ceremony
Had banish'd all offence: Time's golden thigh
Upholds the flow'ry body of the earth,
In sacred harmony, and every birth
Of men, and actions, makes legitimate,
Being us'd aright; the use of time is fate.
Yet did the gentle flood transfer, once more,
This prize of love home to his father's shore;
Where he unlades himself of that false wealth
That makes few rich; treasures compos'd by stealth.
And to his sister, kind Hermione,
Who on the shore kneel'd praying to the sea
For his return, he all Love's goods did show,
In Hero seised for him, in him for Hero.
His most kind sister all his secrets knew,
And to her, singing, like a shower he flew,
Sprinkling the earth, that to their tombs took in
Streams dead for love, to leave his ivory skin,
Which yet a snowy foam did leave above,
As soul to the dead water that did love;
And from thence did the first white roses spring,
(For love is sweet and fair in every thing,)
And all the sweeten'd shore, as he did go,
Was crown'd with od'rous roses, white as snow.
Love-blest Leander was with love so filled,
That love to all that touch'd him he instilled.
And as the colours of all things we see,
To our sight's powers communicated be;
So to all objects that in compass came
Of any sense he had, his senses' flame
Flow'd from his parts with force so virtual,
It fir'd with sense things mere insensual.
Now, with warm baths and odours comforted,
When he lay down he kindly kiss'd his bed,
As consecrating it to Hero's right,
And vow'd thereafter, that whatever sight
Put him in mind of Hero, or her bliss,
Should be her* altar to prefer a kiss.
Then laid he forth his late enriched arms,
In whose white circle Love writ all his charms,
And made his characters sweet Hero's limbs,
When on his breast's warm sea she sideling swims.
And as those arms, held up in circle, met,
He said, "See, sister, Hero's carcanet!
Which she had rather wear about her neck,
Than all the jewels that do Juno deck."
* But as he shook, with passionate desire, To put in flame his other secret fire,
A music so divine did pierce his ear,
As never yet his ravish'd sense did hear;
When suddenly a light of twenty hues,
Brake through the roof, and like the rainbow views
Amaz'd Leander: in whose beams came down
The goddess Ceremony, with a crown
Of all the stars; and Heaven with her descended:
Her flaming hair to her bright feet extended,
By which hung all the bench of deities;
And in a chain, compact of ears and eyes,
She led Religion; all her body was
Clear and transparent as the purest glass,
For she was all presented to the sense:
Devotion, Order, State, and Reverence,
Her shadows were; Society, Memory;
All which her sight made live, her absence die.
A rich disparent pentacle she wears,
Drawn full of circles and strange characters:
Her face was changeable to every eye;
One way look'd ill, another graciously;
* Warton judged Chapman's part to commence here; but I should rather point out the address to Marlow's shade, as the commencement of his labours.
+ She, i. e. his sister, edit. 1637.
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