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Hero and Leander, by Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

Minor poems by Christopher Marlowe

- The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

- Fragment, first printed in "England's Parnassus," 1600

- In obitum honoratissimi viri, Rogeri Manwood, militis, Quaestorii Reginalis Capitalis Baronis

- Dialogue in Verse

HERO AND LEANDER

TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL SIR THOMAS WALSINGHAM, KNIGHT.

Note: The first two Sestiads were written by Marlowe; the last four by Chapman, who supplied also the Arguments for the six Sestiads.

THE FIRST SESTIAD

THE ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST SESTIAD

Hero's description and her love's; The fane of Venus where he moves His worthy love-suit, and attains; Whose bliss the wrath of Fates restrains For Cupid's grace to Mercury: Which tale the author doth imply.

THE SECOND SESTIAD

THE ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND SESTIAD

Hero of love takes deeper sense, And doth her love more recompense: Their first night's meeting, where sweet kisses Are th' only crowns of both their blisses. He swims t' Abydos, and returns: Cold Neptune with his beauty burns; Whose suit he shuns, and doth aspire Hero's fair tower and his desire.

Here Marlowe's work ends. The rest of the poem is by Chapman.

THE THIRD SESTIAD

THE ARGUMENT OF THE THIRD SESTIAD

Leander to the envious light Resigns his night-sports with the night, And swims the Hellespont again. Thesme, the deity sovereign Of customs and religious rites, Appears, reproving his delights, Since nuptial honours he neglected; Which straight he vows shall be effected. Fair Hero, left devirginate, Weighs, and with fury wails her state: But with her love and woman's wit She argues and approveth it.

THE FOURTH SESTIAD

THE ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH SESTIAD

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 counterfeit 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.

THE FIFTH SESTIAD

THE ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTH SESTIAD

Day doubles her accustomed date, As loath the Night, incens'd by Fate, Should wreck our lovers. Hero's plight; Longs for Leander and the night: Which ere her thirsty wish recovers, She sends for two betrothed lovers, And marries tham, that, with their crew, Their sports, and ceremonies due, She covertly might celebrate, With secret joy, her own estate. She makes a feast, at which appears The wild nymph Teras, that still bears An ivory lute, tells ominous tales, And sings at solemn festivals.

Now was bright Hero weary of the day, Thought an Olympiad in Leander's stay. Sol and the soft-foot Hours hung on his arms, And would not let him swim, forseeing his harms: That day Aurora double grace obtain'd, Of her love Ph?bus; she his horses reign'd, Set on his golden knee, and, as she list, She pull'd him back; and, as she pull'd, she kiss'd, To have him turn to bed: he lov'd her more, To see the love Leander Hero bore: Examples profit much; ten times in one, In persons full of note, good deeds are done. Day was so long, men walking fell asleep; The heavy humours that their eyes did steep Made them fear mischiefs. The hard streets were beds For covetous churls and for ambitious heads, That, spite of Nature, would their business ply: All thought they had the falling epilepsy, Men grovell'd so upon the smother'd ground; And pity did the heart of Heaven confound. The Gods, the Graces, and the Muses came Down to the Destinies, to stay the frame Of the true lovers' deaths, and all world's tears: But Death before had stopp'd their cruel ears. All the celestials parted mourning then, Pierc'd with our human miseries more than men: Ah, nothing doth the world with mischief fill, But want of feeling one another's ill! With their descent the day grew something fair, And cast a brighter robe upon the air. Hero, to shorten time with merriment, For young Alcmane and bright Mya sent, Two lovers that had long crav'd marriage-dues At Hero's hands: but she did still refuse; For lovely Mya was her consort vow'd In her maid state, and therefore not allow'd To amorous nuptials: yet fair Hero now Intended to dispense with her cold vow, Since hers was broken, and to marry her: The rites would pleasing matter minister To her conceits, and shorten tedious day. They came; sweet Music usher'd th' odorous way, And wanton Air in twenty sweet forms danc'd After her fingers; Beauty and Love advanc'd Their ensigns in the downless rosy faces Of youths and maids, led after by the Graces. For all these Hero made a friendly feast, Welcom'd them kindly, did much love protest, Winning their hearts with all the means she might, That, when her fault should chance t' abide the light, Their loves might cover or extenuate it, And high in her worst fate make pity sit. She married them; and in the banquet came, Borne by the virgins. Hero striv'd to frame Her thoughts to mirth: ay me! but hard it is To imitate a false and forced bliss; Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wines on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink. To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly Admired Teras with the ebon thigh; A nymph that haunted the green Sestian groves, And would consort soft virgins in their loves, At gaysome triumphs and on solemn days, Singing prophetic elegies and lays, And fingering of a silver lute she tied With black and purple scarfs by her left side. Apollo gave it, and her skill withal, And she was term'd his dwarf, she was so small: Yet great in virtue, for his beams enclos'd His virtues in her; never was propos'd Riddle to her, or augury, strange or new, But she resolv'd it; never slight tale flew From her charm'd lips without important sense, Shown in some grave succeeding consequence. This little sylvan, with her songs and tales, Gave such estate to feasts and nuptials, That though ofttimes she forewent tragedies, Yet for her strangeness still she pleas'd their eyes; And for her smallness they admir'd her so, They thought her perfect born, and could not grow. All eyes were on her. Hero did command An altar deck'd with sacred state should stand At the feast's upper end, close by the bride, On which the pretty nymph might sit espied. Then all were silent; every one so hears, As all their senses climb'd into their ears: And first this amorous tale, that fitted well Fair Hero and the nuptials, she did tell.

Come, come, dear Night! Love's mart of kisses, Sweet close of his ambitious line, The fruitful summer of his blisses! Love's glory doth in darkness shine. O, come, soft rest of cares! come, Night! Come, naked Virtue's only tire, The reaped harvest of the light, Bound up in sheaves of sacred fire! Love calls to war; Sighs his alarms, Lips his swords are, The field his arms.

Come, Night, and lay thy velvet hand On glorious Day's outfacing face; And all thy crowned flames command, For torches to our nuptial grace! Love calls to war; Sighs his alarms, Lips his swords are, The field his arms.

No need have we of factious Day, To cast, in envy of thy peace, Her balls of discord in thy way: Here Beauty's day doth never cease; Day is abstracted here, And varied in a triple sphere. Hero, Alcmane, Mya, so outshine thee, Ere thou come here, let Thetis thrice refine thee. Love calls to war; Sighs his alarms, Lips his swords are, The field his arms.

The evening star I see: Rise, youths! the evening star Helps Love to summon war; Both now embracing be. Rise, youths! Love's rite claims more than banquets; rise! Now the bright marigolds, that deck the skies, Ph?bus' celestial flowers, that, contrary To his flowers here, ope when he shuts his eye, And shut when he doth open, crown your sports: Now Love in Night, and Night in Love exhorts Courtship and dances: all your parts employ, And suit Night's rich expansure with your joy. Love paints his longings in sweet virgins' eyes: Rise, youths! Love's rite claims more than banquets; rise! Rise, virgins! let fair nuptial loves enfold Your fruitless breasts: the maidenheads ye hold Are not your own alone, but parted are; Part in disposing them your parents share, And that a third part is; so must ye save Your loves a third, and you your thirds must have. Love paints his longings in sweet virgins' eyes: Rise, youths! Love's rites claim more than banquets; rise!

Herewith the amorous spirit, that was so kind To Teras' hair, and comb'd it down with wind. Still as it, comet-like, brake from her brain, Would needs have Teras gone, and did refrain To blow it down: which, staring up, dismay'd The timorous feast; and she no longer stay'd; But, bowing to the bridegroom and the bride, Did, like a shooting exhalation, glide Out of their sights: the turning of her back Made them all shriek, it look'd so ghastly black. O hapless Hero! that most hapless cloud Thy soon-succeeding tragedy foreshow'd. Thus all the nuptial crew to joys depart; But much-wrung Hero stood Hell's blackest dart: Whose wound because I grieve so to display, I use digressions thus t'increase the day.

Leucote flies to all the Winds, And from the Fates their outrage blinds, That Hero and her love may meet. Leander, with Love's complete fleet Mann'd in himself, puts forth to seas; When straight the ruthless Destinies, With At?, stirs the winds to war Upon the Hellespont: their jar Drowns poor Leander. Hero's eyes, Wet witnesses of his surprise, 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.

MINOR POEMS BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

COME live with me, and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And I will make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle

A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair-lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: An if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my love.

FRAGMENT

I WALK'D along a stream, for pureness rare, Brighter than sun-shine; for it did acquaint The dullest sight with all the glorious prey That in the pebble-paved channel lay.

No molten crystal, but a richer mine, Even Nature's rarest alchymy ran there,-- Diamonds resolv'd, and substance more divine, Through whose bright-gliding current might appear A thousand naked nymphs, whose ivory shine, Enamelling the banks, made them more dear Than ever was that glorious palace' gate Where the day-shining Sun in triumph sate.

Upon this brim the eglantine and rose, The tamarisk, olive, and the almond tree, As kind companions, in one union grows, Folding their twining arms, as oft we see Turtle-taught lovers either other close, Lending to dulness feeling sympathy; And as a costly valance o'er a bed, So did their garland-tops the brook o'erspread.

Their leaves, that differ'd both in shape and show, Though all were green, yet difference such in green, Like to the checker'd bent of Iris' bow, Prided the running main, as it had been--

IN OBITUM HONORATISSIMI VIRI, ROGERI MANWOOD, MILITIS, QUAESTORII REGI- NALIS CAPITALIS BARONIS

NOCTIVAGI terror, ganeonis triste flagellum, Et Jovis Alcides, rigido vulturque latroni, Urn? subtegitur. Scelerum, gaudete, nepotes! Insons, luctific? sparsis cervice capillis, Plange! fori lumen, venerandae gloria legis, Occidit: heu, secum eff?tas Acherontis ad oras Multa abiit virtus. Pro tot virtutibus uni, Livor, parce viro; non audacissimus esto Illius in cineres, cujus tot millia vultus Mortalium attonuit: sic cum te nuntia Ditis Vulneret exsanguis, feliciter ossa quiescant, Famaque marmorei superet monumenta sepulcri.

DIALOGUE IN VERSE

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