"Wonder of time," quoth she, "this is my spite, That you being dead the day should yet be light. "Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy, Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend; It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end; Ne'er settled equally, but high or low; That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. "It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud; "It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, "It shall suspect where is no cause of fear; And most deceiving when it seems most just; "It shall be cause of war and dire events, Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy, a O'erstraw'd-o'erstrewed. b Measures-grave dances suited to age. By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd And says, within her bosom it shall dwell, "Poor flower," quoth she, "this was thy father's guise, breast ; "Here was thy father's bed, bere in my My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night: Thus weary of the world, away she hies, Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen End of Venus and Adonis, TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TITCHFIELD. THE love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end, whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater my duty would show greater: meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship; to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness. a Your Lordship's in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Moiety. In Henry IV.,' Part I., and in Lear,' Shakspere uses moiety as it is here used, meaning a portion, not a half. |