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Venus and Adonis (Quarto 1, 1592-3)

Author: William Shakespeare
Editor: Hardy M. Cook
Peer Reviewed
VENVS AND ADONIS.

Fie, liuelesse picture, cold, and sencelesse stone,
VVell painted idoll, image dull, and dead,
Statüe contenting but the eye alone,
Thing like a man, but of no woman bred:
215Thou art no man, though of a mans complexion,
For men will kisse euen by their owne direction.

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,
And swelling passion doth prouoke a pause,
Red cheeks, and fierie eyes blaze forth her wrong:
220Being Iudge in loue, she cannot right her cause.
And now she weeps, & now she faine would speake
And now her sobs do her intendments breake.

Sometime she shakes her head, and then his hand,
Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;
225Sometime her armes infold him like a band,
She would, he will not in her armes be bound:
And when from thence he struggles to be gone,
She locks her lillie fingers one in one.

Fondling, she saith, since I haue hemd thee here
230VVithin the circuit of this iuorie pale,
Ile be a parke, and thou shalt be my deare:
Feed where thou wilt, on mountaine, or in dale;
Graze on my lips, and if those hils be drie,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountaines lie.
VVithin