A LOVER'S COMPLAINT.

FROM off a hill whose concave womb re-worded1
A painful story from a sistering vale,

My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid 2 to list the sad-tuned 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 carcass 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 scared age.

Re-worded, echoed.

2 Laid. So the original. But it is usually more correctly printed lay. The idiomatic grammar of Shakspeare's age ought not to be removed.

Oft did she heave her napkin' to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,2
Laund'ring the silken figures in the brine
That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguished woe,
In clamors of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend; 5
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To th' orbéd earth: sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,
The mind and sight distractedly commixed.

Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;
For some, untucked, descended her sheaved' hat,
Hanging her pale and pinéd 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.

Napkin, handkerchief. Iago says, of Desdemona's fatal handkerchief,

66

"I am glad I have found this napkin."

2 Conceited characters, fanciful figures worked on the handker chief.

3 Laund'ring, washing.

4 Pelleted, formed into pellets, or small balls.

5 Shakspeare often employs the metaphor of a piece of ord nance; but what in his plays is generally a slight allusion here becomes a somewhat quaint conceit.

6 Thorbed. We retain orbéd as a dissyllable, according to the original. Mr. Dyce has the orbed.

7 Sheaved, made of straw, collected from sheaves.

A thousand favors from a maund1 she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of bedded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set;
Like usury, applying wet to wet,

Or monarch's hands, that let not bounty fall

Where want cries "some," but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one,

Which she perused, sighed, tore, and gave the flood;
Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet mo3 letters sadly penned in blood
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswathed, and sealed to curious secresy.

1 Maund, a basket. The word is used in the old translation of the Bible.

2 Bedded. So the original, the word probably meaning jet imbedded, or set, in some other substance. Steevens has beaded jet, -jet formed into beads; which Mr. Dyce adopts.

3 Mo, more. This word is now invaribly printed more. It occurs in subsequent stanzas. Why should we destroy this little archaic beauty by a rage for modernizing?

4 Sleided silk. The commentators explain this as "untwisted silk." In the chorus to the fourth act of Pericles, Marina is pictured,

"When she weaved the sleided silk

With fingers long, small, white as milk."

Percy, in a note on this passage, says, "untwisted silk, prepared to be used in the weaver's sley." The first part of this description is certainly not correct. The silk is not untwisted, for it must be spun before it is woven; and a strong twisted silk is exactly what was required when letters were to be sealed "feat" (neatly) "to curious secresy." In Mr. Ramsay's introduction to his valuable edition of the Paston Letters, the old mode of sealing a letter is clearly described: "It was carefully folded, and fastened at the end by a sort of paper strap, upon which the seal was affixed; and under the seal a string, a silk thread, or even a straw, was fre quently placed running around the letter."

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kissed, and often gave1 to tear;
Cried, "O false blood! thou register of lies,
What unapprovéd witness dost thou bear!

Ink would have seemed more black and damnéd 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, observéd as they flew,2
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;
And, privileged by age, desires to know,
In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.

3

So slides he down upon his grainéd bat,1
And comely-distant sits he by her side;

1 Gare. So the original. Malone changes the word to 'gan. This appears to us, although it has the sanction of Mr. Dyce's adoption, an unnecessary change; gave is here used in the sense of gave the mind to, contemplated, made a movement towards, inclined to. Shakspeare has several times "my mind gave me; and the word may, therefore, we think, stand alone here as expressing inclination.

2 Malone, by making the sentence parenthetical which begins at "sometime a blusterer," and ends at "swiftest hours," causes the reverend man's attention to be drawn to the scattered fragments of letters as they flew. a very snow-storm of letters. Surely

this is nonsense!

"The swiftest hours, observéd as they flew,"

clearly show that the reverend man, although he had been en gaged in the ruffle, in the turmoil, of the court and city, had not suffered the swiftest hours to pass unobserved. He was a man of experience, and was thus qualified to give advice.

3 Fancy is often used by Shakspeare in the sense of love; but here it means one that is possessed by fancy.

4 Bat, club.

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 judgment 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 myself, and to no love beside.

"But woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit (it was to gain my grace)
Of one' by nature's outwards so commended,
That maiden's eyes stuck over all his face :
Love lacked a dwelling, and made him her place.
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodged, and newly deified.

His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;
And every light occasion of the wind.
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.
What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find:
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind;
For on his visage was in little drawn,
What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.

"Small show of man was yet upon his chin ; His phoenix down began but to appear,

1 Of one, the original reads O one.

2

2 Sawn. Malone explains this as seen; but Boswell says tha the word means sown, and that it is still so pronounced in Scotland.