"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 ? 66 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, "No, no," quoth she, "no dame, hereafter living, 66 "By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving." Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, She throws forth Tarquin's name : "He, he," she says, But more than he her poor tongue could not speak; Till after many accents and delays, Untimely breathings, sick and short assays, She utters this: "He, he, fair lords, 'tis he, "That guides this hand to give this wound to me." Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast Of that polluted prison where it breath'd: Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny. Stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed, The murderous knife, and as it left the place, And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide 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 55 vastly] i. e. like a waste. 56 rigol] i. e. circle. And blood untained still doth red abide, "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. "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 newborn; "But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old, "Shows me a barebon'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, "If they surcease to be, that should survive. "Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger, "And leave the faltering feeble souls alive? "The old bees die, the young possess their hive: "Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again, and see "Thy father die, and not thy father thee!" By this starts Collatine as from a dream, And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream The deep vexation of his inward soul That no man could distinguish what he said. Yet sometime Tarquin was pronounced plain, Then son and father weep with equal strife, The one doth call her his, the other his, Yet neither may possess the claim they lay. The father says, "She's mine." "O, mine she is," Replies her husband: "do not take away "My sorrow's interest; let no mourner say "He weeps for her, for she was only mine, "And only must be wail'd by Collatine." "O," quoth Lucretius, "I did give that life, The dispers'd air, who, holding Lucrece' life, Brutus, who pluck'd the knife from Lucrece' side, Began to clothe his wit in state and pride, As silly jeering idiots are with kings, For sportive words, and uttering foolish things. But now he throws that shallow habit by, 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. "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? 57 late] i. e. recently. |