"'But, O, what banquet wert thou to the taste, Being nurse and feeder of the other four Would they not wish the feast might ever last, And bid Suspicion double-lock the door, Lest Jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest, Should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast?'" Such lapses of taste are not infrequent in Shakespeare's early comedies as well. They answer, in their way, to the riot of horrors in _Titus Andronicus_--analogous mannerisms of an as yet undeveloped art. At the same time, the puissant sensuousness of this poem is as a prelude to the large utterance of passion in _Romeo and Juliet_, and towards its close Shakespeare soars, so to speak, symbolically, from a delineation of the mere fever of the senses to a forecast of that love in which it is only one element, when he makes Adonis say:-- "I 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.'" It would, of course, be absurd to lay too much stress on these edifying antitheses in this unedifying poem. It is more important to note that the descriptions of animal life--for example, that of the hare's flight--are unrivalled for truth and delicacy of observation, and to mark how, even in this early work, Shakespeare's style now and then rises to positive greatness. This is especially the case in the descriptions of the boar and of the horse. The boar--his back "set with a battle of bristly pikes," his eyes like glow-worms, his snout "digging sepulchres where'er he goes," his neck short and thick, and his onset so fierce that "The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part; through which he rushes" --this boar seems to have been painted by Snyders in a huntingpiece, in which the human figures came from the brush of Rubens. Shakespeare himself seems to have realised with what mastery he had depicted the stallion; for he says:-- "Look, when a painter would surpass the life,? In limning out a well-proportion'd steed, His art with nature's workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed; So did this horse excel a common one, In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone." We can feel Shakespeare's love of nature in such a stanza as this:-- "Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: Look, what a horse should have, he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back." How consummate, too, is the description of all his movements:-- "Sometime he scuds far off, and there he stares; Anon he starts at stirring of a feather."