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raight the ruthless Destinies, With, Ate, stir the winds to war Upon the Hellespont: their jar Drowns poor Leander. Hero's eyes, Wet witnesses of his surprise, 10 Her torch blown out, grief casts her down Upon her love, and both doth drown: In whose just ruth the god of seas Transforms them to th' Acanthides. No longer could the Day nor Destinies Delay the Night, who now did frowning rise Into her throne; and at her humorous breasts Visions and Dreams lay sucking: all men's rests Fell like the mists of death upon their eyes, Day's too-long darts so kill'd their faculties. The Winds yet, like the flowers, to cease began; For bright Leucote, Venus' whitest swan, That held sweet Hero dear, spread her fair wings, Like to a field of snow, and message brings 10 From Venus to the Fates, t'entreat them lay Their charge upon the Winds their rage to stay, That the stern battle of the seas might cease, And guard Leander to his love in peace. The Fates consent;--ay me, dissembling Fates! They showed their favours to conceal their hates, And draw Leander on, lest seas too high Should stay his too obsequious destiny: Who[114] like a fleering slavish parasite, In warping profit or a traitorous sleight, 20 Hoops round his rotten body with devotes, And pricks his descant face full of false notes; Praising with open throat, and oaths as foul As his false heart, the beauty of an owl; Kissing his skipping hand with charmed skips, That cannot leave, but leaps upon his lips Like a cock-sparrow, or a shameless quean Sharp at a red-lipp'd youth, and naught doth mean Of all his antic shows, but doth repair More tender fawns,[115] and takes a scatter'd hair 30 From his tame subject's shoulder; whips and calls For everything he lacks; creeps 'gainst the walls With backward humbless, to give needless way: Thus his false fate did with Leander play. First to black Eurus flies the white Leucote (Born 'mongst the negroes in the Levant sea, On whose curl'd head[s] the glowing sun doth rise), And shows the sovereign will of Destinies, To have him cease his blasts; and down he lies. Next, to the fenny Notus course she holds,
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