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

      Hero, in sacred habit deckt,

      Doth private sacrifice effect.

      Her scarf's description, wrought by Fate;

      Ostents that threaten her estate;

      The strange, yet physical, events,

      Leander's counterfeit70 presents.

      In thunder Cyprides descends,

      Presaging both the lovers' ends:

      Ecte, the goddess of remorse,

      With vocal and articulate force

      Inspires Leucote, Venus' swan,

      T' excuse the Beauteous Sestian.

      Venus, to wreak her rites' abuses,

      Creates the monster Eronusis,

      Inflaming Hero's sacrifice

      With lightning darted from her eyes;

      And thereof springs the painted beast

      That ever since taints every breast.

      Now from Leander's place she rose, and found

      Her hair and rent robe scatter'd on the ground;

      Which taking up, she every piece did lay

      Upon an altar, where in youth of day

      She us'd t' exhibit private sacrifice:

      Those would she offer to the deities

      Of her fair goddess and her powerful son,

      As relics of her late-felt passion;

      And in that holy sort she vow'd to end them,

      In hope her violent fancies, that did rend them,

      Would as quite fade in her love's holy fire,

      As they should in the flames she meant t' inspire.

      Then put she on all her religious weeds,

      That decked her in her secret sacred deeds;

      A crown of icicles, that sun nor fire

      Could ever melt, and figur'd chaste desire;

      A golden star shined in her naked breast,

      In honour of the queen-light of the east.

      In her right hand she held a silver wand,

      On whose bright top Peristera did stand.

      Who was a nymph, but now transformed a dove,

      And in her life was dear in Venus' love;

      And for her sake she ever since that time

      Choosed doves to draw her coach through heaven's blue clime.

      Her plenteous hair in curlèd billows swims

      On her bright shoulder: her harmonious limbs

      Sustained no more but a most subtile veil,

      That hung on them, as it durst not assail

      Their different concord; for the weakest air

      Could raise it swelling from her beauties fair;

      Nor did it cover, but adumbrate only

      Her most heart-piercing parts, that a blest eye

      Might see, as it did shadow, fearfully,

      All that all-love-deserving paradise:

      It was as blue as the most freezing skies;

      Near the sea's hue, for thence her goddess came:

      On it a scarf she wore of wondrous frame;

      In midst whereof she wrought a virgin's face,

      From whose each cheek a fiery blush did chase

      Two crimson flames, that did two ways extend,

      Spreading the ample scarf to either end;

      Which figur'd the division of her mind,

      Whiles yet she rested bashfully inclin'd,

      And stood not resolute to wed Leander;

      This serv'd her white neck for a purple sphere,

      And cast itself at full breadth down her back:

      There, since the first breath that begun the wrack

      Of her free quiet from Leander's lips,

      She wrought a sea, in one flame, full of ships;

      But that one ship where all her wealth did pass,

      Like simple merchants' goods, Leander was;

      For in that sea she naked figured him;

      Her diving needle taught him how to swim,

      And to each thread did such resemblance give,

      For joy to be so like him it did live:

      Things senseless live by art, and rational die

      By rude contempt of art and industry.

      Scarce could she work, but, in her strength of thought,

      She fear'd she prick'd Leander as she wrought,71

      And oft would shriek so, that her guardian, frighted,

      Would startling haste, as with some mischief cited:

      They double life that dead things' griefs sustain;

      They kill that feel not their friends' living pain.

      Sometimes she fear'd he sought her infamy;

      And then, as she was working of his eye,

      She thought to prick it out to quench her ill;

      But, as she prick'd, it grew more perfect still:

      Trifling attempts no serious acts advance;

      The fire of love is blown by dalliance.

      In working his fair neck she did so grace it,

      She still was working her own arms t' embrace it:

      That, and his shoulders, and his hands were seen

      Above the stream; and with a pure sea-green

      She did so quaintly shadow every limb,

      All might be seen beneath the waves to swim.

      In this conceited scarf she wrought beside

      A moon in change, and shooting stars did glide

      In number after her with bloody beams;

      Which figur'd her affects72 in their extremes,

      Pursuing nature in her Cynthian body,

      And did her thoughts running on change imply;

      For maids take more delight, when they prepare,

      And think of wives' states, than when wives they are.

      Beneath all these she wrought a fisherman,73

      Drawing his nets from forth the ocean;

      Who