Lines 1-174

The first stanza introduces and neatly characterizes the two characters. It is dawn, and Adonis is ready for the hunt, but “love he laugh’d to scorn” (Line 4), while lovesick Venus hastens on her way to him. This sets the pattern for the entire poem. Venus is the active one. She speaks in the next two stanzas (Lines 7-24), inviting Adonis to sit with her. She promises to “smother” (Line 18) him with kisses. She is so eager that she pulls him off his horse, ties the horse’s bridle to a tree branch, and pushes the unwilling, blushing Adonis down to the ground. She kisses him, while he protests that she is “immodest” (Line 53). In the first of many images and similes drawn from nature, she is likened to an eagle swooping on its prey (Lines 55-58). Adonis is angry but lies passively in her arms (Lines 67-73). Venus tries to get her way by offering him a deal: If he allows her to kiss him just once, she will ask no more of him. Adonis gives his timid assent, but when she goes to kiss him he closes his eyes and turns his lips away (Lines 84-90).