Hero and Leander | Page 7

if he rued
The grief which
Neptune felt. In gentle breasts
Relenting thoughts, remorse, and pity
rests.
And who have hard hearts and obdurate minds,
But vicious,
harebrained, and illiterate hinds?
The god, seeing him with pity to be
moved,
Thereon concluded that he was beloved.
(Love is too full of
faith, too credulous,
With folly and false hope deluding us.)

Wherefore, Leander's fancy to surprise,
To the rich Ocean for gifts he
flies.
'tis wisdom to give much; a gift prevails
When deep
persuading oratory fails.
By this Leander, being near the land,
Cast down his weary feet and
felt the sand.
Breathless albeit he were he rested not
Till to the
solitary tower he got,
And knocked and called. At which celestial
noise
The longing heart of Hero much more joys
Than nymphs and
shepherds when the timbrel rings,
Or crooked dolphin when the sailor
sings.
She stayed not for her robes but straight arose
And, drunk
with gladness, to the door she goes,
Where seeing a naked man, she
screeched for fear
(Such sights as this to tender maids are rare)
And
ran into the dark herself to hide.
(Rich jewels in the dark are soonest
spied).
Unto her was he led, or rather drawn

By those white limbs
which sparkled through the lawn.
The nearer that he came, the more
she fled,
And, seeking refuge, slipped into her bed.
Whereon
Leander sitting thus began,
Through numbing cold, all feeble, faint,
and wan.
"If not for love, yet, love, for pity sake,
Me in thy bed and
maiden bosom take.
At least vouchsafe these arms some little room,

Who, hoping to embrace thee, cheerly swum.
This head was beat

with many a churlish billow,
And therefore let it rest upon thy
pillow."
Herewith affrighted, Hero shrunk away,
And in her
lukewarm place Leander lay,
Whose lively heat, like fire from heaven
fet,
Would animate gross clay and higher set
The drooping thoughts
of base declining souls
Than dreary Mars carousing nectar bowls.

His hands he cast upon her like a snare.
She, overcome with shame
and sallow fear,
Like chaste Diana when Actaeon spied her,
Being
suddenly betrayed, dived down to hide her.
And, as her silver body
downward went,
With both her hands she made the bed a tent,
And
in her own mind thought herself secure,
O'ercast with dim and
darksome coverture.
And now she lets him whisper in her ear,

Flatter, entreat, promise, protest and swear;
Yet ever, as he greedily
assayed
To touch those dainties, she the harpy played,
And every
limb did, as a soldier stout,
Defend the fort, and keep the foeman out.

For though the rising ivory mount he scaled,
Which is with azure
circling lines empaled,
Much like a globe (a globe may I term this,

By which love sails to regions full of bliss)
Yet there with Sisyphus
he toiled in vain,
Till gentle parley did the truce obtain.
Wherein
Leander on her quivering breast
Breathless spoke something, and
sighed out the rest;
Which so prevailed, as he with small ado

Enclosed her in his arms and kissed her too.
And every kiss to her
was as a charm,
And to Leander as a fresh alarm,
So that the truce
was broke and she, alas,
(Poor silly maiden) at his mercy was.
Love
is not full of pity (as men say)
But deaf and cruel where he means to
prey.
Even as a bird, which in our hands we wring,
Forth plungeth
and oft flutters with her wing,
She trembling strove.
This strife of hers (like that
Which made the world) another world
begat
Of unknown joy. Treason was in her thought,
And cunningly
to yield herself she sought.
Seeming not won, yet won she was at
length.
In such wars women use but half their strength.
Leander
now, like Theban Hercules,
Entered the orchard of th' Hesperides;

Whose fruit none rightly can describe but he
That pulls or shakes it

from the golden tree.
And now she wished this night were never done,

And sighed to think upon th' approaching sun;
For much it grieved
her that the bright daylight
Should know the pleasure of this blessed
night,
And them, like Mars and Erycine, display
Both in each
other's arms chained as they lay.
Again, she knew not how to frame
her look,
Or speak to him, who in a moment took
That which so
long so charily she kept,
And fain by stealth away she would have
crept,
And to some corner secretly have gone,
Leaving Leander in
the bed alone.
But as her naked feet were whipping out,
He on the
sudden clinged her so about,
That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she
slid.
One half appeared, the other half was hid.
Thus near the bed
she blushing stood upright,
And from her countenance behold ye
might
A kind of twilight break, which through the hair,
As from an
orient cloud, glimpsed here and there,
And round about the chamber
this false morn
Brought forth the day before the day was born.
So
Hero's ruddy cheek Hero betrayed,
And her all naked to his sight
displayed,
Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took
Than Dis,
on heaps of gold fixing his look.
By this, Apollo's golden harp began

To sound forth music to the ocean,
Which watchful Hesperus no
sooner heard
But he the bright day-bearing car prepared
And ran
before, as harbinger of light,
And with his flaring beams mocked ugly
night,
Till she, o'ercome