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data/examples/dgrep/data/shakespeare/poetry/rapeoflucrece

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-	THE RAPE OF LUCRECE
-
-TO THE
-RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
-Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Tichfield.
-
-
-The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof
-this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety.
-The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth
-of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I
-have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in
-all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would
-show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship,
-to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.
-
-Your lordship's in all duty,
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
-
-
-
-	THE RAPE OF LUCRECE
-
-
-	THE ARGUMENT
-
-
-Lucius Tarquinius, for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus,
-after he had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be
-cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs,
-not requiring or staying for the people's suffrages, had
-possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons
-and other noblemen of Rome, to besiege Ardea. During which siege
-the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of
-Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son, in their discourses after
-supper every one commended the virtues of his own wife: among
-whom Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife
-Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they posted to Rome; and
-intending, by their secret and sudden arrival, to make trial of
-that which every one had before avouched, only Collatinus finds
-his wife, though it were late in the night, spinning amongst her
-maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or
-in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus
-the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus
-Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece' beauty, yet smothering
-his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the
-camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and
-was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by
-Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth
-into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the
-morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight,
-hastily dispatcheth messengers, one to Rome for her father,
-another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one
-accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius;
-and finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause
-of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her
-revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and
-withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent
-they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the
-Tarquins; and bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted
-the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a
-bitter invective against the tyranny of the king: wherewith the
-people were so moved, that with one consent and a general
-acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled, and the state
-government changed from kings to consuls.
-
-
-
-	THE RAPE OF LUCRECE
-
-
-
-FROM the besieged Ardea all in post,
-Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
-Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
-And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
-Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
-And girdle with embracing flames the waist
-Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.
-
-Haply that name of 'chaste' unhappily set
-This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
-When Collatine unwisely did not let
-To praise the clear unmatched red and white
-Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,
-Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
-With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.
-
-For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent,
-Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state;
-What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent
-In the possession of his beauteous mate;
-Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate,
-That kings might be espoused to more fame,
-But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.
-
-O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!
-And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
-As is the morning's silver-melting dew
-Against the golden splendor of the sun!
-An expired date, cancell'd ere well begun:
-Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
-Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms.
-
-Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
-The eyes of men without an orator;
-What needeth then apologies be made,
-To set forth that which is so singular?
-Or why is Collatine the publisher
-Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown
-From thievish ears, because it is his own?
-
-Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty
-Suggested this proud issue of a king;
-For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be:
-Perchance that envy of so rich a thing,
-Braving compare, disdainfully did sting
-His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt
-That golden hap which their superiors want.
-
-But some untimely thought did instigate
-His all-too-timeless speed, if none of those:
-His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state,
-Neglected all, with swift intent he goes
-To quench the coal which in his liver glows.
-O rash false heat, wrapp'd in repentant cold,
-Thy hasty spring still blasts, and ne'er grows old!
-
-When at Collatium this false lord arrived,
-Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame,
-Within whose face beauty and virtue strived
-Which of them both should underprop her fame:
-When virtue bragg'd, beauty would blush for shame;
-When beauty boasted blushes, in despite
-Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white.
-
-But beauty, in that white intituled,
-From Venus' doves doth challenge that fair field:
-Then virtue claims from beauty beauty's red,
-Which virtue gave the golden age to gild
-Their silver cheeks, and call'd it then their shield;
-Teaching them thus to use it in the fight,
-When shame assail'd, the red should fence the white.
-
-This heraldry in Lucrece' face was seen,
-Argued by beauty's red and virtue's white
-Of either's colour was the other queen,
-Proving from world's minority their right:
-Yet their ambition makes them still to fight;
-The sovereignty of either being so great,
-That oft they interchange each other's seat.
-
-Their silent war of lilies and of roses,
-Which Tarquin view'd in her fair face's field,
-In their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses;
-Where, lest between them both it should be kill'd,
-The coward captive vanquished doth yield
-To those two armies that would let him go,
-Rather than triumph in so false a foe.
-
-Now thinks he that her husband's shallow tongue,--
-The niggard prodigal that praised her so,--
-In that high task hath done her beauty wrong,
-Which far exceeds his barren skill to show:
-Therefore that praise which Collatine doth owe
-Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise,
-In silent wonder of still-gazing eyes.
-
-This earthly saint, adored by this devil,
-Little suspecteth the false worshipper;
-For unstain'd thoughts do seldom dream on evil;
-Birds never limed no secret bushes fear:
-So guiltless she securely gives good cheer
-And reverend welcome to her princely guest,
-Whose inward ill no outward harm express'd:
-
-For that he colour'd with his high estate,
-Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty;
-That nothing in him seem'd inordinate,
-Save something too much wonder of his eye,
-Which, having all, all could not satisfy;
-But, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store,
-That, cloy'd with much, he pineth still for more.
-
-But she, that never coped with stranger eyes,
-Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,
-Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies
-Writ in the glassy margents of such books:
-She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks;
-Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,
-More than his eyes were open'd to the light.
-
-He stories to her ears her husband's fame,
-Won in the fields of fruitful Italy;
-And decks with praises Collatine's high name,
-Made glorious by his manly chivalry
-With bruised arms and wreaths of victory:
-Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express,
-And, wordless, so greets heaven for his success.
-
-Far from the purpose of his coming hither,
-He makes excuses for his being there:
-No cloudy show of stormy blustering weather
-Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear;
-Till sable Night, mother of Dread and Fear,
-Upon the world dim darkness doth display,
-And in her vaulty prison stows the Day.
-
-For then is Tarquin brought unto his bed,
-Intending weariness with heavy spright;
-For, after supper, long he questioned
-With modest Lucrece, and wore out the night:
-Now leaden slumber with life's strength doth fight;
-And every one to rest themselves betake,
-Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.
-
-As one of which doth Tarquin lie revolving
-The sundry dangers of his will's obtaining;
-Yet ever to obtain his will resolving,
-Though weak-built hopes persuade him to abstaining:
-Despair to gain doth traffic oft for gaining;
-And when great treasure is the meed proposed,
-Though death be adjunct, there's no death supposed.
-
-Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
-For what they have not, that which they possess
-They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
-And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
-Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
-Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
-That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.
-
-The aim of all is but to nurse the life
-With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age;
-And in this aim there is such thwarting strife,
-That one for all, or all for one we gage;
-As life for honour in fell battle's rage;
-Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost
-The death of all, and all together lost.
-
-So that in venturing ill we leave to be
-The things we are for that which we expect;
-And this ambitious foul infirmity,
-In having much, torments us with defect
-Of that we have: so then we do neglect
-The thing we have; and, all for want of wit,
-Make something nothing by augmenting it.
-
-Such hazard now must doting Tarquin make,
-Pawning his honour to obtain his lust;
-And for himself himself be must forsake:
-Then where is truth, if there be no self-trust?
-When shall he think to find a stranger just,
-When he himself himself confounds, betrays
-To slanderous tongues and wretched hateful days?
-
-Now stole upon the time the dead of night,
-When heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes:
-No comfortable star did lend his light,
-No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries;
-Now serves the season that they may surprise
-The silly lambs: pure thoughts are dead and still,
-While lust and murder wake to stain and kill.
-
-And now this lustful lord leap'd from his bed,
-Throwing his mantle rudely o'er his arm;
-Is madly toss'd between desire and dread;
-Th' one sweetly flatters, th' other feareth harm;
-But honest fear, bewitch'd with lust's foul charm,
-Doth too too oft betake him to retire,
-Beaten away by brain-sick rude desire.
-
-His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth,
-That from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly;
-Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth,
-Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye;
-And to the flame thus speaks advisedly,
-'As from this cold flint I enforced this fire,
-So Lucrece must I force to my desire.'
-
-Here pale with fear he doth premeditate
-The dangers of his loathsome enterprise,
-And in his inward mind he doth debate
-What following sorrow may on this arise:
-Then looking scornfully, he doth despise
-His naked armour of still-slaughter'd lust,
-And justly thus controls his thoughts unjust:
-
-'Fair torch, burn out thy light, and lend it not
-To darken her whose light excelleth thine:
-And die, unhallow'd thoughts, before you blot
-With your uncleanness that which is divine;
-Offer pure incense to so pure a shrine:
-Let fair humanity abhor the deed
-That spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed.
-
-'O shame to knighthood and to shining arms!
-O foul dishonour to my household's grave!
-O impious act, including all foul harms!
-A martial man to be soft fancy's slave!
-True valour still a true respect should have;
-Then my digression is so vile, so base,
-That it will live engraven in my face.
-
-'Yea, though I die, the scandal will survive,
-And be an eye-sore in my golden coat;
-Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive,
-To cipher me how fondly I did dote;
-That my posterity, shamed with the note
-Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin
-To wish that I their father had not bin.
-
-'What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?
-A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
-Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
-Or sells eternity to get a toy?
-For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?
-Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,
-Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?
-
-'If Collatinus dream of my intent,
-Will he not wake, and in a desperate rage
-Post hither, this vile purpose to prevent?
-This siege that hath engirt his marriage,
-This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage,
-This dying virtue, this surviving shame,
-Whose crime will bear an ever-during blame?
-
-'O, what excuse can my invention make,
-When thou shalt charge me with so black a deed?
-Will not my tongue be mute, my frail joints shake,
-Mine eyes forego their light, my false heart bleed?
-The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed;
-And extreme fear can neither fight nor fly,
-But coward-like with trembling terror die.
-
-
-'Had Collatinus kill'd my son or sire,
-Or lain in ambush to betray my life,
-Or were he not my dear friend, this desire
-Might have excuse to work upon his wife,
-As in revenge or quittal of such strife:
-But as he is my kinsman, my dear friend,
-The shame and fault finds no excuse nor end.
-
-'Shameful it is; ay, if the fact be known:
-Hateful it is; there is no hate in loving:
-I'll beg her love; but she is own:
-The worst is but denial and reproving:
-My will is strong, past reason's weak removing.
-Who fears a sentence or an old man's saw
-Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe.'
-
-Thus, graceless, holds he disputation
-'Tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will,
-And with good thoughts make dispensation,
-Urging the worser sense for vantage still;
-Which in a moment doth confound and kill
-All pure effects, and doth so far proceed,
-That what is vile shows like a virtuous deed.
-
-Quoth he, 'She took me kindly by the hand,
-And gazed for tidings in my eager eyes,
-Fearing some hard news from the warlike band,
-Where her beloved Collatinus lies.
-O, how her fear did make her colour rise!
-First red as roses that on lawn we lay,
-Then white as lawn, the roses took away.
-
-'And how her hand, in my hand being lock'd
-Forced it to tremble with her loyal fear!
-Which struck her sad, and then it faster rock'd,
-Until her husband's welfare she did hear;
-Whereat she smiled with so sweet a cheer,
-That had Narcissus seen her as she stood,
-Self-love had never drown'd him in the flood.
-
-'Why hunt I then for colour or excuses?
-All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth;
-Poor wretches have remorse in poor abuses;
-Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth:
-Affection is my captain, and he leadeth;
-And when his gaudy banner is display'd,
-The coward fights and will not be dismay'd.
-
-'Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating, die!
-Respect and reason, wait on wrinkled age!
-My heart shall never countermand mine eye:
-Sad pause and deep regard beseem the sage;
-My part is youth, and beats these from the stage:
-Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize;
-Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?'
-
-As corn o'ergrown by weeds, so heedful fear
-Is almost choked by unresisted lust.
-Away he steals with open listening ear,
-Full of foul hope and full of fond mistrust;
-Both which, as servitors to the unjust,
-So cross him with their opposite persuasion,
-That now he vows a league, and now invasion.
-
-Within his thought her heavenly image sits,
-And in the self-same seat sits Collatine:
-That eye which looks on her confounds his wits;
-That eye which him beholds, as more divine,
-Unto a view so false will not incline;
-But with a pure appeal seeks to the heart,
-Which once corrupted takes the worser part;
-
-And therein heartens up his servile powers,
-Who, flatter'd by their leader's jocund show,
-Stuff up his lust, as minutes fill up hours;
-And as their captain, so their pride doth grow,
-Paying more slavish tribute than they owe.
-By reprobate desire thus madly led,
-The Roman lord marcheth to Lucrece' bed.
-
-The locks between her chamber and his will,
-Each one by him enforced, retires his ward;
-But, as they open, they all rate his ill,
-Which drives the creeping thief to some regard:
-The threshold grates the door to have him heard;
-Night-wandering weasels shriek to see him there;
-They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear.
-
-As each unwilling portal yields him way,
-Through little vents and crannies of the place
-The wind wars with his torch to make him stay,
-And blows the smoke of it into his face,
-Extinguishing his conduct in this case;
-But his hot heart, which fond desire doth scorch,
-Puffs forth another wind that fires the torch:
-
-And being lighted, by the light he spies
-Lucretia's glove, wherein her needle sticks:
-He takes it from the rushes where it lies,
-And griping it, the needle his finger pricks;
-As who should say 'This glove to wanton tricks
-Is not inured; return again in haste;
-Thou see'st our mistress' ornaments are chaste.'
-
-But all these poor forbiddings could not stay him;
-He in the worst sense construes their denial:
-The doors, the wind, the glove, that did delay him,
-He takes for accidental things of trial;
-Or as those bars which stop the hourly dial,
-Who with a lingering slay his course doth let,
-Till every minute pays the hour his debt.
-
-'So, so,' quoth he, 'these lets attend the time,
-Like little frosts that sometime threat the spring,
-To add a more rejoicing to the prime,
-And give the sneaped birds more cause to sing.
-Pain pays the income of each precious thing;
-Huge rocks, high winds, strong pirates, shelves and sands,
-The merchant fears, ere rich at home he lands.'
-
-Now is he come unto the chamber-door,
-That shuts him from the heaven of his thought,
-Which with a yielding latch, and with no more,
-Hath barr'd him from the blessed thing be sought.
-So from himself impiety hath wrought,
-That for his prey to pray he doth begin,
-As if the heavens should countenance his sin.
-
-But in the midst of his unfruitful prayer,
-Having solicited th' eternal power
-That his foul thoughts might compass his fair fair,
-And they would stand auspicious to the hour,
-Even there he starts: quoth he, 'I must deflower:
-The powers to whom I pray abhor this fact,
-How can they then assist me in the act?
-
-'Then Love and Fortune be my gods, my guide!
-My will is back'd with resolution:
-Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried;
-The blackest sin is clear'd with absolution;
-Against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution.
-The eye of heaven is out, and misty night
-Covers the shame that follows sweet delight.'
-
-This said, his guilty hand pluck'd up the latch,
-And with his knee the door he opens wide.
-The dove sleeps fast that this night-owl will catch:
-Thus treason works ere traitors be espied.
-Who sees the lurking serpent steps aside;
-But she, sound sleeping, fearing no such thing,
-Lies at the mercy of his mortal sting.
-
-Into the chamber wickedly he stalks,
-And gazeth on her yet unstained bed.
-The curtains being close, about he walks,
-Rolling his greedy eyeballs in his head:
-By their high treason is his heart misled;
-Which gives the watch-word to his hand full soon
-To draw the cloud that hides the silver moon.
-
-Look, as the fair and fiery-pointed sun,
-Rushing from forth a cloud, bereaves our sight;
-Even so, the curtain drawn, his eyes begun
-To wink, being blinded with a greater light:
-Whether it is that she reflects so bright,
-That dazzleth them, or else some shame supposed;
-But blind they are, and keep themselves enclosed.
-
-O, had they in that darksome prison died!
-Then had they seen the period of their ill;
-Then Collatine again, by Lucrece' side,
-In his clear bed might have reposed still:
-But they must ope, this blessed league to kill;
-And holy-thoughted Lucrece to their sight
-Must sell her joy, her life, her world's delight.
-
-Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
-Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;
-Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,
-Swelling on either side to want his bliss;
-Between whose hills her head entombed is:
-Where, like a virtuous monument, she lies,
-To be admired of lewd unhallow'd eyes.
-
-Without the bed her other fair hand was,
-On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
-Show'd like an April daisy on the grass,
-With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night.
-Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light,
-And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
-Till they might open to adorn the day.
-
-Her hair, like golden threads, play'd with her breath;
-O modest wantons! wanton modesty!
-Showing life's triumph in the map of death,
-And death's dim look in life's mortality:
-Each in her sleep themselves so beautify,
-As if between them twain there were no strife,
-But that life lived in death, and death in life.
-
-Her breasts, like ivory globes circled with blue,
-A pair of maiden worlds unconquered,
-Save of their lord no bearing yoke they knew,
-And him by oath they truly honoured.
-These worlds in Tarquin new ambition bred;
-Who, like a foul ursurper, went about
-From this fair throne to heave the owner out.
-
-What could he see but mightily he noted?
-What did he note but strongly he desired?
-What he beheld, on that he firmly doted,
-And in his will his wilful eye he tired.
-With more than admiration he admired
-Her azure veins, her alabaster skin,
-Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.
-
-As the grim lion fawneth o'er his prey,
-Sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied,
-So o'er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay,
-His rage of lust by gazing qualified;
-Slack'd, not suppress'd; for standing by her side,
-His eye, which late this mutiny restrains,
-Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins:
-
-And they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting,
-Obdurate vassals fell exploits effecting,
-In bloody death and ravishment delighting,
-Nor children's tears nor mothers' groans respecting,
-Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting:
-Anon his beating heart, alarum striking,
-Gives the hot charge and bids them do their liking.
-
-His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye,
-His eye commends the leading to his hand;
-His hand, as proud of such a dignity,
-Smoking with pride, march'd on to make his stand
-On her bare breast, the heart of all her land;
-Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale,
-Left there round turrets destitute and pale.
-
-They, mustering to the quiet cabinet
-Where their dear governess and lady lies,
-Do tell her she is dreadfully beset,
-And fright her with confusion of their cries:
-She, much amazed, breaks ope her lock'd-up eyes,
-Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold,
-Are by his flaming torch dimm'd and controll'd.
-
-Imagine her as one in dead of night
-From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking,
-That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite,
-Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking;
-What terror or 'tis! but she, in worser taking,
-From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view
-The sight which makes supposed terror true.
-
-Wrapp'd and confounded in a thousand fears,
-Like to a new-kill'd bird she trembling lies;
-She dares not look; yet, winking, there appears
-Quick-shifting antics, ugly in her eyes:
-Such shadows are the weak brain's forgeries;
-Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights,
-In darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights.
-
-His hand, that yet remains upon her breast,--
-Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall!--
-May feel her heart-poor citizen!--distress'd,
-Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall,
-Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal.
-This moves in him more rage and lesser pity,
-To make the breach and enter this sweet city.
-
-First, like a trumpet, doth his tongue begin
-To sound a parley to his heartless foe;
-Who o'er the white sheet peers her whiter chin,
-The reason of this rash alarm to know,
-Which he by dumb demeanor seeks to show;
-But she with vehement prayers urgeth still
-Under what colour he commits this ill.
-
-Thus he replies: 'The colour in thy face,
-That even for anger makes the lily pale,
-And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,
-Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale:
-Under that colour am I come to scale
-Thy never-conquer'd fort: the fault is thine,
-For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine.
-
-'Thus I forestall thee, if thou mean to chide:
-Thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night,
-Where thou with patience must my will abide;
-My will that marks thee for my earth's delight,
-Which I to conquer sought with all my might;
-But as reproof and reason beat it dead,
-By thy bright beauty was it newly bred.
-
-'I see what crosses my attempt will bring;
-I know what thorns the growing rose defends;
-I think the honey guarded with a sting;
-All this beforehand counsel comprehends:
-But will is deaf and hears no heedful friends;
-Only he hath an eye to gaze on beauty,
-And dotes on what he looks, 'gainst law or duty.
-
-'I have debated, even in my soul,
-What wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed;
-But nothing can affection's course control,
-Or stop the headlong fury of his speed.
-I know repentant tears ensue the deed,
-Reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity;
-Yet strive I to embrace mine infamy.'
-
-This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade,
-Which, like a falcon towering in the skies,
-Coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade,
-Whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies:
-So under his insulting falchion lies
-Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
-With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells.
-
-'Lucrece,' quoth he,'this night I must enjoy thee:
-If thou deny, then force must work my way,
-For in thy bed I purpose to destroy thee:
-That done, some worthless slave of thine I'll slay,
-To kill thine honour with thy life's decay;
-And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him,
-Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him.
-
-'So thy surviving husband shall remain
-The scornful mark of every open eye;
-Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain,
-Thy issue blurr'd with nameless bastardy:
-And thou, the author of their obloquy,
-Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes,
-And sung by children in succeeding times.
-
-'But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend:
-The fault unknown is as a thought unacted;
-A little harm done to a great good end
-For lawful policy remains enacted.
-The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted
-In a pure compound; being so applied,
-His venom in effect is purified.
-
-'Then, for thy husband and thy children's sake,
-Tender my suit: bequeath not to their lot
-The shame that from them no device can take,
-The blemish that will never be forgot;
-Worse than a slavish wipe or birth-hour's blot:
-For marks descried in men's nativity
-Are nature's faults, not their own infamy.'
-
-Here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye
-He rouseth up himself and makes a pause;
-While she, the picture of pure piety,
-Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws,
-Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws,
-To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,
-Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.
-
-But when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat,
-In his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding,
-From earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get,
-Which blows these pitchy vapours from their bidding,
-Hindering their present fall by this dividing;
-So his unhallow'd haste her words delays,
-And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.
-
-Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally,
-While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth:
-Her sad behavior feeds his vulture folly,
-A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth:
-His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth
-No penetrable entrance to her plaining:
-Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.
-
-Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fix'd
-In the remorseless wrinkles of his face;
-Her modest eloquence with sighs is mix'd,
-Which to her oratory adds more grace.
-She puts the period often from his place;
-And midst the sentence so her accent breaks,
-That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.
-
-She conjures him by high almighty Jove,
-By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship's oath,
-By her untimely tears, her husband's love,
-By holy human law, and common troth,
-By heaven and earth, and all the power of both,
-That to his borrow'd bed he make retire,
-And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.
-
-Quoth she, 'Reward not hospitality
-With such black payment as thou hast pretended;
-Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
-Mar not the thing that cannot be amended;
-End thy ill aim before thy shoot be ended;
-He is no woodman that doth bend his bow
-To strike a poor unseasonable doe.
-
-'My husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me:
-Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me:
-Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me:
-Thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me.
-My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee:
-If ever man were moved with woman moans,
-Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans:
-
-'All which together, like a troubled ocean,
-Beat at thy rocky and wreck-threatening heart,
-To soften it with their continual motion;
-For stones dissolved to water do convert.
-O, if no harder than a stone thou art,
-Melt at my tears, and be compassionate!
-Soft pity enters at an iron gate.
-
-'In Tarquin's likeness I did entertain thee:
-Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?
-To all the host of heaven I complain me,
-Thou wrong'st his honour, wound'st his princely name.
-Thou art not what thou seem'st; and if the same,
-Thou seem'st not what thou art, a god, a king;
-For kings like gods should govern everything.
-
-'How will thy shame be seeded in thine age,
-When thus thy vices bud before thy spring!
-If in thy hope thou darest do such outrage,
-What darest thou not when once thou art a king?
-O, be remember'd, no outrageous thing
-From vassal actors can be wiped away;
-Then kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.
-
-'This deed will make thee only loved for fear;
-But happy monarchs still are fear'd for love:
-With foul offenders thou perforce must bear,
-When they in thee the like offences prove:
-If but for fear of this, thy will remove;
-For princes are the glass, the school, the book,
-Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look.
-
-'And wilt thou be the school where Lust shall learn?
-Must he in thee read lectures of such shame?
-Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern
-Authority for sin, warrant for blame,
-To privilege dishonour in thy name?
-Thou black'st reproach against long-living laud,
-And makest fair reputation but a bawd.
-
-'Hast thou command? by him that gave it thee,
-From a pure heart command thy rebel will:
-Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,
-For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.
-Thy princely office how canst thou fulfil,
-When, pattern'd by thy fault, foul sin may say,
-He learn'd to sin, and thou didst teach the way?
-
-'Think but how vile a spectacle it were,
-To view thy present trespass in another.
-Men's faults do seldom to themselves appear;
-Their own transgressions partially they smother:
-This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother.
-O, how are they wrapp'd in with infamies
-That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!
-
-'To thee, to thee, my heaved-up hands appeal,
-Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier:
-I sue for exiled majesty's repeal;
-Let him return, and flattering thoughts retire:
-His true respect will prison false desire,
-And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,
-That thou shalt see thy state and pity mine.'
-
-'Have done,' quoth he: 'my uncontrolled tide
-Turns not, but swells the higher by this let.
-Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide,
-And with the wind in greater fury fret:
-The petty streams that pay a daily debt
-To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls' haste
-Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.'
-
-'Thou art,' quoth she, 'a sea, a sovereign king;
-And, lo, there falls into thy boundless flood
-Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning,
-Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood.
-If all these pretty ills shall change thy good,
-Thy sea within a puddle's womb is hearsed,
-And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed.
-
-'So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave;
-Thou nobly base, they basely dignified;
-Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave:
-Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride:
-The lesser thing should not the greater hide;
-The cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot,
-But low shrubs wither at the cedar's root.
-
-'So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state'--
-No more,' quoth he; 'by heaven, I will not hear thee:
-Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate,
-Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee;
-That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee
-Unto the base bed of some rascal groom,
-To be thy partner in this shameful doom.'
-
-This said, he sets his foot upon the light,
-For light and lust are deadly enemies:
-Shame folded up in blind concealing night,
-When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize.
-The wolf hath seized his prey, the poor lamb cries;
-Till with her own white fleece her voice controll'd
-Entombs her outcry in her lips' sweet fold:
-
-For with the nightly linen that she wears
-He pens her piteous clamours in her head;
-Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears
-That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed.
-O, that prone lust should stain so pure a bed!
-The spots whereof could weeping purify,
-Her tears should drop on them perpetually.
-
-But she hath lost a dearer thing than life,
-And he hath won what he would lose again:
-This forced league doth force a further strife;
-This momentary joy breeds months of pain;
-This hot desire converts to cold disdain:
-Pure Chastity is rifled of her store,
-And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before.
-
-Look, as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk,
-Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight,
-Make slow pursuit, or altogether balk
-The prey wherein by nature they delight;
-So surfeit-taking Tarquin fares this night:
-His taste delicious, in digestion souring,
-Devours his will, that lived by foul devouring.
-
-O, deeper sin than bottomless conceit
-Can comprehend in still imagination!
-Drunken Desire must vomit his receipt,
-Ere he can see his own abomination.
-While Lust is in his pride, no exclamation
-Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,
-Till like a jade Self-will himself doth tire.
-
-And then with lank and lean discolour'd cheek,
-With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace,
-Feeble Desire, all recreant, poor, and meek,
-Like to a bankrupt beggar wails his case:
-The flesh being proud, Desire doth fight with Grace,
-For there it revels; and when that decays,
-The guilty rebel for remission prays.
-
-So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome,
-Who this accomplishment so hotly chased;
-For now against himself he sounds this doom,
-That through the length of times he stands disgraced:
-Besides, his soul's fair temple is defaced;
-To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,
-To ask the spotted princess how she fares.
-
-She says, her subjects with foul insurrection
-Have batter'd down her consecrated wall,
-And by their mortal fault brought in subjection
-Her immortality, and made her thrall
-To living death and pain perpetual:
-Which in her prescience she controlled still,
-But her foresight could not forestall their will.
-
-Even in this thought through the dark night he stealeth,
-A captive victor that hath lost in gain;
-Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth,
-The scar that will, despite of cure, remain;
-Leaving his spoil perplex'd in greater pain.
-She bears the load of lust he left behind,
-And he the burden of a guilty mind.
-
-He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence;
-She like a wearied lamb lies panting there;
-He scowls and hates himself for his offence;
-She, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear;
-He faintly flies, sneaking with guilty fear;
-She stays, exclaiming on the direful night;
-He runs, and chides his vanish'd, loathed delight.
-
-He thence departs a heavy convertite;
-She there remains a hopeless castaway;
-He in his speed looks for the morning light;
-She prays she never may behold the day,
-'For day,' quoth she, 'nights scapes doth open lay,
-And my true eyes have never practised how
-To cloak offences with a cunning brow.
-
-'They think not but that every eye can see
-The same disgrace which they themselves behold;
-And therefore would they still in darkness be,
-To have their unseen sin remain untold;
-For they their guilt with weeping will unfold,
-And grave, like water that doth eat in steel,
-Upon my cheeks what helpless shame I feel.'
-
-Here she exclaims against repose and rest,
-And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind.
-She wakes her heart by beating on her breast,
-And bids it leap from thence, where it may find
-Some purer chest to close so pure a mind.
-Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite
-Against the unseen secrecy of night:
-
-'O comfort-killing Night, image of hell!
-Dim register and notary of shame!
-Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!
-Vast sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame!
-Blind muffled bawd! dark harbour for defame!
-Grim cave of death! whispering conspirator
-With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!
-
-'O hateful, vaporous, and foggy Night!
-Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,
-Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,
-Make war against proportion'd course of time;
-Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb
-His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,
-Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.
-
-'With rotten damps ravish the morning air;
-Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick
-The life of purity, the supreme fair,
-Ere he arrive his weary noon-tide prick;
-And let thy misty vapours march so thick,
-That in their smoky ranks his smother'd light
-May set at noon and make perpetual night.
-
-'Were Tarquin Night, as he is but Night's child,
-The silver-shining queen he would distain;
-Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled,
-Through Night's black bosom should not peep again:
-So should I have co-partners in my pain;
-And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
-As palmers' chat makes short their pilgrimage.
-
-'Where now I have no one to blush with me,
-To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,
-To mask their brows and hide their infamy;
-But I alone alone must sit and pine,
-Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine,
-Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,
-Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
-
-'O Night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke,
-Let not the jealous Day behold that face
-Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
-Immodestly lies martyr'd with disgrace!
-Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,
-That all the faults which in thy reign are made
-May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade!
-
-'Make me not object to the tell-tale Day!
-The light will show, character'd in my brow,
-The story of sweet chastity's decay,
-The impious breach of holy wedlock vow:
-Yea the illiterate, that know not how
-To cipher what is writ in learned books,
-Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks.
-
-'The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story,
-And fright her crying babe with Tarquin's name;
-The orator, to deck his oratory,
-Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame;
-Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame,
-Will tie the hearers to attend each line,
-How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.
-
-'Let my good name, that senseless reputation,
-For Collatine's dear love be kept unspotted:
-If that be made a theme for disputation,
-The branches of another root are rotted,
-And undeserved reproach to him allotted
-That is as clear from this attaint of mine
-As I, ere this, was pure to Collatine.
-
-'O unseen shame! invisible disgrace!
-O unfelt sore! crest-wounding, private scar!
-Reproach is stamp'd in Collatinus' face,
-And Tarquin's eye may read the mot afar,
-How he in peace is wounded, not in war.
-Alas, how many bear such shameful blows,
-Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!
-
-'If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me,
-From me by strong assault it is bereft.
-My honour lost, and I, a drone-like bee,
-Have no perfection of my summer left,
-But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft:
-In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept,
-And suck'd the honey which thy chaste bee kept.
-
-'Yet am I guilty of thy honour's wrack;
-Yet for thy honour did I entertain him;
-Coming from thee, I could not put him back,
-For it had been dishonour to disdain him:
-Besides, of weariness he did complain him,
-And talk'd of virtue: O unlook'd-for evil,
-When virtue is profaned in such a devil!
-
-'Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
-Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests?
-Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?
-Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?
-Or kings be breakers of their own behests?
-But no perfection is so absolute,
-That some impurity doth not pollute.
-
-'The aged man that coffers-up his gold
-Is plagued with cramps and gouts and painful fits;
-And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold,
-But like still-pining Tantalus he sits,
-And useless barns the harvest of his wits;
-Having no other pleasure of his gain
-But torment that it cannot cure his pain.
-
-'So then he hath it when he cannot use it,
-And leaves it to be master'd by his young;
-Who in their pride do presently abuse it:
-Their father was too weak, and they too strong,
-To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long.
-The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours
-Even in the moment that we call them ours.
-
-'Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;
-Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;
-The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;
-What virtue breeds iniquity devours:
-We have no good that we can say is ours,
-But ill-annexed Opportunity
-Or kills his life or else his quality.
-
-'O Opportunity, thy guilt is great!
-'Tis thou that executest the traitor's treason:
-Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
-Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season;
-'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason;
-And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
-Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.
-
-'Thou makest the vestal violate her oath;
-Thou blow'st the fire when temperance is thaw'd;
-Thou smother'st honesty, thou murder'st troth;
-Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd!
-Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud:
-Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,
-Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief!
-
-'Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,
-Thy private feasting to a public fast,
-Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,
-Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste:
-Thy violent vanities can never last.
-How comes it then, vile Opportunity,
-Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
-
-'When wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend,
-And bring him where his suit may be obtain'd?
-When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end?
-Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain'd?
-Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain'd?
-The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;
-But they ne'er meet with Opportunity.
-
-'The patient dies while the physician sleeps;
-The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
-Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;
-Advice is sporting while infection breeds:
-Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds:
-Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages,
-Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.
-
-'When Truth and Virtue have to do with thee,
-A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid:
-They buy thy help; but Sin ne'er gives a fee,
-He gratis comes; and thou art well appaid
-As well to hear as grant what he hath said.
-My Collatine would else have come to me
-When Tarquin did, but he was stay'd by thee.
-
-Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,
-Guilty of perjury and subornation,
-Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,
-Guilty of incest, that abomination;
-An accessary by thine inclination
-To all sins past, and all that are to come,
-From the creation to the general doom.
-
-'Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night,
-Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,
-Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
-Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare;
-Thou nursest all and murder'st all that are:
-O, hear me then, injurious, shifting Time!
-Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.
-
-'Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,
-Betray'd the hours thou gavest me to repose,
-Cancell'd my fortunes, and enchained me
-To endless date of never-ending woes?
-Time's office is to fine the hate of foes;
-To eat up errors by opinion bred,
-Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.
-
-'Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
-To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
-To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
-To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
-To wrong the wronger till he render right,
-To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
-And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;
-
-'To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
-To feed oblivion with decay of things,
-To blot old books and alter their contents,
-To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,
-To dry the old oak's sap and cherish springs,
-To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
-And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel;
-
-'To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,
-To make the child a man, the man a child,
-To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
-To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
-To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
-To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
-And waste huge stones with little water drops.
-
-'Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
-Unless thou couldst return to make amends?
-One poor retiring minute in an age
-Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,
-Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends:
-O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back,
-I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack!
-
-'Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,
-With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight:
-Devise extremes beyond extremity,
-To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:
-Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright;
-And the dire thought of his committed evil
-Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.
-
-'Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,
-Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;
-Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
-To make him moan; but pity not his moans:
-Stone him with harden'd hearts harder than stones;
-And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
-Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.
-
-'Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
-Let him have time against himself to rave,
-Let him have time of Time's help to despair,
-Let him have time to live a loathed slave,
-Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave,
-And time to see one that by alms doth live
-Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.
-
-'Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
-And merry fools to mock at him resort;
-Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
-In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
-His time of folly and his time of sport;
-And ever let his unrecalling crime
-Have time to wail th' abusing of his time.
-
-'O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,
-Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill!
-At his own shadow let the thief run mad,
-Himself himself seek every hour to kill!
-Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill;
-For who so base would such an office have
-As slanderous death's-man to so base a slave?
-
-'The baser is he, coming from a king,
-To shame his hope with deeds degenerate:
-The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
-That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate;
-For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
-The moon being clouded presently is miss'd,
-But little stars may hide them when they list.
-
-'The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
-And unperceived fly with the filth away;
-But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
-The stain upon his silver down will stay.
-Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day:
-Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
-But eagles gazed upon with every eye.
-
-'Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!
-Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!
-Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
-Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
-To trembling clients be you mediators:
-For me, I force not argument a straw,
-Since that my case is past the help of law.
-
-'In vain I rail at Opportunity,
-At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful Night;
-In vain I cavil with mine infamy,
-In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite:
-This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
-The remedy indeed to do me good
-Is to let forth my foul-defiled blood.
-
-'Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree?
-Honour thyself to rid me of this shame:
-For if I die, my honour lives in thee;
-But if I live, thou livest in my defame:
-Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame,
-And wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe,
-Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.'
-
-This said, from her be-tumbled couch she starteth,
-To find some desperate instrument of death:
-But this no slaughterhouse no tool imparteth
-To make more vent for passage of her breath;
-Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth
-As smoke from AEtna, that in air consumes,
-Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.
-
-'In vain,' quoth she, 'I live, and seek in vain
-Some happy mean to end a hapless life.
-I fear'd by Tarquin's falchion to be slain,
-Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife:
-But when I fear'd I was a loyal wife:
-So am I now: O no, that cannot be;
-Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.
-
-'O, that is gone for which I sought to live,
-And therefore now I need not fear to die.
-To clear this spot by death, at least I give
-A badge of fame to slander's livery;
-A dying life to living infamy:
-Poor helpless help, the treasure stol'n away,
-To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!
-
-'Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know
-The stained taste of violated troth;
-I will not wrong thy true affection so,
-To flatter thee with an infringed oath;
-This bastard graff shall never come to growth:
-He shall not boast who did thy stock pollute
-That thou art doting father of his fruit.
-
-'Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,
-Nor laugh with his companions at thy state:
-But thou shalt know thy interest was not bought
-Basely with gold, but stol'n from forth thy gate.
-For me, I am the mistress of my fate,
-And with my trespass never will dispense,
-Till life to death acquit my forced offence.
-
-'I will not poison thee with my attaint,
-Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin'd excuses;
-My sable ground of sin I will not paint,
-To hide the truth of this false night's abuses:
-My tongue shall utter all; mine eyes, like sluices,
-As from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale,
-Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.'
-
-By this, lamenting Philomel had ended
-The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow,
-And solemn night with slow sad gait descended
-To ugly hell; when, lo, the blushing morrow
-Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow:
-But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,
-And therefore still in night would cloister'd be.
-
-Revealing day through every cranny spies,
-And seems to point her out where she sits weeping;
-To whom she sobbing speaks: 'O eye of eyes,
-Why pry'st thou through my window? leave thy peeping:
-Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping:
-Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
-For day hath nought to do what's done by night.'
-
-Thus cavils she with every thing she sees:
-True grief is fond and testy as a child,
-Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees:
-Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild;
-Continuance tames the one; the other wild,
-Like an unpractised swimmer plunging still,
-With too much labour drowns for want of skill.
-
-So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care,
-Holds disputation with each thing she views,
-And to herself all sorrow doth compare;
-No object but her passion's strength renews;
-And as one shifts, another straight ensues:
-Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words;
-Sometime 'tis mad and too much talk affords.
-
-The little birds that tune their morning's joy
-Make her moans mad with their sweet melody:
-For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;
-Sad souls are slain in merry company;
-Grief best is pleased with grief's society:
-True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed
-When with like semblance it is sympathized.
-
-'Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;
-He ten times pines that pines beholding food;
-To see the salve doth make the wound ache more;
-Great grief grieves most at that would do it good;
-Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood,
-Who being stopp'd, the bounding banks o'erflows;
-Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows.
-
-'You mocking-birds,' quoth she, 'your tunes entomb
-Within your hollow-swelling feather'd breasts,
-And in my hearing be you mute and dumb:
-My restless discord loves no stops nor rests;
-A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests:
-Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears;
-Distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears.
-
-'Come, Philomel, that sing'st of ravishment,
-Make thy sad grove in my dishevell'd hair:
-As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,
-So I at each sad strain will strain a tear,
-And with deep groans the diapason bear;
-For burden-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still,
-While thou on Tereus descant'st better skill.
-
-'And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part,
-To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,
-To imitate thee well, against my heart
-Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye;
-Who, if it wink, shall thereon fall and die.
-These means, as frets upon an instrument,
-Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.
-
-'And for, poor bird, thou sing'st not in the day,
-As shaming any eye should thee behold,
-Some dark deep desert, seated from the way,
-That knows not parching heat nor freezing cold,
-Will we find out; and there we will unfold
-To creatures stern sad tunes, to change their kinds:
-Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.'
-
-As the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
-Wildly determining which way to fly,
-Or one encompass'd with a winding maze,
-That cannot tread the way out readily;
-So with herself is she in mutiny,
-To live or die which of the twain were better,
-When life is shamed, and death reproach's debtor.
-
-'To kill myself,' quoth she, 'alack, what were it,
-But with my body my poor soul's pollution?
-They that lose half with greater patience bear it
-Than they whose whole is swallow'd in confusion.
-That mother tries a merciless conclusion
-Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one,
-Will slay the other and be nurse to none.
-
-'My body or my soul, which was the dearer,
-When the one pure, the other made divine?
-Whose love of either to myself was nearer,
-When both were kept for heaven and Collatine?
-Ay me! the bark peel'd from the lofty pine,
-His leaves will wither and his sap decay;
-So must my soul, her bark being peel'd away.
-
-'Her house is sack'd, her quiet interrupted,
-Her mansion batter'd by the enemy;
-Her sacred temple spotted, spoil'd, corrupted,
-Grossly engirt with daring infamy:
-Then let it not be call'd impiety,
-If in this blemish'd fort I make some hole
-Through which I may convey this troubled soul.
-
-'Yet die I will not till my Collatine
-Have heard the cause of my untimely death;
-That he may vow, in that sad hour of mine,
-Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.
-My stained blood to Tarquin I'll bequeath,
-Which by him tainted shall for him be spent,
-And as his due writ in my testament.
-
-'My honour I'll bequeath unto the knife
-That wounds my body so dishonoured.
-'Tis honour to deprive dishonour'd life;
-The one will live, the other being dead:
-So of shame's ashes shall my fame be bred;
-For in my death I murder shameful scorn:
-My shame so dead, mine honour is new-born.
-
-'Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,
-What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?
-My resolution, love, shall be thy boast,
-By whose example thou revenged mayest be.
-How Tarquin must be used, read it in me:
-Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe,
-And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.
-
-'This brief abridgement of my will I make:
-My soul and body to the skies and ground;
-My resolution, husband, do thou take;
-Mine honour be the knife's that makes my wound;
-My shame be his that did my fame confound;
-And all my fame that lives disbursed be
-To those that live, and think no shame of me.
-
-'Thou, Collatine, shalt oversee this will;
-How was I overseen that thou shalt see it!
-My blood shall wash the slander of mine ill;
-My life's foul deed, my life's fair end shall free it.
-Faint not, faint heart, but stoutly say 'So be it:'
-Yield to my hand; my hand shall conquer thee:
-Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.'
-
-This Plot of death when sadly she had laid,
-And wiped the brinish pearl from her bright eyes,
-With untuned tongue she hoarsely calls her maid,
-Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies;
-For fleet-wing'd duty with thought's feathers flies.
-Poor Lucrece' cheeks unto her maid seem so
-As winter meads when sun doth melt their snow.
-
-Her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow,
-With soft-slow tongue, true mark of modesty,
-And sorts a sad look to her lady's sorrow,
-For why her face wore sorrow's livery;
-But durst not ask of her audaciously
-Why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so,
-Nor why her fair cheeks over-wash'd with woe.
-
-But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set,
-Each flower moisten'd like a melting eye;
-Even so the maid with swelling drops gan wet
-Her circled eyne, enforced by sympathy
-Of those fair suns set in her mistress' sky,
-Who in a salt-waved ocean quench their light,
-Which makes the maid weep like the dewy night.
-
-A pretty while these pretty creatures stand,
-Like ivory conduits coral cisterns filling:
-One justly weeps; the other takes in hand
-No cause, but company, of her drops spilling:
-Their gentle sex to weep are often willing;
-Grieving themselves to guess at others' smarts,
-And then they drown their eyes or break their hearts.
-
-For men have marble, women waxen, minds,
-And therefore are they form'd as marble will;
-The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds
-Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
-Then call them not the authors of their ill,
-No more than wax shall be accounted evil
-Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
-
-Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,
-Lays open all the little worms that creep;
-In men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain
-Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep:
-Through crystal walls each little mote will peep:
-Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,
-Poor women's faces are their own fault's books.
-
-No man inveigh against the wither'd flower,
-But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd:
-Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour,
-Is worthy blame. O, let it not be hild
-Poor women's faults, that they are so fulfill'd
-With men's abuses: those proud lords, to blame,
-Make weak-made women tenants to their shame.
-
-The precedent whereof in Lucrece view,
-Assail'd by night with circumstances strong
-Of present death, and shame that might ensue
-By that her death, to do her husband wrong:
-Such danger to resistance did belong,
-That dying fear through all her body spread;
-And who cannot abuse a body dead?
-
-By this, mild patience bid fair Lucrece speak
-To the poor counterfeit of her complaining:
-'My girl,' quoth she, 'on what occasion break
-Those tears from thee, that down thy cheeks are
-raining?
-If thou dost weep for grief of my sustaining,
-Know, gentle wench, it small avails my mood:
-If tears could help, mine own would do me good.
-
-'But tell me, girl, when went'--and there she stay'd
-Till after a deep groan--'Tarquin from hence?'
-'Madam, ere I was up,' replied the maid,
-'The more to blame my sluggard negligence:
-Yet with the fault I thus far can dispense;
-Myself was stirring ere the break of day,
-And, ere I rose, was Tarquin gone away.
-
-'But, lady, if your maid may be so bold,
-She would request to know your heaviness.'
-'O, peace!' quoth Lucrece: 'if it should be told,
-The repetition cannot make it less;
-For more it is than I can well express:
-And that deep torture may be call'd a hell
-When more is felt than one hath power to tell.
-
-'Go, get me hither paper, ink, and pen:
-Yet save that labour, for I have them here.
-What should I say? One of my husband's men
-Bid thou be ready, by and by, to bear
-A letter to my lord, my love, my dear;
-Bid him with speed prepare to carry it;
-The cause craves haste, and it will soon be writ.'
-
-Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write,
-First hovering o'er the paper with her quill:
-Conceit and grief an eager combat fight;
-What wit sets down is blotted straight with will;
-This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill:
-Much like a press of people at a door,
-Throng her inventions, which shall go before.
-
-At last she thus begins: 'Thou worthy lord
-Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee,
-Health to thy person! next vouchsafe t' afford--
-If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see--
-Some present speed to come and visit me.
-So, I commend me from our house in grief:
-My woes are tedious, though my words are brief.'
-
-Here folds she up the tenor of her woe,
-Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly.
-By this short schedule Collatine may know
-Her grief, but not her grief's true quality:
-She dares not thereof make discovery,
-Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse,
-Ere she with blood had stain'd her stain'd excuse.
-
-Besides, the life and feeling of her passion
-She hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her:
-When sighs and groans and tears may grace the fashion
-Of her disgrace, the better so to clear her
-From that suspicion which the world might bear her.
-To shun this blot, she would not blot the letter
-With words, till action might become them better.
-
-To see sad sights moves more than hear them told;
-For then eye interprets to the ear
-The heavy motion that it doth behold,
-When every part a part of woe doth bear.
-'Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear:
-Deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords,
-And sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.
-
-Her letter now is seal'd, and on it writ
-'At Ardea to my lord with more than haste.'
-The post attends, and she delivers it,
-Charging the sour-faced groom to hie as fast
-As lagging fowls before the northern blast:
-Speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems:
-Extremity still urgeth such extremes.
-
-The homely villain court'sies to her low;
-And, blushing on her, with a steadfast eye
-Receives the scroll without or yea or no,
-And forth with bashful innocence doth hie.
-But they whose guilt within their bosoms lie
-Imagine every eye beholds their blame;
-For Lucrece thought he blush'd to her see shame:
-
-When, silly groom! God wot, it was defect
-Of spirit, Life, and bold audacity.
-Such harmless creatures have a true respect
-To talk in deeds, while others saucily
-Promise more speed, but do it leisurely:
-Even so this pattern of the worn-out age
-Pawn'd honest looks, but laid no words to gage.
-
-His kindled duty kindled her mistrust,
-That two red fires in both their faces blazed;
-She thought he blush'd, as knowing Tarquin's lust,
-And, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed;
-Her earnest eye did make him more amazed:
-The more she saw the blood his cheeks replenish,
-The more she thought he spied in her some blemish.
-
-But long she thinks till he return again,
-And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone.
-The weary time she cannot entertain,
-For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, and groan:
-So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan,
-That she her plaints a little while doth stay,
-Pausing for means to mourn some newer way.
-
-At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece
-Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy:
-Before the which is drawn the power of Greece.
-For Helen's rape the city to destroy,
-Threatening cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy;
-Which the conceited painter drew so proud,
-As heaven, it seem'd, to kiss the turrets bow'd.
-
-A thousand lamentable objects there,
-In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:
-Many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear,
-Shed for the slaughter'd husband by the wife:
-The red blood reek'd, to show the painter's strife;
-And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights,
-Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.
-
-There might you see the labouring pioner
-Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust;
-And from the towers of Troy there would appear
-The very eyes of men through loop-holes thrust,
-Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust:
-Such sweet observance in this work was had,
-That one might see those far-off eyes look sad.
-
-In great commanders grace and majesty
-You might behold, triumphing in their faces;
-In youth, quick bearing and dexterity;
-Pale cowards, marching on with trembling paces;
-Which heartless peasants did so well resemble,
-That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble.
-
-In Ajax and Ulysses, O, what art
-Of physiognomy might one behold!
-The face of either cipher'd either's heart;
-Their face their manners most expressly told:
-In Ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigor roll'd;
-But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent
-Show'd deep regard and smiling government.
-
-There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand,
-As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight;
-Making such sober action with his hand,
-That it beguiled attention, charm'd the sight:
-In speech, it seem'd, his beard, all silver white,
-Wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly
-Thin winding breath, which purl'd up to the sky.
-
-About him were a press of gaping faces,
-Which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice;
-All jointly listening, but with several graces,
-As if some mermaid did their ears entice,
-Some high, some low, the painter was so nice;
-The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
-To jump up higher seem'd, to mock the mind.
-
-Here one man's hand lean'd on another's head,
-His nose being shadow'd by his neighbour's ear;
-Here one being throng'd bears back, all boll'n and
-red;
-Another smother'd seems to pelt and swear;
-And in their rage such signs of rage they bear,
-As, but for loss of Nestor's golden words,
-It seem'd they would debate with angry swords.
-
-For much imaginary work was there;
-Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
-That for Achilles' image stood his spear,
-Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind,
-Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:
-A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
-Stood for the whole to be imagined.
-
-And from the walls of strong-besieged Troy
-When their brave hope, bold Hector, march'd to
-field,
-Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy
-To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield;
-And to their hope they such odd action yield,
-That through their light joy seemed to appear,
-Like bright things stain'd, a kind of heavy fear.
-
-And from the strand of Dardan, where they fought,
-To Simois' reedy banks the red blood ran,
-Whose waves to imitate the battle sought
-With swelling ridges; and their ranks began
-To break upon the galled shore, and than
-Retire again, till, meeting greater ranks,
-They join and shoot their foam at Simois' banks.
-
-To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,
-To find a face where all distress is stell'd.
-Many she sees where cares have carved some,
-But none where all distress and dolour dwell'd,
-Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,
-Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes,
-Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.
-
-In her the painter had anatomized
-Time's ruin, beauty's wreck, and grim care's reign:
-Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised;
-Of what she was no semblance did remain:
-Her blue blood changed to black in every vein,
-Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,
-Show'd life imprison'd in a body dead.
-
-On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes,
-And shapes her sorrow to the beldam's woes,
-Who nothing wants to answer her but cries,
-And bitter words to ban her cruel foes:
-The painter was no god to lend her those;
-And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,
-To give her so much grief and not a tongue.
-
-'Poor instrument,' quoth she,'without a sound,
-I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue;
-And drop sweet balm in Priam's painted wound,
-And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong;
-And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long;
-And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes
-Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.
-
-'Show me the strumpet that began this stir,
-That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
-Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur
-This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear:
-Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here;
-And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,
-The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.
-
-'Why should the private pleasure of some one
-Become the public plague of many moe?
-Let sin, alone committed, light alone
-Upon his head that hath transgressed so;
-Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
-For one's offence why should so many fall,
-To plague a private sin in general?
-
-'Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
-Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds,
-Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
-And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,
-And one man's lust these many lives confounds:
-Had doting Priam cheque'd his son's desire,
-Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.'
-
-Here feelingly she weeps Troy's painted woes:
-For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,
-Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
-Then little strength rings out the doleful knell:
-So Lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell
-To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow;
-She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow.
-
-She throws her eyes about the painting round,
-And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament.
-At last she sees a wretched image bound,
-That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent:
-His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content;
-Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
-So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.
-
-In him the painter labour'd with his skill
-To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
-An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
-A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe;
-Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so
-That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
-Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.
-
-But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
-He entertain'd a show so seeming just,
-And therein so ensconced his secret evil,
-That jealousy itself could not mistrust
-False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust
-Into so bright a day such black-faced storms,
-Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.
-
-The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
-For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story
-The credulous old Priam after slew;
-Whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory
-Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,
-And little stars shot from their fixed places,
-When their glass fell wherein they view'd their faces.
-
-This picture she advisedly perused,
-And chid the painter for his wondrous skill,
-Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abused;
-So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill:
-And still on him she gazed; and gazing still,
-Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,
-That she concludes the picture was belied.
-
-'It cannot be,' quoth she,'that so much guile'--
-She would have said 'can lurk in such a look;'
-But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,
-And from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took:
-'It cannot be' she in that sense forsook,
-And turn'd it thus,' It cannot be, I find,
-But such a face should bear a wicked mind.
-
-'For even as subtle Sinon here is painted.
-So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
-As if with grief or travail he had fainted,
-To me came Tarquin armed; so beguiled
-With outward honesty, but yet defiled
-With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,
-So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.
-
-'Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
-To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds!
-Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise?
-For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds:
-His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds;
-Those round clear pearls of his, that move thy pity,
-Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.
-
-'Such devils steal effects from lightless hell;
-For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
-And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell;
-These contraries such unity do hold,
-Only to flatter fools and make them bold:
-So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter,
-That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.'
-
-Here, all enraged, such passion her assails,
-That patience is quite beaten from her breast.
-She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
-Comparing him to that unhappy guest
-Whose deed hath made herself herself detest:
-At last she smilingly with this gives o'er;
-'Fool, fool!' quoth she, 'his wounds will not be sore.'
-
-Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,
-And time doth weary time with her complaining.
-She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,
-And both she thinks too long with her remaining:
-Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining:
-Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps,
-And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.
-
-Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought,
-That she with painted images hath spent;
-Being from the feeling of her own grief brought
-By deep surmise of others' detriment;
-Losing her woes in shows of discontent.
-It easeth some, though none it ever cured,
-To think their dolour others have endured.
-
-But now the mindful messenger, come back,
-Brings home his lord and other company;
-Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black:
-And round about her tear-stained eye
-Blue circles stream'd; like rainbows in the sky:
-These water-galls in her dim element
-Foretell new storms to those already spent.
-
-Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
-Amazedly in her sad face he stares:
-Her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw,
-Her lively colour kill'd with deadly cares.
-He hath no power to ask her how she fares:
-Both stood, like old acquaintance in a trance,
-Met far from home, wondering each other's chance.
-
-At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,
-And thus begins: 'What uncouth ill event
-Hath thee befall'n, that thou dost trembling stand?
-Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent?
-Why art thou thus attired in discontent?
-Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,
-And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.'
-
-Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire,
-Ere once she can discharge one word of woe:
-At length address'd to answer his desire,
-She modestly prepares to let them know
-Her honour is ta'en prisoner by the foe;
-While Collatine and his consorted lords
-With sad attention long to hear her words.
-
-And now this pale swan in her watery nest
-Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending;
-'Few words,' quoth she, 'Shall fit the trespass best,
-Where no excuse can give the fault amending:
-In me moe woes than words are now depending;
-And my laments would be drawn out too long,
-To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.
-
-'Then be this all the task it hath to say
-Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed
-A stranger came, and on that pillow lay
-Where thou was wont to rest thy weary head;
-And what wrong else may be imagined
-By foul enforcement might be done to me,
-From that, alas, thy Lucrece is not free.
-
-'For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight,
-With shining falchion in my chamber came
-A creeping creature, with a flaming light,
-And softly cried 'Awake, thou Roman dame,
-And entertain my love; else lasting shame
-On thee and thine this night I will inflict,
-If thou my love's desire do contradict.
-
-' 'For some hard-favour'd groom of thine,' quoth he,
-'Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will,
-I'll murder straight, and then I'll slaughter thee
-And swear I found you where you did fulfil
-The loathsome act of lust, and so did kill
-The lechers in their deed: this act will be
-My fame and thy perpetual infamy.'
-
-'With this, I did begin to start and cry;
-And then against my heart he sets his sword,
-Swearing, unless I took all patiently,
-I should not live to speak another word;
-So should my shame still rest upon record,
-And never be forgot in mighty Rome
-Th' adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom.
-
-'Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,
-And far the weaker with so strong a fear:
-My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak;
-No rightful plea might plead for justice there:
-His scarlet lust came evidence to swear
-That my poor beauty had purloin'd his eyes;
-And when the judge is robb'd the prisoner dies.
-
-'O, teach me how to make mine own excuse!
-Or at the least this refuge let me find;
-Though my gross blood be stain'd with this abuse,
-Immaculate and spotless is my mind;
-That was not forced; that never was inclined
-To accessary yieldings, but still pure
-Doth in her poison'd closet yet endure.'
-
-Lo, here, the hopeless merchant of this loss,
-With head declined, and voice damm'd up with woe,
-With sad set eyes, and wretched arms across,
-From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow
-The grief away that stops his answer so:
-But, wretched as he is, he strives in vain;
-What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.
-
-As through an arch the violent roaring tide
-Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,
-Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride
-Back to the strait that forced him on so fast;
-In rage sent out, recall'd in rage, being past:
-Even so his sighs, his sorrows, make a saw,
-To push grief on, and back the same grief draw.
-
-Which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth,
-And his untimely frenzy thus awaketh:
-'Dear lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth
-Another power; no flood by raining slaketh.
-My woe too sensible thy passion maketh
-More feeling-painful: let it then suffice
-To drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes.
-
-'And for my sake, when I might charm thee so,
-For she that was thy Lucrece, now attend me:
-Be suddenly revenged on my foe,
-Thine, mine, his own: suppose thou dost defend me
-From what is past: the help that thou shalt lend me
-Comes all too late, yet let the traitor die;
-For sparing justice feeds iniquity.
-
-'But ere I name him, you fair lords,' quoth she,
-Speaking to those that came with Collatine,
-'Shall plight your honourable faiths to me,
-With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine;
-For 'tis a meritorious fair design
-To chase injustice with revengeful arms:
-Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies' harms.'
-
-At this request, with noble disposition
-Each present lord began to promise aid,
-As bound in knighthood to her imposition,
-Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray'd.
-But she, that yet her sad task hath not said,
-The protestation stops. 'O, speak, ' quoth she,
-'How may this forced stain be wiped from me?
-
-'What is the quality of mine offence,
-Being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance?
-May my pure mind with the foul act dispense,
-My low-declined honour to advance?
-May any terms acquit me from this chance?
-The poison'd fountain clears itself again;
-And why not I from this compelled stain?'
-
-With this, they all at once began to say,
-Her body's stain her mind untainted clears;
-While with a joyless smile she turns away
-The face, that map which deep impression bears
-Of hard misfortune, carved in it with tears.
-'No, no,' quoth she, 'no dame, hereafter living,
-By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving.'
-
-Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break,
-She throws forth Tarquin's name; 'He, he,' she says,
-But more than 'he' her poor tongue could not speak;
-Till after many accents and delays,
-Untimely breathings, sick and short assays,
-She utters this, 'He, he, fair lords, 'tis he,
-That guides this hand to give this wound to me.'
-
-Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast
-A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed:
-That blow did that it from the deep unrest
-Of that polluted prison where it breathed:
-Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeath'd
-Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly
-Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.
-
-Stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed,
-Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew;
-Till Lucrece' father, that beholds her bleed,
-Himself on her self-slaughter'd body threw;
-And from the purple fountain Brutus drew
-The murderous knife, and, as it left the place,
-Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase;
-
-And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide
-In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
-Circles her body in on every side,
-Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood
-Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
-Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd,
-And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd.
-
-About the mourning and congealed face
-Of that black blood a watery rigol goes,
-Which seems to weep upon the tainted place:
-And ever since, as pitying Lucrece' woes,
-Corrupted blood some watery token shows;
-And blood untainted still doth red abide,
-Blushing at that which is so putrified.
-
-'Daughter, dear daughter,' old Lucretius cries,
-'That life was mine which thou hast here deprived.
-If in the child the father's image lies,
-Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived?
-Thou wast not to this end from me derived.
-If children predecease progenitors,
-We are their offspring, and they none of ours.
-
-'Poor broken glass, I often did behold
-In thy sweet semblance my old age new born;
-But now that fresh fair mirror, dim and old,
-Shows me a bare-boned death by time out-worn:
-O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn,
-And shivered all the beauty of my glass,
-That I no more can see what once I was!
-
-'O time, cease thou thy course and last no longer,
-If they surcease to be that should survive.
-Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger
-And leave the faltering feeble souls alive?
-The old bees die, the young possess their hive:
-Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again and see
-Thy father die, and not thy father thee!
-
-By this, starts Collatine as from a dream,
-And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place;
-And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream
-He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face,
-And counterfeits to die with her a space;
-Till manly shame bids him possess his breath
-And live to be revenged on her death.
-
-The deep vexation of his inward soul
-Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue;
-Who, mad that sorrow should his use control,
-Or keep him from heart-easing words so long,
-Begins to talk; but through his lips do throng
-Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart's aid,
-That no man could distinguish what he said.
-
-Yet sometime 'Tarquin' was pronounced plain,
-But through his teeth, as if the name he tore.
-This windy tempest, till it blow up rain,
-Held back his sorrow's tide, to make it more;
-At last it rains, and busy winds give o'er:
-Then son and father weep with equal strife
-Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.
-
-The one doth call her his, the other his,
-Yet neither may possess the claim they lay.
-The father says 'She's mine.' 'O, mine she is,'
-Replies her husband: 'do not take away
-My sorrow's interest; let no mourner say
-He weeps for her, for she was only mine,
-And only must be wail'd by Collatine.'
-
-'O,' quoth Lucretius,' I did give that life
-Which she too early and too late hath spill'd.'
-'Woe, woe,' quoth Collatine, 'she was my wife,
-I owed her, and 'tis mine that she hath kill'd.'
-'My daughter' and 'my wife' with clamours fill'd
-The dispersed air, who, holding Lucrece' life,
-Answer'd their cries, 'my daughter' and 'my wife.'
-
-Brutus, who pluck'd the knife from Lucrece' side,
-Seeing such emulation in their woe,
-Began to clothe his wit in state and pride,
-Burying in Lucrece' wound his folly's show.
-He with the Romans was esteemed so
-As silly-jeering idiots are with kings,
-For sportive words and uttering foolish things:
-
-But now he throws that shallow habit by,
-Wherein deep policy did him disguise;
-And arm'd his long-hid wits advisedly,
-To cheque the tears in Collatinus' eyes.
-'Thou wronged lord of Rome,' quoth be, 'arise:
-Let my unsounded self, supposed a fool,
-Now set thy long-experienced wit to school.
-
-'Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe?
-Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?
-Is it revenge to give thyself a blow
-For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds?
-Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds:
-Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so,
-To slay herself, that should have slain her foe.
-
-'Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart
-In such relenting dew of lamentations;
-But kneel with me and help to bear thy part,
-To rouse our Roman gods with invocations,
-That they will suffer these abominations,
-Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced,
-By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased.
-
-'Now, by the Capitol that we adore,
-And by this chaste blood so unjustly stain'd,
-By heaven's fair sun that breeds the fat earth's
-store,
-By all our country rights in Rome maintain'd,
-And by chaste Lucrece' soul that late complain'd
-Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,
-We will revenge the death of this true wife.'
-
-This said, he struck his hand upon his breast,
-And kiss'd the fatal knife, to end his vow;
-And to his protestation urged the rest,
-Who, wondering at him, did his words allow:
-Then jointly to the ground their knees they bow;
-And that deep vow, which Brutus made before,
-He doth again repeat, and that they swore.
-
-When they had sworn to this advised doom,
-They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence;
-To show her bleeding body thorough Rome,
-And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence:
-Which being done with speedy diligence,
-The Romans plausibly did give consent
-To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.
-
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