Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase;
hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.

(1–4)

VENUS
Thrice fairer than myself,    .    .    .    .    .    .

the field’s chief flower, sweet above compare,
stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man:

Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed;

if thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed

a thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.

Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,

and being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses;

and yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety,

but rather famish them amid their plenty.
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.

(7–9, 13, 15–20, 22)

POET
With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
and trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good.

Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret,
which bred more beauty in his angry eyes.

So fastened in her arms Adonis lies;
still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
'twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats;
she red [and hot] as coals of glowing fire,
he [red for shame, but] frosty in desire.

(25, 27–8, 69–70, 68, 75–6, 73, 35–6)

POET
Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;
and by her fair immortal hand she swears
from his soft bosom never to remove
till he take truce with her contending tears;
and one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.

But when her lips were ready for his pay,
he winks, and turns his lips another way.

(79–84, 89–90)

VENUS
Love is a spirit all    .    .    .    of fire,
not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie:
These forceless flowers   .   .   .   support me;
two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky.
Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be
that thou should think it heavy unto thee?

Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?
Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?
Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected.

Were I hard-favoured, foul, or wrinkled-old,
then mightst thou pause;    .    .    .    .    .
but having no defects, why dost abhor me?

Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine;
the kiss shall be thine own as well as mine.

(149–59, 133, 137–8, 115, 117)

And now Adonis, with a lazy sprite,
and with a heavy, dark, disliking eye,
souring his cheeks cries:

(181–2, 185)

ADONIS

      Fie, no more of love!
[The sun doth burn my face;] I must remove.

VENUS
Ay me,    .    .    .    .    young, and so unkind?
Art thou a woman’s son, and canst not feel
what ’tis to love,    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    ?

Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,
well-painted idol, image dull and dead,
statue contenting but the eye alone,
thing like a man, but of no woman bred!

POET
And now she weeps, and now she fain
would speak.
Being mad before, how doth she now for wits?
Now which way shall she turn? What shall
she say?

(185–7, 201–2, 211–14, 221, 249, 253)

VENUS
Fondling, my dear, since I have hemmed
thee here
within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed were thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
[graze on my lips,] and if those hills be dry,
stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

(229–34)

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,

a lily prisoned in a gaol of snow,

or ivory in an alabaster band:

so white a friend engirts so white a foe.

(361–4)

ADONIS

Give me my hand; . . . why dost thou feel it?

VENUS

Give me my heart, . . . and thou shalt have it

ADONIS

For shame, . . . let go, and let me go;

I pray you hence, and leave me here alone.

VENUS

Affection is a coal that must be cooled;
else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire.
The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath
none.

O, learn to love; the lesson is but plain,
and once made perfect, never lost again.

And like the deadly bullet of a gun,

his meaning struck her ere his words begun.

(461–2)

POET


And at his look she flatly falleth down,


for looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth.


The silly boy, believing she is dead,


claps her pale cheek,        .        .        .        .        .        ;

for on the grass she lies as she were slain.

.        .        .        .        .        A thousand ways he seeks


to mend the hurt that his unkindness marred.


He kisses her, and she by her good will


will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

(463–4, 467–8, 473–4, 477–80)

VENUS


O, where am I?      .      .      .      In earth or heaven?


Or in the ocean drenched, or in the fire?


Do I delight to die, or life desire?


But now I died, and death was lively joy.

Thine eyes have murdered this poor heart
 of mine;


and these mine eyes, true leaders to their
 queen,


but for thy piteous lips no more had seen


The night of sorrow now is turned to day.

Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted;


long may they kiss each other, for this cure!

What hour is this? Or morn or weary even?


O, thou didst kill me: kill me once again!

(493–4, 496, 498, 502–4, 481, 511, 505, 495, 499)

ADONIS
The kiss I gave you is bestowed in vain,
and all in vain you strive against the stream;
for, by this black-faced night, desire’s foul nurse,
your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
but Lust’s effect is tempest after sun.
Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain;
Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
but soundly    .    .    .    sleeps alone.

I tell you, no; tomorrow I intend
to hunt the boar.   .   .   .   .   .   .

(771–4, 793, 799–802, 785–6, 587–8)

VENUS
O, be advised: thou knowst not what it is
with javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore.
On his bow-back he hath a battle set
of bristly pikes that ever threat his foes;
being moved, he strikes whate’er is in his way,
and whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay.

Alas, he naught esteems that face of thine.
O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still;
come not within his danger by thy will.
His tushes never sheathed he whetteth still,
like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.

Didst thou not mark my face? Was it not white?
Sawest thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye?
Grew I not faint, and fell I not down right?

What should I do, [seeing thee so indeed,]
that tremble at th’imagination?
The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,
and fear doth teach it divination:
If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow,
I prophesy thy death, [my living sorrow].

(615–16, 619–20, 623–4, 631, 637, 639,
617–18,  643–5, 667–70, 672, 671)

ADONIS
The night is spent.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
And now ’tis dark, and going I shall fall.

VENUS
.   .   .   .   .   Why, what of that?   .   .   .
In night   .   .   .   desire sees best of all.

ADONIS
I am    .    .    .    expected of my friends;
therefore, [in sadness,] now I will away.

(717, 719, 717, 720, 718, 807)

POET
With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
and homeward through the dark laund runs apace;
leaves Love upon her back deeply distressed.

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
gazing upon a late-embarked friend;
so did the merciless and pitchy night
fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood,
even so confounded in the dark she lay,
having lost the fair discovery of her way.

(811–14, 817–18, 821–4)

VENUS
Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
who wakes the morning, so much o’erworn
and yet I hear no tidings of my love.

(853, 855/866, 867)

POET
She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn:
Anon she hears them chant it lustily,
and all in haste she coasteth to the cry.
How she outruns the wind, the poor wretch!

For now she knows it is no gentle chase.
And as she runs, the bushes in the way
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    some kiss her face,
some twine about her thigh to make her stay.

By this she hears the hounds are at a bay;
  .   .   .   the timorous yelping of the hounds
appals her senses [and her spirit confounds].

Even now   .   .   .   she hears a merry horn,
whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.
For now reviving joy bids her rejoice.
.   .   With that   .   .   she spied the hunted boar,
whose frothy mouth, bepainted all with red,
a second fear through all her sinews spread.

A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways;
she treads the path that she untreads again.
By this, far off she hears Adonis’ voice.

As falcons to the lure, away she flies:
the grass stoops not, she treads on it so light,
and in her haste unfortunately spies
the foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight;
which seen, her eyes, as murd’red with the view,
like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew.

(868–70, 681/680, 883, 871–3, 877, 881–2, 1025–6,
977, 900–1, 903, 907–8, 973/978, 1027–32)

POET
Where lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies:
A wound the loving swine had trenched in his soft groin.
No flower was nigh,    .    .    .    .    .    .
but stole his blood and seemed with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth.
Her voice is stopped; she thinks he could not die.
But through the floodgates breaks the silver rain,
the crystal tide that [from her two cheeks fair
in the sweet channel of her bosom] dropped.

By this the boy that by her side lay killed
was melted like a vapour from her sight,
and in his blood [that on the ground lay spilled]
a purple flower sprung up, chequered with white.

(1128, 1052/1116, 1055–7, 1061/1060, 959, 957–8, 1165–8)

VENUS
Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast;
thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right.
Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest,
my throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night;
there shall not be one minute in an hour
wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.

(1183–8)

Parenthetical numbers below each song refer to the lines of the poem. Series of spaced dots stand in place of omitted text, permitting the verses to retain their visual shape. Text within square brackets has not been set to music, but here provides the necessary context to better appreciate the beauty of the whole. Italics and smaller font indicate text that is not sung, but that is nonetheless present in the score between the piano staves.

Shakespeare, William. Venus and Adonis. In Shakespeare’s Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and the Shorter Poems, ed. by Katherine Duncan-Jones and H.R. Woudhuysen, The Arden Shakespeare (an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing), 2007. pp. 131–229.