What could he see but mightily he noted?
What did he note but strongly he desired?
What he beheld on that he firmly doted,
And in his will his wilful eye he tired.1
With more than admiration he admired
Her azure veins, her alabaster skin,
Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin.
As the grim lion fawneth o'er his prey,
Sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied,
So o'er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay,
His rage of lust by gazing qualified;
Slacked, not suppressed; for standing by her side,
His eye, which late this mutiny restrains,
Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins :
And they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting,
Obdurate vassals, fell exploits effecting,
In bloody death and ravishment delighting,
Nor children's tears, nor mother's groans respecting,
Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting:
Anon his beating heart, alarum striking,
Gives the hot charge, and bids them do their liking.
His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye,
His eye commends the leading to his hand;
His hand, as proud of such a dignity,
Smoking with pride, marched on to make his stand
On her bare breast, the heart of all her land;
Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale. Left their round turrets destitute and pale.
1 Tired, satiated, glutted
as a falcon tires on his prey.
They, mustering to the quiet cabinet
Where their dear governess and lady lies,
Do tell her she is dreadfully beset,
And fright her with confusion of their cries:
She, much amazed, breaks ope her locked-up eyes, Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold,
Are by his flaming torch dimmed and controlled.
Imagine her as one in dead of night
From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking,
That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite,
Whose grim aspéct sets every joint a shaking;
What terror 'tis! but she, in worser taking,
From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view
The sight which makes supposéd terror true.
Wrapped and confounded in a thousand fears,
Like to a new-killed bird she trembling lies;
She dares not look; yet, winking, there appears
Quick-shifting antics, ugly in her eyes:
Such shadows are the weak brain's forgeries:
Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights,
In darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights
His hand, that yet remains upon her breast,
(Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall!)
May feel her heart, poor citizen, distressed,
Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall,
Beating her bulk,' that his hand shakes withal.
1 Bulk, the body, the whole mass. Johnson, however, defines the word as the breast, or largest part of a man; deriving it from the Dutch bulcke. A passage in Hamlet employs the word in the same way as in the text before us:
"He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk."
This moves in him more rage, and lesser pity,
To make the breach, and enter this sweet city.
First, like a trumpet, doth his tongue begin
To sound a parley to his heartless foe,
Who o'er the white sheet peers her whiter chin,
The reason of this rash alarm to know,
Which he by dumb demeanor seeks to show;
But she with vehement prayers urgeth still
Under what color he commits this ill.
Thus he replies: "The color in thy face.
(That even for anger makes the lily pale,
And the red rose blush at her own disgrace)
Shall plead for me, and tell my loving tale :
Under that color am I come to scale
Thy never-conquered fort; the fault is thine,
For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine.
"Thus I forestall thee, if thou mean to chide:
Thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night,
Where thou with patience must my will abide,
My will that marks thee for my earth's delight,
Which I to conquer sought with all my might;
But as reproof and reason beat it dead,
By thy bright beauty was it newly bred.
"I see what crosses my attempt will bring;
I know what thorns the growing rose defends:
I think the honey guarded with a sting:
All this, beforehand, counsel comprehends:
But will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends;
Turbervile, who preceded Shakspeare about twenty years, has this line :
"My liver leapt within my bulk."
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,
stop the headlong fury of his speed.
I know repentant tears ensue the deed,
Reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity;
Yet strive I to embrace mine infamy."
This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade,
Which, like a falcon towering in the skies,
Coucheth the fowl below with his wing's shade,
Whose crooked beak threats, if he mount he dies :
So under his insulting falchion lies
Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells.
"Lucrece," quoth he, "this night I must enjoy thee
If thou deny, then force must work my way,
For in thy bed I purpose to destroy thee;
That done, some worthless slave of thine I'll slay,
To kill thine honor with thy life's decay;
And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him,
Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him.
"So thy surviving husband shall remain
The scornful mark of every open eye;
Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain,
1 Coucheth, causes to couch.
2 We have the same image in Henry VI. Part III. :
"Not he that loves him best
Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells"
Thy issue blurred with nameless bastardy.
And thou, the author of their obloquy,
Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes,
And sung by children in succeeding times.
"But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend :
The fault unknown is as a thought unacted;
A little harm, done to a great good end,
For lawful policy remains enacted.
The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted
In a pure compound; being so applied,
His venom in effect is purified.
"Then for thy husband and thy children's sake,
Tender1 my suit: bequeath not to their lot
The shame that from them no device can take,
The blemish that will never be forgot;
Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour's blot : 2
For marks descried in men's nativity
Are nature's faults, not their own infamy."
Here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause;
While she, the picture of pure piety,
Like a white hind under the grype's sharp claws,
Pleads in a wilderness, where are no laws,
2 Birth-hour's blot, corpcral blemish. So in A Midsummer Night's Dream:
"And the blots of nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious."
3 Steevens says the grype is properly the griffin. But in the passage before us, as in the early English writers, the word is applied to birds of prey, the eagle especially.
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