A Lovers Complaint | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by the PG Shakespeare Team,
a team of
about twenty Project Gutenberg volunteers.
A LOVER'S COMPLAINT
by William Shakespeare
From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story
from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,

And down I laid to list the sad-tun'd tale;
Ere long espied a fickle
maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming
her world with sorrow's wind and rain.
Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage
from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw

The carcase of a beauty spent and done.
Time had not scythed all that
youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of Heaven's fell rage

Some beauty peeped through lattice of sear'd age.
Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited
characters,
Laund'ring the silken figures in the brine
That season'd
woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;

As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamours of all size, both
high and low.
Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride;
As they did battery to
the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To
th' orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon
their gazes lend
To every place at once, and nowhere fix'd,
The
mind and sight distractedly commix'd.
Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless
hand of pride;
For some, untuck'd, descended her sheav'd hat,

Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet
still did bide,
And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,


Though slackly braided in loose negligence.
A thousand favours from a maund she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of
beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose
weeping margent she was set;
Like usury applying wet to wet,
Or
monarchs' hands, that lets not bounty fall
Where want cries 'some,'
but where excess begs all.
Of folded schedules had she many a one,
Which she perus'd, sigh'd,
tore, and gave the flood;
Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone,

Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet mo letters
sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly

Enswath'd, and seal'd to curious secrecy.
These often bath'd she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss'd, and often
'gan to tear;
Cried, 'O false blood, thou register of lies,
What
unapproved witness dost thou bear!
Ink would have seem'd more
black and damned here!'
This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,

Big discontent so breaking their contents.
A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,
Sometime a blusterer, that
the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest
hours, observed as they flew,
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;

And, privileg'd by age, desires to know
In brief, the grounds and
motives of her woe.
So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he
by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance
with his hearing to divide:
If that from him there may be aught
applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis promised in
the charity of age.
'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold
The injury of many a
blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgement I am old;
Not age, but
sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading

flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied
Love to