Internet Shakespeare Editions

About this text

  • Title: Venus and Adonis (Modern)
  • Editor: Hardy M. Cook
  • ISBN: 978-1-55058-411-0

    Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Hardy M. Cook
    Peer Reviewed

    Venus and Adonis (Modern)

    "Fie, fie, fond love, thou art as full of fear
    As one with treasure laden, hemmed with thieves.
    Trifles unwitnessèd with eye or ear
    Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves."
    1025 Even at this word she hears a merry horn,
    Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.
    As falcons to the lure, away she flies.
    The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light;
    And in her haste unfortunately spies
    1030The foul boar's conquest on her fair delight;
    Which seen, her eyes are murdered with the view,
    Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew.
    Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
    Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain,
    1035And there, all smothered up, in shade doth sit,
    Long after fearing to creep forth again;
    So at his bloody view her eyes are fled
    Into the deep-dark cabins of her head,
    Where they resign their office and their light
    1040To the disposing of her troubled brain,
    Who bids them still consort with ugly night
    And never wound the heart with looks again,
    Who, like a king perplexèd in his throne,
    By their suggestion gives a deadly groan.
    1045Whereat each tributary subject quakes,
    As when the wind imprisoned in the ground,
    Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes,
    Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound.
    This mutiny each part doth so surprise
    1050 That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes;