University of Virginia Library

SCEN. III.

Tyndarus, Asotus, Ballio.
Tyn.
What Fury shot a viper through my soul
To poison all my thoughts? Civill dissension
Warres in my bloud: here Love with thousand bowes
And twenty thousand arrows layes his siege

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To my poore heart; which, man'd with nought but fear,
Denies the great god entrance. O Evadne!
Canst thou that risest fairer then the morn,
Set blacker then the evening?—Weak jealousie!—
Did e're thy prying and suspicious sight
Finde her lippe guilty of a wanton smile?
Or one lascivious glance dart from her eye?
The blushes of her cheeks are innocent,
Her carriage sober, her discourse all chaste;
No toyish gesture, no desire to see
The publick shows, or haunt the Theatre.
She is no popular Mistresse, all her kisses
Do speak her Virgin, such a bashfull heat
At severall tides ebbes, flowes; flowes, ebbes again,
As 'twere afraid to meet our wilder flame.
But if all this be cunning, (as who knows
The sleights of Sirens?) and I credulous fool
Train'd by her songs to sink in her embraces;
I were undone for ever—wretched Tyndarus!

Asot.
Ha, ha, ha, he. This is an arrant Coxcombe,
That's jealous of his wife ere he has got her,
And thinks himself a Cuckold before marriage.

Ballio.
Want of a Tutour makes unbridled youth
Run wildely into passions. You have got
A skilfull Pilot (though I say it, Pupill)
One that will steer both you, and your estate
Into safe harbour.—Pray, observe his humour.

Tyn.
Away foul sin.—'Tis Atheisme to suspect
A devil lodg'd in such divinity.
Call snow unchaste, and say the ice is wanton,
If she be so. No, my Evadne, no,
I know thy soul as beauteous as thy face.
That glorious outside which all eyes adore,
Is but the fair shrine of a fairer saint.
O pardon me thy penitent infidell:
By thy fair eyes (from whom this little world
Borrows that light it has) I henceforth vow,

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Never to think sinne can be grown so bold
As to assault thy soul.

Asot.
This fellow, Tutour,
Waxes and wanes a hundred times in a minute:
In my conscience he was got in the change o'th' Moon.