"Backward she pushed him, as she would be thrust, / And governed him in strength, though not in lust."
This quotation describes Venus's first assault of Adonis, when she thrusts him off his horse and holds him down. Here, the narrator establishes the inverted power dynamic in which Venus is the aggressor and Adonis the pursued. This quotation also describes the nature of Venus's love as unrequited – despite her superior strength as a goddess, she cannot "govern" Adonis in desire, meaning that he will not return her affections no matter how ardently she attempts to seduce him.
"The tender spring upon thy tempting lip / Shows thee unripe, yet mayst thou well be tasted: / Make use of time, let not advantage slip; / Beauty within itself should not be wasted: / Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime / Rot and consume themselves in little time."
Here, Venus attempts to convince Adonis to give into her advances. Using the metaphor of flowers (foreshadowing the end of the poem), Venus argues that if flowers are not picked as soon as they bloom, their beauty is wasted. She compares Adonis to flowers, suggesting that he is in his prime and that he must make "use" of his youth by experiencing desire and procreating.
"Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, / Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie."
This quotation is one of the most famous from the poem, due in large part to its eroticism and innuendo. Here, Venus encourages Adonis to explore her body, beginning with her lips and "straying lower" to the "pleasant fountains" – euphemisms for sex, the female anatomy, and fertility. Here, Venus uses explicit language to entice Adonis to return her affections, but even these veiled descriptions of her body are not enough to sway him.
"His eye which scornfully glisters like fire / Shows his hot courage and his high desire."
When Adonis escapes Venus temporarily, he attempts to continue his hunt. However, just as he is about to gallop away on his horse, a mare trots by and Adonis's horse runs after her. This quotation describes the horse's behavior as he chases after the mare, thereby comparing Venus's desire for Adonis to an animal instinct and reminding readers of the inverted erotic dynamic around which the poem turns.
"Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d? / Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth? / If springing things be any jot diminish’d, / They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth; / The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young / Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong."
Just as Venus described Adonis as a blooming flower that needs to be picked, Adonis describes himself as a bud that has not yet bloomed. Here, he argues that time builds strength, suggesting that he will not be able to reproduce well if he has sex too soon. This quotation showcases the difference between how Venus and Adonis both perceive Adonis's age – Venus sees him as existing in his prime, while Adonis still wishes to maintain his boyhood and lack of concern for love and desire.
"She's love, she loves, and yet she is not loved."
Here, the narrator quite succinctly underscores the tragedy of Venus's unrequited love. As the goddess of love, one would expect her to entrance anyone she desired, but the narrative suggests that her power as a goddess has its limits in the mortal realm.
"What is thy body but a swallowing grave, / Seeming to bury that posterity / Which by the rights of time thou needs must have, / If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?"
Here, Venus returns once again to her argument that Adonis must reproduce. Otherwise, she argues, he is burying his legacy. In this quotation, Venus compares the virginal body to a grave, a common trope of early modern English "carpe diem" poetry in which a speaker (typically male) argues that the beloved (typically female) will waste their beauty by not having sex. The most famous example of this trope is Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," when the speaker tells the lady that in the grave "worms shall try / that long preserved virginity" (27-28).
"Call if not love, for Love to heaven is fled / Since sweating Lust on earth usurped his name."
Here, Adonis accuses Venus of lying about being in love with him, suggesting instead that what she feels is lust. He describes lust as "sweating," underscoring the element of sex and desire attached to it. The poem continues to raise the question of whether what Venus feels is love or lust, or whether one can truly ever know the difference.
"It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud, / Bud, and be blasted, in a breathing while; / The bottom poison, and the top o'erstrawed / 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."
At the end of the poem, Venus decrees that lovers from this point on will suffer from their love. Here, Venus describes the "curse" that she puts on love for all eternity, and in so doing describes the attributes of love that dominated Petrarchan poetry in the Renaissance. Shakespeare himself, in a number of his sonnets, portrays love as torturous, untrue, and paradoxical.
"Here was thy father's bed, here in my breast; Thou art the next of blood, and 'tis thy right. / Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest, / My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night."
The poem concludes with Venus plucking the purple flower from the ground and placing it on her breast. This image is both maternal and erotic, as she perceives the flower as Adonis's "next of blood," or child. However, the image also refers back to her earlier argument that flowers in bloom must be plucked, suggesting that she, in this moment, fulfilled her desire to consummate her love with Adonis.
