and every touch
attempt?
Ben Jonson - The Devil's Association
_2 Cup. _ What can I turn other than a Fury itself to see thy
impudence? If I be a shadow, what is substance? was it not I that
yesternight waited on the bride into the nuptial chamber, and,
against the bridegroom came, made her the throne of love? had I
not lighted my torches in her eyes, planted my mother's roses in 5
her cheeks; were not her eye-brows bent to the fashion of my bow,
and her looks ready to be loosed thence, like my shafts? had I not
ripened kisses on her lips, fit for a Mercury to gather, and made
her language sweeter than his upon her tongue? was not the girdle
about her, he was to untie, my mother's, wherein all the joys and 10
delights of love were woven?
_1 Cup. _ And did not I bring on the blushing bridegroom to taste
those joys? and made him think all stay a torment? did I not
shoot myself into him like a flame, and made his desires and his
graces equal? were not his looks of power to have kept the night 15
alive in contention with day, and made the morning never wished
for? Was there a curl in his hair, that I did not sport in, or a
ring of it crisped, that might not have become Juno's fingers? his
very undressing, was it not Love's arming? did not all his kisses
charge?
and every touch attempt? but his words, were they not 20
feathered from my wings, and flew in singing at her ears, like
arrows tipt with gold?
In the above passages the chief correspondences to be noted are
as follows:
1. _Ch. _ 5. 17; _U. _ 36. 3-4; _Challenge_ 6. Cf.
also _Ch. _ 9. 17:
Eyebrows bent, like Cupid's bow.
2. _Ch. _ 5. 25-6; _U.