Venus and Adonis

Venus and Adonis is the poem that made Shakespeare famous — a work of sustained wit, erotic energy, and unexpected emotional depth, built around a goddess who cannot have what she wants and a boy who does not understand what he is refusing.

Full Poem: Venus and Adonis

Presented below is the complete text of Venus and Adonis, reproduced in full and arranged into clear narrative sections. These headings are modern additions created to help readers follow the shifts in tone and action throughout Shakespeare’s long poem, while the original text remains unchanged.

Section 1: Venus Encounters Adonis

Lines 1–120

Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis tried him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laugh’d to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor ’gins to woo him.

‘Thrice fairer than myself,’ thus she began,
‘The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare,
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are;
Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

‘Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.
Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses;
And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses.

‘And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,
Making them red and pale with fresh variety;
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.
A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.’

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
The precedent of pith and livelihood,
And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good:
Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force
Courageously to pluck him from his horse.

Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty in desire.

The studded bridle on a ragged bough
Nimbly she fastens: O! how quick is love:
The steed is stalled up, and even now
To tie the rider she begins to prove:
Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust,
And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust.

So soon was she along, as he was down,
Each leaning on their elbows and their hips:
Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,
And ’gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips;
And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,
‘If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.’

He burns with bashful shame; she with her tears
Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks;
Then with her windy sighs, and golden hairs,
To fan and blow them dry again she seeks:
He saith she is immodest, blames her miss;
What follows more she murders with a kiss.

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone;
Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends, she doth anew begin.

Forc’d to content, but never to obey,
Panting he lies and breatheth in her face;
She feedeth on the steam, as on a prey,
And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace;
Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,
So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.

Look! how a bird lies tangled in a net,
So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies;
Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret,
Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:
Rain added to a river that is rank’d
Perforce will force it overflow the bank.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,
For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale;
Still is he sullen, still he low’rs and frets,
’Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale;
Being red she loves him best, and being white,
Her best is better’d with a more delight.

Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;
And by her fair immortal hand she swears,
From his soft bosom never to remove
Till he take pity on her burning tears.
‘Alas!’ quoth she, ‘but love and you should meet,
The kiss you take is better than you give.’

Thus she replies: ‘O! Jove, that I were he,
This gentle boy for youth is such a thief,
As scarce he makes one minute in her life.
He thrives on beauty, blushes when he’s seen,
No marvel then though beauty’s shield be sheen.’

---

Section 2: The Seduction Attempts

Lines 121–216

‘O thou didst kill me: kill me once again;
Thy eyes’ deep piercing shafts make them immortal,
And they are mortal wounds that thou dost give.
Thou mak’st the death whereon I die content,
And in this death of mine thou may’st find life:
Kill me again, and I will love thee still.’

She joy’d at his delight, yet long’d for more,
Of such a happy chance the time was short;
The sun was ready to set, the day was o’er,
Love calls her back, his flame will be forgot:
But he replies, ‘O lady mine, let me away;
My body is tired, and my spirit weak.’

‘For shame,’ he cries, ‘let go, and let me go;
My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone;
But thou continu’st on me still to grow;
Some spot of guilt bids me not linger on.
Thou must not impose duty on a son,
Nor make a father’s sorrow in thy love.’

‘Sweet boy,’ she says, ‘this night I’ll waste in sorrow;
But you, O beauty’s treasure, I shall keep:
For thee I’ll watch; I’ll beg, I’ll pray, I’ll follow,
Till thou shalt know me dearer than thy sleep:
O! do not disdain me, for thou art fair,
And love to beauty strives with all his might.’

‘O! give it me, lest thy hard heart do steel it,
And being steel’d, soft sighs can never melt it.’
The boy replies, ‘You have no reason for’t;
Being o’er my own heart’s truth I should rebel:
Trust me, my love, I’ll bring thee fast again,
Yet do not look for further good or ill.’

‘Nay, mother, nay,’ quoth he, ‘this strife is vain;
O lady dear! thou mak’st this love to swell;
These tears that thou hast shed are my deep pain;
To weep for love is nought but women’s skill:
I will not be thy thrall, but be thy guide!’
Yet still she holds him as in vassalage.

‘I will not,’ quoth he; and she quotes her wrong,
And he must grant her suit, and give his oath:
He, wretched soul, to ease one weary moan,
Rejects her motion, and resumes his troth:
Her sorrow made him sad; thus he begins—
‘Fair queen of love, I wish I could repair—’

Yet will not move until her craving eyes
Be satisfied with more than she can ask;
Which if she cannot alter, she must rise
And savour all this evil-love’s sweet task:
‘Ah me!’ she says, ‘what am I then the worse?
You keep me still in bondage of my pain!’

‘Alas! poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!’
Thus she laments, fresh tears bedew her cheeks:
‘What face remains to glad my weary ghost?
What tongue shall smooth thy love, when beauty speaks?
Whose boldness answers mine with timid fear,
When thou shalt vanish from my longing eyes?’

‘If thou wilt leave me, leave thyself in me:
My soul follows thee, and I cannot live
Unless thou yield me how I may be free;
But if thou wilt not, be it as thou give.
My hope is dead—my soul doth from me run—
And in thy whispers only lies my life.’

‘I’ll read thy sighs and tears to further me;
I’ll shape them for instruction in my love;
I’ll be thy scholar if thou wilt keep me,
And thou shalt rule me as the gods above.
O trespass sweetly urg’d! give to the kind
What nature, mercy, love, and peace do bind.’

---

Section 3: Adonis Resists

Lines 217–360

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,
And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid
Their mistress mounted through the empty skies,
In her light chariot quickly is convey’d;
Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
Means to immure herself and not be seen.

Now was she just return’d, and for her grace
Was solemnly attended by the morn;
When, lo! the sky weary of her watch, did trace
Upon the earth the footstep of the dawn:
And by the sun her beams of light were thrown,
To show his beauty where he lay alone.

The tender spring upon his tempting lip
Doth put a rose; his cheek a white lily;
For wind doth clear the dew which on him slips,
And with his breath the air he doth make chilly;
But Venus, seeing all her labour vain,
He scorns her tears, her sighs he counts but rain.

‘Shame on,’ she cries, ‘let go, and let me go;
My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone;
But thou continuest on me still to grow;
Some guilt within my heart bids me not stay.
Thou must not force affection from a son,
Nor make a father’s sorrow with thy love.’

‘Sweet boy,’ she says, ‘this night I’ll waste in sorrow;
But you, O beauty’s treasure, I shall keep:
For thee I’ll watch; I’ll beg, I’ll pray, I’ll follow,
Till thou shalt know me dearer than thy sleep:
O! do not disdain me, for thou art fair,
And love to beauty strives with all his might.’

‘O thou didst kill me: kill me once again,
Thy eyes’ deep piercing shafts make them immortal;
And they are mortal wounds that thou dost give.
Thou mak’st the death whereon I die content,
And in this death of mine thou may’st find life:
Kill me again, and I will love thee still.’

He leaves her lightly, like a playful child,
And makes a slight defence against her will;
She, trembling in her passion, is beguil’d,
And led away by him where he thinks fit:
She nerves her heart against his cold disdain,
And makes her thoughts the servants of her pain.

‘Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,
Well-painted idol, image dull and dead,
Statue contenting but the eye alone,
Thing like a man, but of no woman bred!
Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion,
For men will kiss even by their own direction.’

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,
And swelling passion doth provoke a pause;
Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong;
Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause:
And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,
And now her sobs do her intendments break.

Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand;
Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;
Sometimes her arms infold him like a band;
She would, he will not in her arms be bound:
And when from thence he struggles to be gone,
She locks her lily fingers one in one.

‘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.’

Within this limit is relief enough,
Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain,
Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,
To shelter thee from tempest and from rain:
Then be my deer, since I am such a park;
No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.’

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Section 4: The Warning and the Hunt

Lines 361–480

But, when a sad, unseen, unseen sorrow sneaks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced yet,
Adonis, though he knows her meaning, speaks
With short, shrill, hurried accents of regret;
‘I hate not love,’ quoth he, ‘but loathe the shame
That in my breast by reason doth take aim.’

‘Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled,
Since sweating Lust on earth usurp’d his name;
Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;
Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves,
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.’

‘Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust’s effect is tempest after sun;
Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.’

‘More I could tell, but more I dare not say;
The text is old, the orator too green.
Therefore in sadness now I will away;
My face is full of shame, my heart of teen;
Mine ears, that to thy wanton talk attended,
Do burn themselves for having so offended.’

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast;
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;
Look how a bright star shooteth from the west,
So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye,
Which after him she darts, as one would die.

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;
She whispers in his ear a heavy tale,
As if the woeful story should be told.
Herself she comforts, though she feels the smart;
She casts her eyes about the mountain side.

‘Hunted by sorrow,’ quoth she, ‘runs my deer,
And tears do wash his face like new-fall’n rain;
His sighs, his looks, his blushes now appear
Like ripening fruit that blossoms in his pain;
Yet he will not be drawn from the intent,
Nor brook counsel, his will is adamant.’

‘O, be advis’d! thou know’st not what it is
With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher bent to slay;
Tis not for idle boys to handle spears,
Nor women’s arms to manish wrathful boars.’

‘O! let him keep awhile the sleepy night,
And with thy sobs refresh his wearied spirit;
For thou canst give more sober counsel, right,
Than he who with blunt rage can ill inherit
The wisdom of thy warnings, sweet and grave,
To teach him safely how his life to save.’

Thus she delivers him her loving lines,
Chiding his youth, and softening his desire;
But he, with glove or gauntlet, quick resigns
Her tender hold, and leaps with sudden fire
To meet the boar, with unadvised haste,
Who in the woods his fatness now doth waste.

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Section 5: The Boar and the Tragedy Begins

Lines 481–600

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d
Was melt’d like a vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white;
Whose leaves with drops of blood were all besmear’d
Of which the sun, in rising, made a shade.

She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath,
And says within her bosom it doth dwell,
Since such a flower was born from out his death;
And by her tears and sighs thus speaking o’er,
She rains upon the earth a shower of woe.

‘Alas!’ she cries, ‘wherefore am I so fond
To kiss the shadow of his beauty here?
Why doth his blood thus stain the grassy ground?
Why where he trod, should flowers now appear?
His face, his eyes, his lips apply their change,
And all his virtues now in this strange flower range.’

‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in this mould;
And on this hill he did his life resign;
And in this valley, underneath this fold,
Thy father died beneath this fatal line.
O cursed boar! that in these shades was bred,
To spoil the fruit that in these leaps was shed.’

‘Here was his mouth, where oft he lay and kiss’d,
And here his lips, whereon I fed with joy;
Here was that tongue which such sweet counsel bless’d,
Which led me from despair, a foolish toy;
Here where he felt my tears, my words, my love,
And where his sighs did to my breast remove.’

‘Accursed boar!’ quoth she, ‘in his soft groin
Thy spear did prick as if thou wert his foe;
Yet he found love within that cruel point,
And died to give thy cruelty more show;
O! where was Cupid that he should not see
This boy of beauty slain so ruefully?’

‘O proud death! what feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So hast laid low in such a little dell?
Didst thou intend that thou shouldst have this lot,
To slay the world’s delight, that Venus rais’d,
Whose death the world in all its regions prais’d?’

‘Thou wast the mark at which he levell’d all his steely darts,
His quiver was thy heart, his arrows keen;
Where they did light, the wound did never heal;
O cruel haste of love! O vengeance seen!
His shafts were such as wounds did ever steep
In tears, which Love’s own hand did safely keep.’

‘O wretched boy!’ quoth she, ‘the world’s sole joy,
O thou, sweet tyrant! thou hast robb’d my heart;
And after I had labour’d all in vain,
And slain myself in sorrow, fell apart.
For where is now thy triumph? where thy bliss?
Where are thy words, thy looks, thy lips, and kiss?’

‘O, where is now the blood-reverend brow,
That oft with lily hands I wash’d so clean?
Where be those eyes that taught the sun to glow,
And made the morning envied of their sheen?
Where is that praise, where those fair cheeks, that seem’d
As if the rose and lily had been beam’d?’

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Section 6: The Death of Adonis

Lines 601–720

‘O miserable me!’ she cries, ‘to hear
This deadly news, and live beyond his end!
Why do I draw my breath, and not repair
To that cold grave which doth his beauty lend?
And why should sorrow over me prevail,
To keep me here, and not let life turn pale?’

‘Ah me! the boar hath overshot his dart,
And in that wound his anger now doth lie;
Thine eye hath seen the death-blow pierce his heart,
And all his strength with that fierce blow did die;
Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
What face remains to glad my weary ghost?’

‘And yet, of all, the worst remains behind—
Thou art not dead, Adonis, but asleep;
And in this dream of death thou dost but find
A short delay before thy senses leap
To life again; O! would it might be so,
That I might wake thee with a gentle blow.’

‘But no; thy beauty, once so fresh and pure,
Is now the prey of death’s unkindly hand;
Thy rose-cheek’d youth no longer doth endure,
And all thy grace hath left this wither’d land;
O, woe is me! whose grief no tongue can tell,
But only tears, which from my eyelids fell.’

‘Look how the night doth bind the weary day,
And all the clouds like mourners wear their black;
So death hath shadow’d thee from me away,
And in thy absence leaves me nothing back;
My sun is set, my joy is lost for ever,
And with thee dies my hope of all endeavour.’

‘What mountains witness’d not thy beauty’s bloom?
What valleys sorrow not to hear thy fall?
What beasts are silent at thy cruel doom?
What streams deny their tides for thee to call?
All nature weeps, save only ruthless death,
Which seiz’d thy youth, and stopp’d thy gentle breath.’

‘Accursed boar! rude, savage, and unkind,
Whose tusks did tear that tender flower in two;
Whose wrath no pity in thy heart could find,
Nor any thought of mercy could subdue;
Thy malice reign’d where gentleness should be,
And slew the world’s delight, my love, and me.’

‘For I have lost him, lost him, lost for ever;
My soul, my joy, my life, my only care;
And time nor tears nor sighs nor sorrow ever
Can bring again the youth so sweet and fair;
O! would my heart might break, and I might die,
For life is death when love’s sweet life doth fly.’

‘Yet will I weep, and in my weeping mourn,
And in my mourning tell the bitter tale;
Which future years shall mark, and still return
To sigh, and say: “Here Venus’ tears did fail.”
And all who hear shall feel their sorrows move,
And curse the boar that spoil’d the queen of love.’

---

Section 7: Venus’s Lament

Lines 721–840

‘Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
What face remains to glad my weary eye?
What blossom left of all that beauty crost,
Whereon my hopes and joys were wont to lie?
O, all is fled; Adonis is no more,
And sorrow shuts the ever-yielding door.’

‘And thou, harsh boar! whose breath hath bruis’d my flower,
Whose tusk hath torn the rose of all my bliss,
Thy deed hath robb’d me of my sweetest hour,
And slain the youth whom I so long did kiss;
If there be law in love or justice found,
On thee shall fall the curse of this deep wound.’

‘For every tear I shed, the clouds shall weep;
For every sigh, the winds shall raise a storm;
For every moan, the seas their waves shall keep,
And for my grief, all nature shall deform;
The heavens shall move, the stars shall lose their light,
And day be shrouded in eternal night.’

‘O beauty! how thy glory is o’erthrown,
How soon thy triumph bends to sudden death!
The youth I lov’d, the joy I call’d mine own,
Hath yielded up his sweet enchanting breath;
And I remain to mourn the bitter strife,
Where death hath conquer’d love and yielded life.’

‘My sorrow now becomes the world’s sad story,
My tears the emblem of a heart undone;
My loss the shadow of all former glory,
My sighs a tempest that shall never shun;
For ever griev’d, for ever left to moan,
A widow’d goddess, desolate, alone.’

‘Yet in this grief, some comfort will I take—
The memory of his beauty shall remain;
And still in flowers his sweetness shall awake,
And in each blossom breathe his charms again;
The rose shall blush, the lily wax so pale,
Because his breath did on their hues prevail.’

‘Thus nature, mindful of her darling’s grace,
Shall keep his semblance in her tender store;
And in each bud the image of his face
Shall teach all lovers how to love the more;
And in the meadows where his body lay,
The flowers shall bloom, and never fade away.’

‘So shall my sorrow live, and never die;
So shall the story of our love be told;
And all who hear shall heave a weary sigh,
And think on me when they my pain behold;
And curse the boar that wrought this deadly wrong,
And slew the youth to whom my joys belong.’

---

Section 8: The Curse of Love

Lines 841–960

‘Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy:
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend;
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;
Ne’er settled equally, but high or low;
That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.’

‘It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud;
Bud and be blasted in a breathing while;
The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak.’

‘It shall be sparing, and too full of riot,
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
Make the young old, the old become a child.’

‘It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful and too severe,
And most deceiving when it seems most just;
Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward,
Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.’

‘It shall be cause of war, and dire events;
And set dissension ’twixt the son and sire;
Subject and servile to all discontents;
As dry combustious matter is to fire;
Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy,
They that love best their love shall not enjoy.’

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d
Was melted like a vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d
A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white:
Whose leaves with drops of blood were all besmear’d,
And which the sun in rising soon made dry.

She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath;
And says within her bosom it doth dwell,
Since such a flower was born from such a death;
And by her tears, which on the earth she sheds,
The flower blooms fresh, as if it newly spreads.

‘Poor flower,’ quoth she, ‘this was thy father’s guise—
Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire—
For every little grief to wet his eyes,
To grow unto himself was his desire;
And so stand thou, resembling him in this,
His face thou hast, for he had all thy bliss.’

She kisses it, and calls it by his name,
And with a sanguine robe doth deck the flower;
And throws upon it heaps of tears and shame,
And bids it ever in her sight to tower;
And in her breast She lays it up to sleep,
And sighs, and cries, and cries, and sighs full deep.

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Section 9: Venus Departs

Lines 961–1080

By this, the sun that with his golden face
Had gilded all the valley where she stood,
Was fast declining now from her embrace,
And left the world unto the darkling wood;
Which at his mourning light did seem to plain,
And sigh’d to see the fair Adonis slain.

She often looks upon his bleeding wound,
And often kisses it, and often weeps;
And she, poor soul, hath not yet half profound
The bitter loss that in her bosom creeps;
She calls him back, as if he might have heard,
But he lies still, and answers not a word.

‘O Ruthless beast!’ quoth she, ‘that with thy tusk
Hath slain the sweetest youth that ever breath’d;
And left this world, that now in sorrow must
Remember thee, accursed, that hath wreath’d
The fairest flower that ever nature gave,
And laid it bleeding in a timeless grave.’

She tears her hair, and with her nails doth wound
Her tender cheeks, and beats her breast in vain;
And to the senseless earth she falls down prone,
And with her tears she wets the ground again;
And calls upon his name, and cries so loud,
That echo answers from the distant cloud.

‘O Adon’, Adon’, my sweet life, my joy,
My only love, my comfort on this earth,
Why dost thou leave thy Venus with annoy?
Why rob her thus of all her former mirth?
Return again, return again to me,
And let me die, if thou wilt not be free.’

But he returns not; for the night grows deep,
And silence takes the rest of all the wood;
The shepherd’s bell rings on the distant steep,
And weary flocks now seek their nightly food;
But she alone doth wander in her pain,
And still she calls, and calls on him again.

At last she rises from the bloody ground,
And stooping to the flower newly born,
She plucks it from the soil where it was found,
And in her bosom lays it, all forlorn;
Then slowly mounts her chariot, dim and pale,
While all the winds seem mourning in their gale.

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Section 10: The Final Return to Paphos

Lines 1081–1194

And so she flies, the goddess of desire,
Her silver doves in sorrow flap their wings;
The silent night seems weeping to aspire,
And all the air with lamentation rings;
For she hath lost the joy she lov’d so dear,
And leaves behind a world that mourns her fear.

In her bright chariot mounted through the skies,
To Paphos swiftly is she borne away;
Her face she hides, lest mortals see her eyes,
Which overflow with tears that ne’er decay;
And in her bower, she vows to dwell alone,
And let no comfort ever make her moan.

Thus, weary of the world, away she hies,
And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid
Their mistress mounted through the empty skies,
In her light chariot quickly is convey’d;
Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
Means to immure herself and not be seen.

Originally published in 1593 in quarto form. Public domain.

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At a Glance

Where this poem sits in Shakespeare’s work, and how it’s built.

Why It Still Matters

Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare’s first published work and immediately his most popular. It went through ten editions in his lifetime — more than any of the plays — and was the poem that established his reputation among educated Elizabethan readers. Understanding it matters not just as literary history but because the poem itself is genuinely original and surprisingly modern in its concerns.

What Shakespeare does with the Ovidian myth is unusual. In Ovid’s version, Venus and Adonis are mutual lovers; Adonis is simply killed by the boar. Shakespeare inverts the dynamic entirely: Adonis is cold, resistant, and uninterested. Venus pursues and is refused. This inversion — the goddess of love failing at love — produces the poem’s particular energy, somewhere between comedy and elegy. It is a poem about desire as a force that operates without reciprocity, and about what happens to the person left wanting when the object of desire simply will not cooperate.

Background and Context

The poem was written during the plague years of 1592–93, when London’s theatres were closed and Shakespeare needed another way to establish himself. He dedicated it to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, in terms that suggest either genuine admiration or careful professional cultivation — probably both. The dedication describes it as “the first heir of my invention,” suggesting Shakespeare regarded the plays he had already written as somehow less fully his own.

The source is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book X, in which the story of Venus and Adonis appears as part of the song of Orpheus. Ovid’s version treats them as genuine lovers. Shakespeare’s departure from this — making Adonis resistant and Venus the pursuer — is the poem’s central creative decision, and it changes everything. It allows Shakespeare to write about desire from the outside, from the perspective of the person who wants without being wanted, which is a far more psychologically interesting position than mutual love.

The poem’s enormous success in its own time partly reflects Elizabethan taste for Ovidian narrative poetry — sophisticated, erotic, witty, and decorated with elaborate imagery. But it also reflects something in the poem itself that outlasts its moment: the comedy of Venus’s pursuit is genuinely funny, and the tragedy of Adonis’s death is genuinely moving, and the transition between these two registers is handled with great skill.

Summary of the Poem

The poem unfolds in a single continuous narrative, divided here into its main movements for clarity. Shakespeare’s original text is preserved in full above.

Venus Seizes Adonis (Lines 1–240)

The poem opens at speed: Venus has already spotted Adonis, already dismounted him from his horse, and is already making her case. The opening is deliberately comic — a goddess physically manhandling a reluctant teenager — but the comedy is precise. Venus argues, pleads, philosophises, and flatters. Adonis blushes, frowns, and refuses. Shakespeare establishes the poem’s central dynamic immediately: Venus has all the power and none of the influence; Adonis has all the influence and none of the power.

The Debate About Love and Lust (Lines 241–540)

The middle section is largely rhetorical — Venus and Adonis argue about the nature of desire. Venus makes the case for love as natural, generous, and life-giving. Adonis responds with the poem’s most philosophically interesting speech, distinguishing love from lust: love is patient and true, lust is destructive and self-consuming. It is a speech that would not be out of place in a moral treatise, and it comes from a boy who is about to go and get himself killed hunting a boar. Shakespeare plants the irony carefully. Adonis’s philosophy is sound; his judgment about his own safety is not.

The Stallion and the Jennet (Lines 259–324)

In the poem’s most celebrated digression, Adonis’s horse breaks free and pursues a jennet — a female horse — across the fields. Venus observes this and uses it as an argument: even animals follow the promptings of desire; why should Adonis resist what nature itself endorses? The passage is one of Shakespeare’s finest pieces of descriptive writing, and it functions simultaneously as comedy, erotic suggestion, and ironic commentary on the difference between instinct and the human capacity to override it.

Venus’s Warning and Adonis’s Departure (Lines 541–714)

As evening comes, Adonis prepares to leave and hunt the boar the following morning. Venus, who has been dreaming of a different kind of night, is alarmed. She warns him against the boar — the animal is genuinely dangerous, and she knows it. Adonis dismisses her concern and leaves. The scene shifts the poem’s tone entirely. Venus, who has been the aggressor throughout, is suddenly vulnerable. Her warnings, which could have seemed like manipulation, now sound like genuine fear.

The Discovery (Lines 715–1026)

Venus wanders through the night, increasingly anxious. She encounters signs of the hunt and eventually finds Adonis dead, killed by the boar’s tusk. The description of her discovery is one of the poem’s most carefully handled moments. Shakespeare slows time down. Venus’s grief is not immediately eloquent; it is first physical, instinctive, and disbelieving. The comedy of the first half of the poem has disappeared entirely.

The Flower and the Curse (Lines 1027–1194)

From Adonis’s blood a flower grows — the anemone. Venus takes it and holds it to her breast. Then she pronounces a curse on love: henceforth, love among mortals will be mixed with jealousy, sorrow, and fear. It will never be settled or equal. It will make the wise foolish and the strong weak. The curse is both a mythological explanation for why love is painful and a genuine expression of grief. Venus departs to Paphos, withdrawing from the world. The poem ends in silence.

Key Themes

The poem’s themes are generated by its central situation: desire without reciprocity. Each major idea follows from this initial condition.

The Comedy and Tragedy of Unrequited Desire

The poem’s most remarkable quality is its tonal range. The first half is largely comic — Venus’s relentless pursuit, Adonis’s sulky resistance, the absurdity of a goddess being rejected by a teenager. The second half is tragic — the death, the grief, the curse. Shakespeare handles the transition without jarring the reader because he has established from the beginning that Venus’s desire, however comic in its expression, is real and vulnerable. The comedy does not mock her; it makes her more human. When the tragedy comes, it lands with full weight because we have been laughing with her, not at her.

Desire as a Force Independent of Its Object

Adonis does not love Venus, will never love Venus, and dies without having changed his mind. Venus’s desire does not create its own fulfilment; it produces only more desire and eventually grief. Shakespeare is making a precise observation: love, as Venus experiences it, is not a relationship but a condition. It does not require the other person’s participation to be real and consuming. This makes it both powerful and pitiful.

The Relationship Between Love and Death

The poem repeatedly links desire and mortality. Venus’s love for Adonis makes her mortal in her vulnerability — she can be hurt, abandoned, and bereft in ways that a goddess supposedly cannot be. Adonis’s preference for the hunt over love leads directly to his death. The curse at the end makes the connection permanent: love will always carry death within it, as sorrow, jealousy, and the knowledge that what we love we will lose.

Youth and Its Refusals

Adonis is young enough that his confidence has not yet been tested by consequence. His speech distinguishing love from lust is philosophically sound, but it is also the speech of someone who thinks he understands desire because he has never been in its grip. His death is Shakespeare’s quiet comment on what happens when the conviction of one’s own invulnerability meets the world’s indifference to it.

Key Literary Devices

Shakespeare uses the full resources of Elizabethan rhetoric in this poem, always with a light touch that prevents it from feeling merely ornamental.

The Comic Reversal of Gender Roles

The poem’s central structural device is the inversion of conventional Petrarchan love poetry, in which the male lover pursues and the female beloved is distant and cold. Here Venus pursues and Adonis withdraws. This reversal is not simply a witty conceit; it produces genuine psychological complexity. Venus, who should be in control, is entirely at Adonis’s mercy. Adonis, who should be powerless, sets the terms. The inversion illuminates something true about desire: that the person who wants more is always the more vulnerable one, regardless of social or even divine power.

Extended Simile

Shakespeare’s similes in this poem are among the most elaborate and precise in his non-dramatic work. The comparison of Venus to an eagle feeding, of Adonis caught in her arms to a bird in a net, of his departure to a shooting star — each simile does more than illustrate. It characterises. The eagle simile reveals Venus’s desire as predatory without being pejorative; the bird simile reveals Adonis’s situation as one of genuine entrapment; the shooting star captures both the speed of his exit and the sense of something brilliant being extinguished.

The Digression as Argument

The extended passage describing the stallion and the jennet is often cited as a digression, but it functions as the poem’s strongest argument for natural desire. By showing how even horses respond to sexual attraction without shame or philosophy, Shakespeare gives Venus’s case its best evidence and simultaneously shows why it fails: Adonis is not a horse. His capacity to resist instinct is precisely what makes him human and what makes him vulnerable to the particular pride that sends him toward the boar.

The Blazon Inverted

The blazon — the conventional poetic catalogue of a woman’s physical beauties — appears throughout Elizabethan love poetry. Shakespeare uses it here but applies it to Adonis rather than to Venus, and puts it largely in Venus’s mouth. The effect is double: it feminises Adonis, making him the object of the gaze rather than its source, and it reveals something about Venus’s desire — she catalogues him, possesses him in language, because she cannot possess him in any other way.

Analysis

The poem’s first half is an extended comic scene — arguably the funniest sustained passage in Shakespeare’s non-dramatic work — and its success depends on a precise tonal balance. Venus must be ridiculous enough to be funny but dignified enough to be sympathetic. Shakespeare achieves this by making her rhetoric genuinely good. Her arguments for love are not simply desperate; they are intelligent. Her imagery is vivid and her logic is sound. She fails not because she argues badly but because Adonis is not listening. The comedy is at the situation’s expense, not hers.

Adonis’s speech on love and lust is the poem’s philosophical centre. It is a good speech — clear, reasoned, and morally serious. Love is patient and self-renewing; lust is consuming and self-destructive. The irony is that everything Adonis says about lust could be applied to the hunt. He is about to go and pursue something dangerous for the pure pleasure of the chase, without counting the cost, and it will kill him. Shakespeare does not underline this irony. He trusts the reader to see it.

The transition from comedy to tragedy is managed through the figure of the boar. It appears first as an abstraction in Venus’s warnings — she fears it, she describes its tusks, she begs Adonis not to go. Then it appears in the aftermath, as the agent of death. The animal connects the two halves of the poem: in the first half it is a plot device that separates Venus from Adonis; in the second half it is the cause of everything. There is something in the boar’s indifference to the human world of love and pursuit that mirrors Adonis’s own indifference to Venus.

The curse is the poem’s most debated passage. Some readers find it too tidy — a mythological explanation that domesticates the grief. Others find it the poem’s most honest moment: Venus, having lost what she loved, tells the truth about what love is. It is never equal, never settled, always mixed with fear. The curse is not bitterness; it is accurate. Shakespeare presents it as both, and does not resolve the ambiguity. Venus departs to Paphos and does not return. The poem ends not with consolation but with withdrawal — a goddess who has learned what mortals already know, that desire and loss are the same experience at different stages.

Related Poems and Works

Venus and Adonis connects most directly to Shakespeare’s other narrative poems and to the mythological tradition it draws from and revises.

The Rape of Lucrece: Published one year later and dedicated to the same patron, The Rape of Lucrece is in almost every way Venus and Adonis’s tonal opposite — solemn where Venus and Adonis is playful, political where it is personal, dark where it is luminous. Together they show the full range of Shakespeare’s ambitions as a narrative poet. Both are interested in desire and its consequences, but they approach the subject from completely different angles.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Written in roughly the same period, the play shares the poem’s interest in the comedy of mismatched desire — the wrong people wanting the wrong people, love as a kind of madness that overrides good judgment. Titania’s infatuation with Bottom has something of the same quality as Venus’s pursuit of Adonis: desire untethered from its appropriate object, producing both comedy and something more unsettling beneath it.

Twelfth Night: The play’s opening lines — “If music be the food of love, play on” — establish desire as excessive and self-consuming, which is precisely the condition Venus is in throughout the poem. Both works are interested in what happens when desire exceeds its object, and in the particular quality of suffering that comes from wanting something that will not, or cannot, respond.

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