Page:Hero and Leander - Marlowe and Chapman (1821).pdf/142

Before we love, how range we through this sphere,
Searching the sundry fancies hunted here!
Now with desire of wealth transported quite
Beyond our free humanity's delight:
Now with ambition climbing falling towers,
Whose hope to scale, our fear to fall devours:
Now rapt with pastimes, pomp, all joys impure;
In things without us, no delight is sure.
But love, with all joys crown'd, within doth sit;
O Goddess, pity love, and pardon it!"
Thus spake she weeping: but her Goddess' ear
Burn'd with too stern a heat, and would not hear.
Aye me! hath Heaven's straight fingers no more graces,
For such a Hero, than for homeliest faces?
Yet she hop'd well, and in her sweet conceit
Weighing her arguments, she thought them weight:
And that the logic of Leander's beauty,
And them together, would bring proofs of duty.
And if her soul, that was a skilful glance
Of Heaven's great essence, found such imperance
In her love's beauties, she had confidence
Jove lov'd him too, and pardon'd her offence.
Beauty in heaven and earth this grace doth win,
It supples rigour, and it lessens sin.