187.
At last she thus begins: "Thou worthy lord
Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee,
Health to thy person! next vouchsafe to afford
(If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see)
Some present speed to come and visit me.

So, I commend me from our house in grief:
My woes are tedious, though my words are brief."
188.

Here folds she up the tenor of her woe,
Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly.
By this short schedule Collatine may know
Her grief, but not her grief's true quality:
She dares not thereof make discovery,

Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse,

Ere she with blood had stain'd her stain'd excuse. 189.

Besides, the life and feeling of her passion

She hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her:
When sighs, and groans, and tears may grace the fashion
Of her disgrace, the better so to clear her
From that suspicion which the world might bear her.
To shun this blot, she would not blot the letter
With words, till action might become them better.
190.

To see sad sights moves more than hear them told;
For then the eye interprets to the ear
The heavy motion that it doth behold,
When every part a part of woe doth bear.
'Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear:

Deep floods make lesser noise than shallow fords,
And sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.
191.

Her letter now is seal'd, and on it writ,
"At Ardea to my lord with more than haste'
The post attends, and she delivers it,
Charging the sour-faced groom to hie as fast
As lagging fowls before the northern blast.

Speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems:
Extremity still urgeth such extremes.

192.

The homely villain court'sies to her low;
And, blushing on her, with a steadfast eye
Receives the scroll, without or yea or no,
And forth with bashful innocence doth hie.
But they whose guilt within their bosoms lie
Imagine every eye beholds their blame;

For Lucrece thought he blush'd to see her shame: 193.

When, silly groom! God wot, it was defect
Of spirit, life, and bold audacity.
Such harmless creatures have a true respect
To talk in deeds, while others saucily
Promise more speed, but do it leisurely:

Even so, this pattern of the worn-out age
Pawn'd honest looks, but laid no words to gage.
194.

His kindled duty kindled her mistrust,
That two red fires in both their faces blazed;
She thought he blush'd, as knowing Tarquin's lust,
And, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed;
Her earnest eye did make him more amazed:

The more she saw the blood his cheeks replenish, The more she thought he spied in her some blemish. 195.

But long she thinks till he return again,
And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone.
The weary time she cannot entertain,
For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, and groan:
So woe hath wearied woe, moan tirèd moan,
That she her plaints a little while doth stay,
Pausing for means to moan some newer way.
196.

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;

Which the conceited painter drew so proud,
As heaven, it seem'd, to kiss the turrets bow'd.
197.

A thousand lamentable objects there,
In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:
Many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear,
Shed for the slaughter'd husband by the wife:
The red blood reek'd, to shew the painter's strife;
And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights,
Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.

198.

There might you see the labouring pioneer Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust; And from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men through loopholes thrust, Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust:

Such sweet observance in this work was had, That one might see those far-off eyes look sad. 199.

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

Pale cowards, marching on with trembling paces;
Which heartless peasants did so well resemble,
That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble
200

In Ajax and Ulysses, O, what art

Of physiognomy might one behold!

The face of either 'cipher'd either's heart;
Their face their manners most expressly told:
In Ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigour roll'd;
But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent,
Shew'd deep regard and smiling government.
201.

There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand,
As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight;
Making such sober action with his hand,
That it beguiled attention, charm'd the sight:
In speech, it seem'd, his beard, all silver white,
Wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly
Thin winding breath, which purl'd up to the sky.

202.

About him were a press of gaping faces,
Which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice;
All jointly listening, but with several graces,
As if some mermaid did their ears entice;
Some high, some low, -the painter was so nice;
The scalps of many, almost hid behind,

To jump up higher seem'd, to mock the mind.
203.

Here one man's hand lean'd on another's head,
His nose being shadow'd by his neighbour's car;
Here one, being throng'd, bears back, all blown and red;
Another, smother'd, seems to pelt and swear;
And in their rage such signs of rage they bear,
As, but for loss of Nestor's golden words,
It seem'd they would debate with angry swords.

204.

For much imaginary work was there;
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
That for Achilles' image stood his spear,
Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind,
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined."
205.

And from the walls of strong-besiegèd Troy,
When their brave hope, bold Hector, march'd to field,
Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy
To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield;
And to their hope they such odd action yield,

That through their light joy seemed to appear
(Like bright things stain'd) a kind of heavy fear.

206.

And, from the strond of Dardan, where they fought,
To Simoïs' reedy banks, the red blood ran,
Whose waves to imitate the battle sought
With swelling ridges; and their ranks began
To break upon the galled shore, and than
Retire again, till, meeting greater ranks,
They join, and shoot their foain at Simoîs' banks.
207.

To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,
To find a face where all distress is steled.
Many she sees where cares have carved some,
But none where all distress and dolour dwell'd,
Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,

Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes,
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.

208.

In her the painter had anatomised
Time's ruin, beauty's wreck, and grim care's reign:
Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised;
Of what she was no semblance did remain :
Her blue blood changed to black in every vein,
Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,
Shew'd life imprison'd in a body dead.

209. On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes, And shapes her sorrow to the beldam's woes, Who nothing wants to answer her but cries, And bitter words to ban her cruel foes: The painter was no god to lend her those; And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong, To give her so much grief, and not a tongue.

210.

"Poor instrument," quoth she, "without a sound,
I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue;
And drop sweet balm in Priam's painted wound,
And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong;
And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long;
And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes
Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.
211.

"Shew me the strumpet that began this stir,
That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur
This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear:
Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here;

And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,
The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter, die.

212.

"Why should the private pleasure of some one
Become the public plague of many mo?
Let sin, alone committed, light alone
Upon his head that hath transgressed so;
Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
For one's offence why should so many fall,
To plague a private sin in general?

213.

"Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds,
Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,
And one man's lust these many lives confounds:
Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire
214.

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:
80 Lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell

To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow;
She lends them words, and she their looks doth borro .

215.

She throws her eyes about the painting round,
And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament:
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent:
His face, though full of cares, yet shew'd content;
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.

216.

In him the painter labour'd with his skill
To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
A humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe';
Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so

That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.
217.

But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
He entertain'd a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconced his secret evil,
That jealousy itself could not mistrust,
False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust
Into so bright a day such black-faced storms,
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.
218.

The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story
The credulous old Priam after slew;
Whose words, like wild-fire, burnt the shining glory
Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

And little stars shot from their fixed places,
When their glass fell wherein they view'd their faces

219.

This picture she advisedly perused,
And chid the painter for his wondrous skill,
Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abused;
Bo fair a form lodged not a mind so ill:
And still on him she gazed; and gazing still,
Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,
That she concludes the picture was belied.

220.

"It cannot be," quoth she, "that so much guile"She would have said-"can lurk in such a look;" But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while. And from her tongue "can lurk" from "cannot" took: "It cannot be," she in that sense forsook,

And turn'd it thus, "It cannot be, I find,
But such a face should bear a wicked mind:
221.
"For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,
So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
(As if with grief or travail he had fainted,)
To me came Tarquin armed; so beguiled
With outward honesty, but yet defiled

With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,
So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.

222.

"Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds!
Priam, why art thou old, and yet not wise?
For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds:
His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds;
Those round clear perils of his, that move thy pity,
Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.

223.

"Such devils steal effects from lightless hell,
For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell;
These contraries such unity do hold,
Only to flatter fools, and make them bold:

So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter, That he finds means to burn his Troy with water." 224.

Here, all enraged, such passion her assails,
That patience is quite beaten from her breast.
She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
Comparing him to that unhappy guest
Whose deed hath made herself herself detest:
At last she smilingly with this gives o'er;
"Fool, fool!" quoth she, "his wounds will not be sore."
225.

Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,
And time doth weary time with her complaining.
She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,
And both she thinks too long with her remaining:
Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining:
Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps;
And they that watch see time how slow it creeps

226.

Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought,
That she with painted images hath spent;
Being from the feeling of her own grief brought
By deep surmise of others' detriment;
Losing her woes in shows of discontent.

It easeth some, though none it ever cured,
To think their dolour others have endured.
227.

But now the mindful messenger, come back,
Brings home his lord and other company;
Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black.
And round about her tear-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.
228.

Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
Amazedly in her sad face he stares;
Her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw,
Her lively colour kill'd with deadly cares.
He hath no power to ask her how she fares:

Both stood, like old acquaintance in a trance,
Met far from home, wondering each other's chance
229.

At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,
And thus begins: "What uncouth ill event
Hath thee befallen, that thou dost trembling stand!
Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent?
Why art thou thus attired in discontent?

Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,
And tell thy grief, that we may give redress."
230.

Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire,
Ere once she can discharge one word of woe:
At length address'd to answer his desire,
She modestly prepares to let them know
Her honour is ta'en prisoner by the foe;
While Collatine and his consorted lords
With sad attention long to hear her words.

231.

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 more woes than words are now depending;
And my laments would be drawn out too long,
To tell them all with one poor tirèd tongue.
232.

"Then be this all the task it hath to say:-
Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed
A stranger came, and on that pillow lay
Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head,
And what wrong else may be imaginèd

By foul enforcement might be done to me,
From that, alas, thy Lucrece is not free.
233.

"For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight,
With shining faulchion in my chamber came
A creeping creature, with a flaming light,
And softly cried, 'Awake, thou Roman dame,
And entertain my love; else lasting shame

On thee and thine this night I will inflict,
If thou my love's desire do contradict.

234.

"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.'

235.

"With this, I did begin to start and cry;
And then against my heart he set his sword,
Swearing, unless I took all patiently,

I should not live to speak another word;
So should my shame still rest upon record,
And never be forgot in mighty Rome

The adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom. 236.

"Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,
And far the weaker with so strong a fear:
My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak;
No rightful plea might plead for justice there:
His scarlet lust came evidence to swear

That my poor beauty had purloin'd his eyes; And when the judge is robb'd, the prisoner dies. 237.

"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."
238.

Lo, here, the helpless merchant of this fos,
With head declined, and voice damm'd up with we
With sad-set eyes, and wretched arms across,
From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow

The grief away that stops his answer so:

But, wretched as he is, he strives in vain;
What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.

239.

As through an arch the violent roaring tide
Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,
Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride
Back to the strait that forced him on so fast;
In rage sent out, recall'd in rage, being past:
Even so his sighs, his sorrows, make a saw.
To push grief on, and back the same grief draw.
240.

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.
241.

"And for my sake, when I might charm thee so,
For she that was thy Lucrece,-now attend me:
Be suddenly revengèd on my foe,

Thine, mine, his own: suppose thou dost defend me
From what is past: the help that thou shalt lend me
Comes all too late, yet let the traitor die;
For sparing justice feeds iniquity.

242.

"But ere I name him, you, fair lords," quoth she, Speaking to those that came with Collatine,

Shall plight your honourable faiths to me, With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine; For 'tis a meritorious fair design

To chase injustice with revengeful arms: [harms." Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies 243.

At this request, with noble disposition
Each present lord began to promise aid,
As bound in knighthood to her imposition,
Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray'd.
But she, that yet her sad task hath not said,
The protestation stops. "O, speak," quoth she,
"How may this forced stain be wiped from me?
244.

"What is the quality of mine offence,

Being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance?
May my pure mind with the foul act dispense,
My low-declinèd 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?"

245.

With this, they all at once began to say,
Her body's stain her mind untainted clears;
While with a joyless smile she turns away
The face, that map which deep impression bears
Of hard misfortune, carved in it with tears.

"No, no," quoth she, "no dame, hereafter living,
By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving."
246.

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 "
247.

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 bequeath'd
Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly
Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.
248.

Stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed,
Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew;
Till Lucrece' father, that beholds her bleed,
Himself on her self-slaughter'd body threw;
And from the purple fountain Brutus drew
The murderous knife, and as it left the place,
Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase;
249.

And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide
In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
Circles her body in on every side,

Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood
Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.

Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd,
And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd

250.

About the mourning and congealed face,
Of that black blood a watery rigol goes.
Which seems to weep upon the tainted place:
And ever since, as pitying Lucrece' woes,
Corrupted blood some watery token shews;
And blood untainted still doth red abide,
Blushing at that which is so putrified.

251.

"Daughter, dear daughter," old Lucretius cries, "That life was mine which thou hast here deprived. If in the child the father's image lies, Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived? Thou wast not to this end from me derived. If children predecease progenitors,

We are their offspring, and they none of ours.
252.

"Poor broken glass, I often did behold
In thy sweet semblance my old age new born;
But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and cold,
Shews me a bareboned 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!

T. T.*

مي

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 primer

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.

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 everywhere:
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 meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet

VI.

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
Make sweet some phial; 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;

Teten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

hen 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 bead, each under eye duman
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 high-most pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, no converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.

VIIL

Qual

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st 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.”

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