1480

'Why should the private pleasure of some one
Become the public plague of many moe?
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?

'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.'

1491

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,
That jealousy itself could not mistrust
False-keeping 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
For perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story 1521
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,
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:
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.

1530

'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:

For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, 1541 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 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! 1559 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;
For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
These contraries such unity do hold,
And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell;

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

And both she thinks too long with herremaining: 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.

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 cur'd,
To think their dolour others have endur'd.

1580

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.

1631

On thee and thine this night I will inflict, 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,
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

1641

The 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 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, 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:

1661

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

1669

As through an arch the violent roaring tide
Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,
Back to the strait that forc'd him on so fast;
Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride
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

1679

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,

Thine, mine, his own: suppose thou dost defend

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
doth fly

Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.

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

1731

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.

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

stain'd.

'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.' 17
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.

T. T.

I.

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, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

II.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd 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 deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou could'st 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, rememb'red not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

IV.

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 unus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee, Which, used, lives the executor to be.