Venus and Adonis
1593
Shakespeare wrote this poem at twenty-nine, and it became his most published work during his lifetime, outselling all his plays. That fact alone should make you curious. Venus, the goddess of love, is so overcome with desire for the impossibly beautiful youth Adonis that she pursues him across a sun-drenched landscape, trailing compliments, seductions, and increasingly desperate arguments. Adonis, coldly indifferent, would rather hunt than lie with a goddess. The poem crackles with dark comedy as Venus offers herself like a prize while Adonis rebuffs her with prissy virtue. But the tone shifts when Adonis ignores her warnings and hunts a boar anyway. He dies. Venus finds his body and transforms his blood into the anemone flower. It's a story about desire that refuses to see its own blindness, about the fine line between passion and comedy, and about what love becomes when it meets loss. The verse is luscious, technically dazzling, and often surprisingly funny. Shakespeare wrote it to impress a patron, and in the process created something that still feels startlingly modern.
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“Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemm'd thee here Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.””
— William Shakespeare
“Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love. That inward beauty and invisible;Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible: Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should I be in love by touching thee.'Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, and that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, and nothing but the very smell were left me, yet would my love to thee be still as much; for from the stillitory of thy face excelling comes breath perfum'd that breedeth love by smelling.””
— William Shakespeare
“Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.””
— William Shakespeare
“She’s Love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d.””
— William Shakespeare
“Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery, for where a heart is hard they make no battery.””
— William Shakespeare
“Thus weary of the world, away she hies,And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aidTheir mistress mounted through the empty skiesIn her light chariot quickly is convey'd;Holding their course to Paphos, where their queenMeans to immure herself and not be seen.””
— William Shakespeare
“Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear””
— William Shakespeare
“O, learn to love, the lesson is but plain, And once made perfect, never lost again.””
— William Shakespeare
“The tender spring upon thy tempting lipShows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted:Make use of time, let not advantage slip;Beauty within itself should not be wasted:Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their primeRot and consume themselves in little time.””
— William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, William. Venus and Adonis. Lex, lex-books.com/book/venus-and-adonis-f4debee1-4743-4767-9f81-c9423310bf90.Shakespeare, W. (1593). Venus and Adonis. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/venus-and-adonis-f4debee1-4743-4767-9f81-c9423310bf90Shakespeare, William. Venus and Adonis. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/venus-and-adonis-f4debee1-4743-4767-9f81-c9423310bf90.
