_Jup._ Alcmena, I must go. _Alcm._ Not yet, my lord. _Jup._ Indeed I must. _Alcm._ Indeed you shall not go. _Jup._ Behold the ruddy streaks o'er yonder hill; Those are the blushes of the breaking morn, That kindle day-light to this nether world. _Alcm._ No matter for the day; it was but made To number out the hours of busy men. Let them be busy still, and still be wretched, And take their fill of anxious drudging day; But you and I will draw our curtains close, Extinguish day-light, and put out the sun. Come back, my lord; in faith you shall retire; You have not yet lain long enough in bed, To warm your widowed side. _Phæd._ [_Aside._] I find my lord is an excellent school-master, my lady is so willing to repeat her lesson. _Merc._ [_Aside._] That's a plaguy little devil; what a roguish eye she has! I begin to like her strangely. She's the perquisite of my place too; for my lady's waiting-woman is the proper fees of my lord's chief gentleman. I have the privilege of a god too; I can view her naked through all her clothes. Let me see, let me see;--I have discovered something, that pleases me already. _Jup._ Let me not live, but thou art all enjoyment! So charming and so sweet, That not a night, but whole eternity, Were well employed, To love thy each perfection as it ought. _Alcm._ [_Kissing him._] I'll bribe you with this kiss, to stay a while. _Jup._ [_Kissing her._] A bribe indeed that soon will bring me back; But, to be just, I must restore your bribe. How I could dwell for ever on those lips! O, I could kiss them pale with eagerness! So soft, by heaven! and such a juicy sweet, That ripened peaches have not half the flavour. _Alcm._ Ye niggard gods! you make our lives too long; You fill them with diseases, wants, and woes, And only dash them with a little love, Sprinkled by fits, and with a sparing hand: Count all our joys, from childhood even to age, They would but make a day of every year. Take back your seventy years, the stint of life, Or else be kind, and cram the quintessence Of seventy years into sweet seventy days; For all the rest is flat, insipid being. _Jup._ But yet one scruple pains me at my parting: I love so nicely, that I cannot bear To owe the sweets of love, which I have tasted, To the submissive duty of a wife. Tell me, and sooth my passion ere I go, That, in the kindest moments of the night, When you gave up yourself to love and me, You thought not of a husband, but a lover? _Alcm._ But tell me first, why you would raise a blush Upon my cheeks, by asking such a question? _Jup._ I would owe nothing to a name so dull As husband is, but to a lover all. _Alcm._ You should have asked me then, when love and night, And privacy, had favoured your demand.