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)

    "Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,
    What bargains may I make still to be sealing?
    To sell myself I can be well contented,
    So thou wilt buy and pay and use good dealing,
    515 Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,
    Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips.
    "A thousand kisses buys my heart from me,
    And pay them at thy leisure, one by one.
    What is ten hundred touches unto thee?
    520Are they not quickly told and quickly gone?
    Say for non-payment that the debt should double,
    Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?"
    "Fair queen," quoth he, "if any love you owe me,
    Measure my strangeness with my unripe years.
    525Before I know myself, seek not to know me.
    No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears.
    The mellow plum doth fall; the green sticks fast,
    Or, being early plucked, is sour to taste.
    "Look, the world's comforter with weary gait
    530His day's hot task hath ended in the west;
    The owl, night's herald, shrieks, 'tis very late;
    The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,
    And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,
    Do summon us to part and bid good night.
    535"Now, let me say good night, and so say you;
    If you will say so, you shall have a kiss."
    "Good night," quoth she, and ere he says adieu,
    The honey fee of parting tendered is.
    Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace.
    540Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.