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 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;
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, 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 Each present lord began to promise aid,
And then against my heart he sets his sword, 1640 As bound in knighthood to her imposition, 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 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, 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, 1660 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 again.
Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray'd. But she, that yet her sad task hath not said, 1699 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; 1710 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, 1720 She utters this, 'He, he, fair lords, 'tis he, That guides this hand to give this wound to me.'
up Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed: That blow did bail it from the deep unrest Of that polluted prison where it breathed: Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed Her winged sprite, and through her wounds
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; 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: '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,
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, 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.
'Daughter, dear daughter,' old Lucretius cries, "That life was mine which thou hast here de- prived.
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 pre-decease 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-boned 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, 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!' 1771
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; 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. 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.
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; 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, supposed a fool, Now set thy long-experienced wit to school.
'Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? 1821 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 pro-ceeds:
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, 1831 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:
The father says 'She's mine.' 'O, mine she is,' To show her bleeding body thorough Rome, 1851
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.'
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.
FROM fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, If thou couldst answer "This fair child of mine Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,' Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime: So thou through windows of thine age shalt see Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thyself alone, Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive. Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee, Which, used, lives th' executor to be.
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, Will play the tyrants to the very same And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there: Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where: Then, were not summer's distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distill'd, though they with winter
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet,
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd: Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd. That use is not forbidden usury
Which happies those that pay the willing loan; That's for thyself to breed another thee, Or ten times happier, be it ten for one; Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, If ten of thine ten times refigured thee: Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart, Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir..
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty; And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle age, Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car, Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day, The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are From his low tract and look another way: So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon, Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,
Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, Strikes each in each by mutual ordering, Resembling sire and child and happy mother Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.'
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye That thou consumest thyself in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow and still weep That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow well may keep By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind. Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murderous shame com- mits.
For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any, Who for thyself art so unprovident. Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, But that thou none lovest is most evident; For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire, Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate Which to repair should be thy chief desire. O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love? Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: Make thee another self, for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest In one of thine, from that which thou departest; And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth con
Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase; Without this, folly, age and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease And threescore year would make the world away. Let those whom Nature hath not made for store, Harsh featureless and rude, barrenly perish: Look, whom she best endow'd she gave the more; Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded Borne on the bier with white up in sheaves bristly beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give. So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no determination; then you were Yourself again after yourself's decease, When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, Which husbandry in honour might uphold Against the stormy gusts of winter's day And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know You had a father: let your son say so.
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck; And yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, Or say with princes if it shall go well, By oft predict that I in heaven find: But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, And, constant stars, in them I read such art As truth and beauty shall together thrive, If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert; Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
When I consider every thing that Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check'd even by the self-same sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory; Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, To change your day of youth to sullied night; And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time? And fortify yourself in your decay With means more blessed than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers, Much liker than your painted counterfeit : So should the lines of life that life repair, Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen, Neither in inward worth nor outward fair, Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. To give away yourself keeps yourself still, And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill'd with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' So should my papers yellow'd with their age Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
So is it not with me as with that Muse Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse; Making a couplement of proud compare, With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. O, let me, true in love, but truly write, And then believe me, my love is as fair As any mother's child, though not so bright As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well; I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate.
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