Not being with civil forms confirm'd and bounded, For human dignities and comforts founded:
But loose and secret all their glories hide;
Fear fills the chamber, Darkness decks the bride.
She vanish'd, leaving pierc'd Leander's heart
With sense of his unceremonious part,
In which with plain neglect of nuptial rites
He close and flatly fell to his delights:
And instantly he vow'd to celebrate
All rites pertaining to his married state.
So up he gets, and to his father goes,
To whose glad ears he doth his vows disclose:
The nuptials are resolv'd with utmost power,
And he at night would swim to Hero's tower,
From whence he meant to Sestos' forked bay
To bring her covertly, where ships must stay,
Sent by her father, thoroughly rigg'd and mann'd,
To waft her safely to Abydos' strand.—
There leave we him; and with fresh wing pursue
Astonish'd Hero, whose most wished view
I thus long have forborne, because I left her
So out of count'nance, and her spirits* bereft her.
* From this, and other passages it would seem that Chapman accentuates spirits as a monosyllable.
To look on one abash'd is impudence,
When of slight faults he hath too deep a sense.
Her blushing het * her chamber: she look'd out,
And all the air she purpled round about;
And after it a foul black day befell,
Which ever since a red morn doth foretell,
And still renews our woes for Hero's woe;
And foul it prov'd, because it figur'd so
The next night's horror; which prepare to hear;
I fail, if it profane your daintiest ear.
+ Then now most strangely-intellectual fire, c
That proper to my soul hast power t'inspire
Her burning faculties, and with the wings
Of thy unsphered flame visit'st the springs
Of spirits immortal! Now (as swift as Time
Doth follow motion) find th' eternal clime
Of his free soul, whose living subject stood
Up to the chin in the Pierean flood,
+ Chapman's noble address to the spirit of his departed precursor, Marlow.
Following Sir E. Brydges, I have taken the liberty (inexcusable, I fear, by lovers of true editions) to substitute now for how, the reading of the old copies; and which wants nothing but intelligibility to render it superior to any other that could be suggested.
And drunk to me half this Muscán story,
Inscribing it to deathless memory:
Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep,
That neither's draught be consecrate to sleep!
Tell it how much his late desires I tender,
(If yet it know not) and to light surrender
My soul's dark offspring, willing it should die
To loves, to passions, and society!
Sweet Hero left upon her bed alone,
Her maidenhead, her vows,-Leander gone,
And nothing with her but a violent crew
Of new-come thoughts, that yet* she never knew,
E'en to herself a stranger was; much like
Th' Iberian city† that War's hand did strike
By English force in princely Essex' guide ‡,
When Peace assur'd her towers had fortified;
And golden-finger'd India had bestow'd
Such wealth on her, that strength and empire flow'd
† Cadiz. The expedition against it sailed June 1, 1596; and was under the joint command of Essex, and Lord Howard, the High Admiral of England; assisted by the councils and presence of Lord Thomas Howard, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir F. Vere, Sir George Carew, and Sir Conyers, Clifford.
Into her turrets; and her virgin waist
The wealthy girdle of the sea embrac'd:
Till our Leander, that made Mars his Cupid,
For soft love-suits, with iron thunders chid:
Swum to her towns, dissolv'd her virgin zone;
Led in his power, and made Confusion
Run through her streets amaz'd, that she suppos'd
She had not been in her own walls enclos'd:
But rapt by wonder to some foreign state,
Seeing all her issue so disconsolate:
And all her peaceful mansions possess'd
With war's just spoil, and many a foreign guest
From every corner driving an enjoyer,
Supplying it with power of a destroyer.
So far'd fair Hero in th' expugned fort
Of her chaste bosom; and of every sort
Strange thoughts possess'd her, ransacking her breast,
For that which was not there, her wonted rest!
She was a mother straight, and bore with pain
Thoughts that spake straight, and wish'd their mother
She hates their lives, and they their own and hers;
Such strife still grows where sin the race prefers.
Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,
That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.
She mus'd how she could look upon her sire,
And not show that without, that was intire*.
For as a glass is an inanimate eye,
And outward forms embraceth inwardly:
So is the eye an animate glass, that shows
In-forms without us; and as Phoebus throws
His beams abroad, though he in clouds be closed,
Still glancing by them till he find opposed
A loose and rorid vapour that is fit
T'event his searching beams, and useth it
To form a tender twenty-coloured eye,
Cast in a circle round about the sky;
So when our fiery soul, our body's star (That ever is in motion circular)
Conceives a form, in seeking to display it
Through all our cloudy parts, it dóth convey it
Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant place,
And that reflects it round about the face.
And this event uncourtly Hero thought,
Her inward guilt would in her looks have wrought:
For yet the world's stale cunning she resisted,
To bear foul thoughts, yet forge what looks she listed,
And held it for a very silly sleight
To make a perfect metal counterfeit,
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