Venus and Adonis (Modern)
Peer Reviewed
¶A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways.
¶She treads the path that she untreads again.
¶Her more than haste is mated with delays,
910Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,
¶_Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting,
¶_In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.
¶Here kenneled in a brake she finds a hound
¶And asks the weary caitiff for his master.
915And there another licking of his wound
¶'Gainst venomed sores, the only sovereign plaster;
¶_And here she meets another, sadly scowling,
¶_To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.
¶When he hath ceased his ill resounding noise,
920Another flap-mouthed mourner, black and grim,
¶Against the welkin volleys out his voice.
¶Another and another answer him,
¶_Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,
¶_Shaking their scratched-ears, bleeding as they go.
