what over fantastic, has in it a sweet and genuine note of fancy:
"Her fresh-heat blood cast figures in her eyes,
And she supposed she saw in Neptune's skies
How her star wander'd, wash'd in smarting brine,
For her love's sake, that with immortal wine
Should be embathed, and swim in more heart's-ease
Than there was water in the Sestian seas."
Here again is a beautiful example of the short sweet interludes which relieve the general style of Chapman's narrative or reflective verse:
"For as proportion, white and crimson, meet
In beauty's mixture, all right clear and sweet,
The eye responsible, the golden hair,
And none is held without the other fair;
All spring together, all together fade;
Such intermix'd affections should invade
Two perfect lovers,"
And this couplet has an exquisite touch of fanciful colour:
"As two clear tapers mix in one their light,
So did the lily and the hand their white."
That at least might have been written by Marlowe himself. But the poem is largely deformed by excrescences and aberrations, by misplaced morals and mistimed conceits; and at the catastrophe,
