Internet Shakespeare Editions

About this text

  • Title: Venus and Adonis (Quarto 1, 1593)
  • 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 (Quarto 1, 1593)

    VENVS AND ADONIS.

    For shame he cries, let go, and let me go,
    380My dayes delight is past, my horse is gone,
    And tis your fault I am bereft him so,
    I pray you hence, and leaue me here alone,
    For all my mind, my thought, my busie care,
    Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.

    385Thus she replies, thy palfrey as he should,
    Welcomes the warme approch of sweet desire,
    Affection is a coale that must be coold,
    Else sufferd it will set the heart on fire,
    The sea hath bounds, but deepe desire hath none,
    390 Therfore no maruell though thy horse be gone.

    How like a iade he stood tied to the tree,
    Seruilly maisterd with a leatherne raine,
    Bnt when he saw his loue, his youths faire fee,
    He held such pettie bondage in disdaine:
    395 Throwing the base thong from his bending crest,
    Enfranchising his mouth, his backe, his brest.

    Who sees his true-loue in her naked bed,
    Teaching the sheets a whiter hew then white,
    But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,
    400His other agents ayme at like delight?
    Who is so faint that dares not be so bold,
    To touch the fier the weather being cold?
    D