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, | 5 |
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 | 10 |
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, | 15 |
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, | 20 |
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 splendour of the sun; | 25 |
An expir’d 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; | 30 |
What needeth then apology 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? | 35 |
|
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 | 40 |
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, | 45 |
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 arriv’d, | 50 |
Well was he welcom’d by the Roman dame, | |
Within whose face beauty and virtue striv’d | |
Which of them both should underprop her fame: | |
When virtue bragg’d, beauty would blush for shame; | |
When beauty boasted blushes, in despite | 55 |
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 | 60 |
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, | |
Argu’d by beauty’s red and virtue’s white: | 65 |
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. | 70 |
|
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 | 75 |
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 prais’d her so— | |
In that high task hath done her beauty wrong, | 80 |
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, | 85 |
Little suspecteth the false worshipper; | |
For unstain’d thoughts do seldom dream on evil, | |
Birds never lim’d no secret bushes fear: | |
So guiltless she securely gives good cheer | |
And reverend welcome to her princely guest, | 90 |
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 sometime too much wonder of his eye, | 95 |
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 cop’d with stranger eyes, | |
Could pick no meaning from their parling looks, | 100 |
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. | 105 |
|
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: | 110 |
Her joy with heav’d-up hand she doth express, | |
And, wordless, so greets heaven for his success. | |
|
Far from the purpose of his coming thither, | |
He makes excuses for his being there: | |
No cloudy show of stormy blustering weather | 115 |
Doth yet in this 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, | 120 |
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, | 125 |
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: | 130 |
Despair to gain doth traffic oft for gaining; | |
And when great treasure is the meed propos’d, | |
Though death be adjunct, there ’s no death suppos’d. | |
|
Those that much covet are with gain so fond, | |
For what they have not, that which they possess | 135 |
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. | 140 |
|
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 battles’ rage; | 145 |
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, | 150 |
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, | 155 |
Pawning his honour to obtain his lust, | |
And for himself himself he 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 | 160 |
To slanderous tongues and wretched hateful days? | |
|
Now stole upon the time the dead of night, | |
When heavy sleep had clos’d up mortal eyes; | |
No comfortable star did lend his light, | |
No noise but owls’ and wolves’ death-boding cries; | 165 |
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; | 170 |
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. | 175 |
|
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: | 180 |
‘As from this cold flint I enforc’d 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 | 185 |
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 | 190 |
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 | 195 |
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! | 200 |
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; | 205 |
Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive, | |
To cipher me how fondly I did dote; | |
That my posterity sham’d with the note, | |
Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin | |
To wish that I their father had not been. | 210 |
|
‘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? | 215 |
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? | 220 |
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, | 225 |
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, | 230 |
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, | 235 |
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: | 240 |
I ’ll beg her love; but she is not her 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.’ | 245 |
|
Thus, graceless, holds he disputation | |
’Tween frozen conscience and hot-burning will, | |
And with good thoughts makes dispensation, | |
Urging the worser sense for vantage still; | |
Which in a moment doth confound and kill | 250 |
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 gaz’d for tidings in my eager eyes, | |
Fearing some hard news from the war-like band | 255 |
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, | 260 |
Forc’d 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, | 265 |
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: | 270 |
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! | 275 |
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?’ | 280 |
|
As corn o’ergrown by weeds, so heedful fear | |
Is almost chok’d 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, | 285 |
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; | 290 |
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, | 295 |
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, | 300 |
The Roman lord marcheth to Lucrece’ bed. | |
|
The locks between her chamber and his will, | |
Each one by him enforc’d, retires his ward; | |
But as they open they all rate his ill, | |
Which drives the creeping thief to some regard: | 305 |
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 | 310 |
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: | 315 |
|
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 neeld his finger pricks; | |
As who should say, ‘This glove to wanton tricks | 320 |
Is not inur’d; return again in haste; | |
Thou seest 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, | 325 |
He takes for accidental things of trial; | |
Or as those bars which stop the hourly dial, | |
Who with a ling’ring stay his course doth let, | |
Till every minute pays the hour his debt. | |
|
‘So, so,’ quoth he, ‘these lets attend the time, | 330 |
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, | 335 |
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 he sought. | 340 |
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 the eternal power | 345 |
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? | 350 |
|
‘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. | 355 |
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: | 360 |
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, | 365 |
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 watchword to his hand full soon, | 370 |
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: | 375 |
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; | 380 |
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. | 385 |
|
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: | 390 |
Where, like a virtuous monument she lies, | |
To be admir’d 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, | 395 |
With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night. | |
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d 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; | 400 |
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, | 405 |
But that life liv’d 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. | 410 |
These worlds in Tarquin new ambition bred; | |
Who, like a foul usurper, 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 desir’d? | 415 |
What he beheld, on that he firmly doted, | |
And in his will his wilful eye he tir’d. | |
With more than admiration he admir’d | |
Her azure veins, her alabaster skin, | |
Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin. | 420 |
|
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, | 425 |
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, | 430 |
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, | 435 |
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, | 440 |
Left their 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: | 445 |
She, much amaz’d, 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, | 450 |
That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite, | |
Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking; | |
What terror ’tis! but she, in worser taking, | |
From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view | |
The sight which makes supposed terror true. | 455 |
|
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; | 460 |
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 | 465 |
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 | 470 |
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 demeanour seeks to show; | |
But she with vehement prayers urgeth still | 475 |
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; | 480 |
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 ensnar’d thee to this night, | 485 |
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. | 490 |
|
‘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; | 495 |
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, | 500 |
Or stop the headlong fury of his speed. | |
I know repentant tears ensue the deed, | |
Reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity; | |
Yet strike I to embrace mine infamy.’ | |
|
This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade, | 505 |
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 | 510 |
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, | 515 |
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; | 520 |
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 rimes, | |
And sung by children in succeeding times. | 525 |
|
‘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 | 530 |
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, | 535 |
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 | 540 |
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, | 545 |
Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite. | |
|
But when a black-fac’d 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 biding, | 550 |
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-working cat, he doth but dally, | |
While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth: | 555 |
Her sad behaviour 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. | 560 |
|
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; | 565 |
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, | 570 |
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 | 575 |
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 | 580 |
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’dst not like deceit, do not deceive me. | 585 |
My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee; | |
If ever man were mov’d with woman’s moans, | |
Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans. | |
|
‘All which together, like a troubled ocean, | |
Beat at thy rocky and wrack-threatening heart, | 590 |
To soften it with their continual motion; | |
For stones dissolv’d 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. | 595 |
|
‘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, | 600 |
Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king; | |
For kings like gods should govern every thing. | |
|
‘How will thy shame be seeded in thine age, | |
When thus thy vices bud before thy spring! | |
If in thy hope thou dar’st do such outrage, | 605 |
What dar’st thou not when once thou art a king? | |
O! be remembered no outrageous thing | |
From vassal actors can be wip’d away; | |
Then kings’ misdeeds cannot be hid in clay. | |
|
‘This deed will make thee only lov’d for fear; | 610 |
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, | 615 |
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, | 620 |
To privilege dishonour in thy name? | |
Thou back’st reproach against long-living laud, | |
And mak’st fair reputation but a bawd. | |
|
‘Hast thou command? by him that gave it thee, | |
From a pure heart command thy rebel will: | 625 |
Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity, | |
For it was lent thee all that brood to kill. | |
Thy princely office how canst thou fulfill, | |
When, pattern’d by thy fault, foul sin may say, | |
He learn’d to sin, and thou didst teach the way? | 630 |
|
‘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. | 635 |
O! how are they wrapp’d in with infamies | |
That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes. | |
|
‘To thee, to thee, my heav’d-up hands appeal, | |
Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier: | |
I sue for exil’d majesty’s repeal; | 640 |
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 | 645 |
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 | 650 |
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. | 655 |
If all these petty ills shall change thy good, | |
Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hears’d, | |
And not the puddle in thy sea dispers’d. | |
|
‘So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave; | |
Thou nobly base, they basely dignified; | 660 |
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. | 665 |
|
‘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 | 670 |
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, | 675 |
When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize. | |
The wolf hath seiz’d 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 | 680 |
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, | 685 |
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; | 690 |
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, | 695 |
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 liv’d by foul devouring. | 700 |
|
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 | 705 |
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, | 710 |
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, | 715 |
Who this accomplishment so hotly chas’d; | |
For now against himself he sounds this doom, | |
That through the length of times he stands disgrac’d; | |
Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defac’d; | |
To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, | 720 |
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 | 725 |
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; | 730 |
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. | 735 |
|
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, sweating with guilty fear, | 740 |
She stays, exclaiming on the direful night; | |
He runs, and chides his vanish’d, loath’d delight. | |
|
He thence departs a heavy convertite, | |
She there remains a hopeless castaway; | |
He in his speed looks for the morning light, | 745 |
She prays she never may behold the day; | |
‘For day,’ quoth she, ‘night’s ’scapes doth open lay, | |
And my true eyes have never practis’d how | |
To cloak offences with a cunning brow. | |
|
‘They think not but that every eye can see | 750 |
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, | 755 |
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 | 760 |
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! | 765 |
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-tongu’d treason and the ravisher! | 770 |
|
‘O hateful, vaporous, and foggy Night! | |
Since thou art guilty of my curseless 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 | 775 |
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 exhal’d unwholesome breaths make sick | |
The life of purity, the supreme fair, | 780 |
Ere he arrive his weary noontide 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, | 785 |
The silver-shining queen he would distain; | |
Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defil’d, | |
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, | 790 |
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, | 795 |
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 | 800 |
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. | 805 |
|
‘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 | 810 |
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, | 815 |
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, | 820 |
For Collatine’s dear love be kept unspotted: | |
If that be made a theme for disputation, | |
The branches of another root are rotted, | |
And undeserv’d reproach to him allotted | |
That is as clear from this attaint of mine, | 825 |
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, | 830 |
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. | 835 |
My honey 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. | 840 |
|
‘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, | 845 |
And talk’d of virtue: O! unlook’d-for evil, | |
When virtue is profan’d 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? | 850 |
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 | 855 |
Is plagu’d 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 | 860 |
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, | 865 |
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; | 870 |
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. | 875 |
|
‘O Opportunity! thy guilt is great, | |
’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason; | |
Thou sett’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; | 880 |
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, | |
Sits Sin to seize the souls that wander by him. | |
|
‘Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath; | |
Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thaw’d; | |
Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth; | 885 |
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, | 890 |
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, | 895 |
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? | 900 |
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; | 905 |
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. | 910 |
|
‘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. | 915 |
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, | 920 |
Guilty of incest, that abomination; | |
An accessory 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, | 925 |
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 murderest all that are; | |
O! hear me, then, injurious, shifting Time, | 930 |
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime. | |
|
‘Why hath thy servant, Opportunity, | |
Betray’d the hours thou gav’st me to repose? | |
Cancell’d my fortunes, and enchained me | |
To endless date of never-ending woes? | 935 |
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, | 940 |
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; | 945 |
|
‘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, | 950 |
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, | 955 |
To tame the unicorn and lion wild, | |
To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil’d, | |
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops, | |
And waste huge stones with little water-drops. | |
|
‘Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, | 960 |
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, | 965 |
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: | 970 |
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; | 975 |
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. | 980 |
|
‘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, | 985 |
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 | 990 |
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 the abusing of his time. | |
|
‘O Time! thou tutor both to good and bad, | 995 |
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 | 1000 |
As slanderous deathsman 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; | 1005 |
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 unperceiv’d fly with the filth away; | 1010 |
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 gaz’d upon with every eye. | 1015 |
|
‘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: | 1020 |
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, | 1025 |
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? | 1030 |
Honour thyself to rid me of this shame; | |
For if I die, my honour lives in thee, | |
But if I live, thou liv’st in my defame; | |
Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame, | |
And wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe, | 1035 |
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 slaughter-house no tool imparteth | |
To make more vent for passage of her breath; | 1040 |
Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth | |
As smoke from Ætna, 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: | 1045 |
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. | 1050 |
|
‘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. | 1055 |
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, | 1060 |
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, | 1065 |
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, | 1070 |
Till life to death acquit my forc’d 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; | 1075 |
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-tun’d warble of her nightly sorrow, | 1080 |
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. | 1085 |
|
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: | 1090 |
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light, | |
For day hath nought to do what ’s done by night.’ | |
|
Thus cavils she with everything she sees: | |
True grief is fond and testy as a child, | |
Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees: | 1095 |
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild; | |
Continuance tames the one; the other wild, | |
Like an unpractis’d swimmer plunging still, | |
With too much labour drowns for want of skill. | |
|
So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care, | 1100 |
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; | 1105 |
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; | 1110 |
Grief best is pleas’d with grief’s society: | |
True sorrow then is feelingly suffic’d | |
When with like semblance it is sympathiz’d. | |
|
’Tis double death to drown in ken of shore; | |
He ten times pines that pines beholding food; | 1115 |
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. | 1120 |
|
‘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: | 1125 |
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, | 1130 |
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 | 1135 |
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, | 1140 |
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, | 1145 |
We will 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, | 1150 |
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 sham’d, and death reproach’s debtor. | 1155 |
|
‘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, | 1160 |
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, | 1165 |
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, | 1170 |
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 | 1175 |
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. | 1180 |
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. | |
|
‘Mine honour I ’ll bequeath unto the knife | |
That wounds my body so dishonoured. | 1185 |
’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. | 1190 |
|
‘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 reveng’d mayst be. | |
How Tarquin must be us’d, read it in me: | 1195 |
Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe, | |
And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so. | |
|
‘This brief abridgment of my will I make: | |
My soul and body to the skies and ground; | |
My resolution, husband, do thou take; | 1200 |
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; | 1205 |
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: | 1210 |
Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.’ | |
|
This plot of death when sadly she had laid, | |
And wip’d the brinish pearl from her bright eyes, | |
With untun’d tongue she hoarsely call’d her maid, | |
Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies; | 1215 |
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, | 1220 |
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. | 1225 |
|
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, enforc’d by sympathy | |
Of those fair suns set in her mistress’ sky, | 1230 |
Who in a salt-wav’d 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 | 1235 |
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, | 1240 |
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 | 1245 |
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: | 1250 |
Through crystal walls each little mote will peep: | |
Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, | |
Poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books. | |
|
No man inveigh against the wither’d flower, | |
But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill’d: | 1255 |
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. | 1260 |
|
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, | 1265 |
The 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 | 1270 |
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 | 1275 |
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, | 1280 |
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; | 1285 |
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. | 1290 |
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.’ | 1295 |
|
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: | 1300 |
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, | 1305 |
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 tenour of her woe, | 1310 |
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, | 1315 |
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 | 1320 |
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 the eye interprets to the ear | 1325 |
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. | 1330 |
|
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-fac’d groom to hie as fast | |
As lagging fowls before the northern blast. | 1335 |
Speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems: | |
Extremely still urgeth such extremes. | |
|
The homely villein curtsies to her low; | |
And, blushing on her, with a steadfast eye | |
Receives the scroll without or yea or no, | 1340 |
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 see her shame: | |
|
When, silly groom! God wot, it was defect | 1345 |
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 | 1350 |
Pawn’d honest looks, but laid no words to gage. | |
|
His kindled duty kindled her mistrust, | |
That two red fires in both their faces blaz’d; | |
She thought he blush’d, as knowing Tarquin’s lust, | |
And, blushing with him, wistly on him gaz’d; | 1355 |
Her earnest eye did make him more amaz’d: | |
The more 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. | 1360 |
The weary time she cannot entertain, | |
For now ’tis stale to sigh, to weep, to 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. | 1365 |
|
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, | |
Threat’ning cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy; | 1370 |
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, | 1375 |
Shed for the slaughter’d husband by the wife: | |
The red blood reek’d, to show the painter’s strife; | |
The dying eyes gleam’d forth their ashy lights, | |
Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. | |
|
There might you see the labouring pioner, | 1380 |
Begrim’d 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, | 1385 |
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; | |
And here and there the painter interlaces | 1390 |
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; | 1395 |
The face of either cipher’d either’s heart; | |
Their face their manners most expressly told: | |
In Ajax’ eyes blunt rage and rigour roll’d; | |
But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent | |
Show’d deep regard and smiling government. | 1400 |
|
There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand, | |
As ’twere encouraging the Greeks to fight; | |
Making such sober action with his hand, | |
That it beguil’d attention, charm’d the sight. | |
In speech, it seem’d, his beard, all silver white, | 1405 |
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, | 1410 |
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, | 1415 |
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, | 1420 |
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, | |
Grip’d in an armed hand; himself behind, | 1425 |
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, | 1430 |
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. | 1435 |
|
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 | 1440 |
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, | 1445 |
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 anatomiz’d | 1450 |
Time’s ruin, beauty’s wrack, and grim care’s reign: | |
Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguis’d; | |
Of what she was no semblance did remain; | |
Her blue blood chang’d to black in every vein, | |
Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed, | 1455 |
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: | 1460 |
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, | 1465 |
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. | 1470 |
|
‘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; | 1475 |
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 | 1480 |
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, | 1485 |
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 check’d his son’s desire, | 1490 |
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: | 1495 |
So Lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell | |
To pencil’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: | 1500 |
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. | 1505 |
|
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 | 1510 |
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 ensconc’d his secret evil, | 1515 |
That jealousy itself could not mistrust | |
False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust | |
Into so bright a day such black-fac’d storms, | |
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms. | |
|
The well-skill’d workman this mild image drew | 1520 |
For perjur’d 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, | 1525 |
When their glass fell wherein they view’d their faces. | |
|
This picture she advisedly perus’d, | |
And chid the painter for his wondrous skill, | |
Saying, some shape in Sinon’s was abus’d; | |
So fair a form lodg’d not a mind so ill: | 1530 |
And still on him she gaz’d, 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;’ | 1535 |
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: | 1540 |
|
‘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 beguil’d | |
With outward honesty, but yet defil’d | 1545 |
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? | 1550 |
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; | 1555 |
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, | 1560 |
That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.’ | |
|
Here, all enrag’d, 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 | 1565 |
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. | 1570 |
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. | 1575 |
|
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. | 1580 |
It easeth some, though none it ever cur’d, | |
To think their dolour others have endur’d. | |
|
But now the mindful messenger, come back, | |
Brings home his lord and other company; | |
Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black; | 1585 |
And round about her tear-distained 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, | 1590 |
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, | 1595 |
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? | 1600 |
Why art thou thus attir’d 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: | 1605 |
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. | 1610 |
|
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; | 1615 |
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 | 1620 |
Where thou wast 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, | 1625 |
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, | 1630 |
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 | 1635 |
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, | 1640 |
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 | |
The adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom. | 1645 |
|
‘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 | 1650 |
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, | 1655 |
Immaculate and spotless is my mind; | |
That was not forc’d; that never was inclin’d | |
To accessary yieldings, but still pure | |
Doth in her poison’d closet yet endure.’ | |
|
Lo! here the hopeless merchant of this loss, | 1660 |
With head declin’d, 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; | 1665 |
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 forc’d him on so fast; | 1670 |
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: | 1675 |
‘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. | 1680 |
|
‘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 | 1685 |
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, | 1690 |
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 | 1695 |
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, | 1700 |
‘How may this forced stain be wip’d 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? | 1705 |
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; | 1710 |
While with a joyless smile she turns away | |
The face, that map which deep impression bears | |
Of hard misfortune, carv’d in it with tears. | |
‘No, no,’ quoth she, ‘no dame, hereafter living, | |
By my excuse shall claim excus’s giving.’ | 1715 |
|
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, | 1720 |
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 unsheath’d: | |
That blow did bail it from the deep unrest | 1725 |
Of that polluted prison where it breath’d; | |
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, | 1730 |
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, | 1735 |
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, | 1740 |
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, | 1745 |
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. | 1750 |
|
‘Daughter, dear daughter!’ old Lucretius cries, | |
‘That life was mine which thou hast here depriv’d | |
If in the child the father’s image lies, | |
Where shall I live now Lucrece is unliv’d? | |
Thou wast not to this end from me deriv’d. | 1755 |
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 fair fresh mirror, dim and old, | 1760 |
Shows me a bare-bon’d death by time outworn. | |
O! from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn, | |
And shiver’d 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, | 1765 |
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 | 1770 |
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, | 1775 |
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 serv’d a dumb arrest upon his tongue; | 1780 |
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. | 1785 |
|
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: | 1790 |
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,’ | 1795 |
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 | 1800 |
Which she too early and too late hath spill’d.’ | |
‘Woe, woe,’ quoth Collatine, ‘she was my wife, | |
I ow’d her, and ’tis mine that she hath kill’d.’ | |
‘My daughter’ and ‘my wife’ with clamours fill’d | |
The dispers’d air, who, holding Lucrece’ life, | 1805 |
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. | 1810 |
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; | 1815 |
And arm’d his long-hid wits advisedly, | |
To check the tears in Collatinus’ eyes. | |
‘Thou wronged lord of Rome,’ quoth he, ‘arise: | |
Let my unsounded self, suppos’d a fool, | |
Now set thy long-experienc’d wit to school. | 1820 |
|
‘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: | 1825 |
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, | 1830 |
To rouse our Roman gods with invocations, | |
That they will suffer these abominations, | |
Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgrac’d, | |
By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chas’d. | |
|
‘Now, by the Capitol that we adore, | 1835 |
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, | 1840 |
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 urg’d the rest, | |
Who, wondering at him, did his words allow: | 1845 |
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; | 1850 |
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. | 1855 |