The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3). Christopher Marlowe

find th' eternal clime

      Of his free soul, whose living subject56 stood

      Up to the chin in the Pierian flood,

      And drunk to me half this Musæan story,

      Inscribing it to deathless memory:

      Confer with it, and make my pledge as deep,

      That neither's draught be consecrate to sleep;

      Tell it how much his late desires I tender

      (If yet it know not), and to light surrender

      My soul's dark offspring, willing it should die

      To loves, to passions, and society.

      Sweet Hero, left upon her bed alone,

      Her maidenhead, her vows, Leander gone,

      And nothing with her but a violent crew

      Of new-come thoughts, that yet she never knew,

      Even to herself a stranger, was much like

      Th' Iberian city57 that War's hand did strike

      By English force in princely Essex' guide,

      When Peace assur'd her towers had fortified,

      And golden-finger'd India had bestow'd

      Such wealth on her, that strength and empire flow'd

      Into her turrets, and her virgin waist

      The wealthy girdle of the sea embraced;

      Till our Leander, that made Mars his Cupid,

      For soft love-suits, with iron thunders chid;

      Swum to her towers,58 dissolv'd her virgin zone;

      Led in his power, and made Confusion

      Run through her streets amaz'd, that she suppos'd

      She had not been in her own walls enclos'd,

      But rapt by wonder to some foreign state,

      Seeing all her issue so disconsolate,

      And all her peaceful mansions possess'd

      With war's just spoil, and many a foreign guest

      From every corner driving an enjoyer,

      Supplying it with power of a destroyer.

      So far'd fair Hero in th' expugnèd fort

      Of her chaste bosom; and of every sort

      Strange thoughts possess'd her, ransacking her breast

      For that that was not there, her wonted rest.

      She was a mother straight, and bore with pain

      Thoughts that spake straight, and wish'd their mother slain;

      She hates their lives, and they their own and hers:

      Such strife still grows where sin the race prefers:

      Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,

      That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.

      She mus'd how she could look upon her sire,

      And not shew that without, that was intire;59

      For as a glass is an inanimate eye,

      And outward forms embraceth inwardly,

      So is the eye an animate glass, that shows

      In-forms without us; and as Phœbus throws

      His beams abroad, though he in clouds be clos'd,

      Still glancing by them till he find oppos'd

      A loose and rorid vapour that is fit

      T' event60 his searching beams, and useth it

      To form a tender twenty-colour'd eye,

      Cast in a circle round about the sky;

      So when our fiery soul, our body's star,

      (That ever is in motion circular,)

      Conceives a form, in seeking to display it

      Through all our cloudy parts, it doth convey it

      Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant place,

      And that reflects it round about the face.

      And this event, uncourtly Hero thought,

      Her inward guilt would in her looks have wrought;

      For yet the world's stale cunning she resisted,

      To bear foul thoughts, yet forge what looks she listed,

      And held it for a very silly sleight,

      To make a perfect metal counterfeit,

      Glad to disclaim herself, proud of an art

      That makes the face a pandar to the heart.

      Those be the painted moons, whose lights profane

      Beauty's true Heaven, at full still in their wane;

      Those be the lapwing-faces that still cry,

      "Here 'tis!" when that they vow is nothing nigh:

      Base fools! when every moorish fool61 can teach

      That which men think the height of human reach.

      But custom, that the apoplexy is

      Of bed-rid nature and lives led amiss,

      And takes away all feeling of offence,

      Yet braz'd not Hero's brow with impudence;

      And this she thought most hard to bring to pass,

      To seem in countenance other than she was,

      As if she had two souls, one for the face,

      One for the heart, and that they shifted place

      As either list to utter or conceal

      What they conceiv'd, or as one soul did deal

      With both affairs at once, keeps and ejects

      Both at an instant contrary effects;

      Retention and ejection in her powers

      Being acts alike; for this one vice of ours,

      That forms the thought, and sways the countenance,

      Rules both our motion and our utterance.

      These and more grave conceits toil'd Hero's spirits;

      For, though the light of her discoursive wits

      Perhaps might find some little hole to pass

      Through all these worldly cinctures, yet, alas!

      There was a heavenly flame encompass'd her,—

      Her goddess, in whose fane she did prefer

      Her virgin vows, from whose impulsive sight

      She knew the black shield of the darkest night

      Could not defend her, nor wit's subtlest art:

      This was the point pierc'd Hero to the heart;

      Who, heavy to the death, with a deep sigh,

      And hand that languished, took a robe was nigh,

      Exceeding large, and of black cypres62 made,

      In which she sate, hid from the day in shade,

      Even over head and face, down to her feet;

      Her left hand made it at her bosom meet,

      Her right hand lean'd on her heart-bowing knee,

      Wrapp'd in unshapeful folds, 'twas death to see;

      Her knee stay'd that, and that her falling face;

      Each

56

Substance, as opposed to spirit. Cf. note. Vol. i., 203.

57

Cadiz, which was taken in June 21, 1596, by the force under the joint command of Essex and Howard of Effingham.

58

So the Isham copy.—The other old eds. read "townes," for which Dyce gives "town."

59

Within.

60

Vent forth.

61

"Fowl" and "fool" had the same pronunciation. Cf. 3 Henry VI. v. 6:—

"Why, what a peevish fool was he of Crete,That taught his son the office of a fowl!And yet for all his wings the fool was drowned."

The "moorish fool" is explained by the allusion to the lapwing, two lines above. (The lapwing was supposed to draw the searcher from her nest by crying in other places. "The lapwing cries most furthest from her nest."—Ray's Proverbs.)

62

A kind of crape.