The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 24
Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern
Authority for sin, warrant for blame?
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To privilege dishonour in thy name,
Thou back’st reproach against long-living laud,
And mak’st fair reputation but a bawd.
‘Hast thou command? by him that gave it thee,
From a pure heart command thy rebel will.
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Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,
For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.
Thy princely office how canst thou fulfil,
When pattern’d by thy fault, foul sin may say
He learn’d to sin, and thou didst teach the way?
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‘Think but how vile a spectacle it were,
To view thy present trespass in another.
Men’s faults do seldom to themselves appear;
Their own transgressions partially they smother.
This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother.
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O how are they wrapp’d in with infamies,
That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!
‘To thee, to thee, my heav’d-up hands appeal,
Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier.
I sue for exil’d majesty’s repeal:
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Let him return, and flatt’ring thoughts retire;
His true respect will prison false desire,
And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,
That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.’
‘Have done,’ quoth he, ‘my uncontrolled tide
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Turns not, but swells the higher by this let.
Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide,
And with the wind in greater fury fret;
The petty streams that pay a daily debt
To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls’ haste
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Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.’
‘Thou art,’ quoth she, ‘a sea, a sovereign king,
And lo there falls into thy boundless flood
Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning,
Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood.
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If all these petty ills shall change thy good,
Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hearsed,
And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed.
‘So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave:
Thou nobly base, they basely dignified;
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Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave;
Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride.
The lesser thing should not the greater hide:
The cedar stoops not to the base shrub’s foot,
But low shrubs wither at the cedar’s root.
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‘So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state’ –
‘No more,’ quoth he, ‘by heaven I will not hear thee.
Yield to my love: if not, enforced hate
Instead of love’s coy touch, shall rudely tear thee.
That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee
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Unto the base bed of some rascal groom,
To be thy partner in this shameful doom.’
This said, he sets his foot upon the light,
For light and lust are deadly enemies:
Shame folded up in blind concealing night,
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When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize.
The wolf hath seiz’d his prey, the poor lamb cries,
Till with her own white fleece her voice controll’d
Entombs her outcry in her lips’ sweet fold.
For with the nightly linen that she wears
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He pens her piteous clamours in her head,
Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears
That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed.
O that prone lust should stain so pure a bed!
The spots whereof could weeping purify,
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Her tears should drop on them perpetually.
But she hath lost a dearer thing than life,
And he hath won what he would lose again.
This forced league doth force a further strife;
This momentary joy breeds months of pain;
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This hot desire converts to cold disdain.
Pure chastity is rifled of her store,
And lust the thief, far poorer than before.
Look as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk,
Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight,
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Make slow pursuit, or altogether balk
The prey wherein by nature they delight:
So surfeit-taking Tarquin fares this night.
His taste delicious, in digestion souring,
Devours his will that liv’d by foul devouring.
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O deeper sin than bottomless conceit
Can comprehend in still imagination!
Drunken desire must vomit his receipt,
Ere he can see his own abomination.
While lust is in his pride no exclamation
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Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,
Till, like a jade, self-will himself doth tire.
And then with lank and lean discolour’d cheek,
With heavy eye, knit brow, and strenghtless pace,
Feeble desire, all recreant, poor and meek,
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Like to a bankrout beggar wails his case.
The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with grace;
For there it revels, and when that decays,
The guilty rebel for remission prays.
So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome,
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Who this accomplishment so hotly chased;
For now against himself he sounds this doom,
That through the length of times he stands disgraced.
Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced,
To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,
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To ask the spotted princess how she fares.
She says her subjects with foul insurrection
Have batter’d down her consecrated wall,
And by their mortal fault brought in subjection
Her immortality, and made her thrall
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To living death and pain perpetual:
Which in her prescience she controlled still,
But her foresight could not forestall their will.
Ev’n in this thought through the dark night he stealeth,
A captive victor that hath lost in gain,
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Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth,
The scar that will despite of cure remain;
Leaving his spoil perplex’d in greater pain:
She bears the load of lust he left behind,
And he the burden of a guilty mind.
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He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence,
She like a wearied lamb lies panting there;
He scowls, and hates himself for his offence,
She desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear.
He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear;
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She stays, exclaiming on the direful night,
He runs, and chides his vanish’d loath’d delight.
He thence departs a heavy convertite,
She there remains a hopeless castaway;
He in his speed looks for the morning light,
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She prays she never may behold the day:
‘For day,’ quoth she, ‘night’s ’scapes doth open lay,
And my true eyes have never practis’d how
To cloak offences with a cunning brow.
‘They think not
but that every eye can see
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The same disgrace which they themselves behold;
And therefore would they still in darkness be,
To have their unseen sin remain untold.
For they their guilt with weeping will unfold,
And grave like water that doth eat in steel,
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Upon my cheeks, what helpless shame I feel.’
Here she exclaims against repose and rest,
And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind.
She wakes her heart by beating on her breast,
And bids it leap from thence, where it may find
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Some purer chest, to close so pure a mind.
Frantic with grief, thus breathes she forth her spite
Against the unseen secrecy of night:
‘O comfort-killing night, image of hell,
Dim register and notary of shame,
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Black stage for tragedies and murders fell,
Vast sin-concealing Chaos, nurse of blame!
Blind muffled bawd, dark harbour for defame,
Grim cave of death, whisp’ring conspirator
With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!
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‘O hateful, vaporous and foggy night,
Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,
Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,
Make war against proportion’d course of time:
Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb
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His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,
Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.
‘With rotten damps ravish the morning air;
Let their exhal’d unwholesome breaths make sick
The life of purity, the supreme fair,
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Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick.
And let thy musty vapours march so thick,
That in their smoky ranks his smother’d light
May set at noon and make perpetual night.
‘Were Tarquin night, as he is but night’s child,
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The silver-shining queen he would distain;
Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defil’d,
Through night’s black bosom should not peep again.
So should I have co-partners in my pain;
And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
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As palmers’ chat makes short their pilgrimage.
‘Where now I have no one to blush with me,
To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,
To mask their brows and hide their infamy;
But I alone, alone must sit and pine,
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Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine,
Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,
Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
‘O night, thou furnace of foul reeking smoke,
Let not the jealous day behold that face
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Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
Immodestly lies martyr’d with disgrace!
Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,
That all the faults which in thy reign are made
May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade.
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‘Make me not object to the tell-tale day:
The light will show character’d in my brow
The story of sweet chastity’s decay,
The impious breach of holy wedlock vow;
Yea, the illiterate that know not how
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To cipher what is writ in learned books,
Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks.
‘The nurse to still her child will tell my story,
And fright her crying babe with Tarquin’s name.
The orator to deck his oratory
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Will couple my reproach to Tarquin’s shame.
Feast-finding minstrels tuning my defame,
Will tie the hearers to attend each line,
How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.
‘Let my good name, that senseless reputation,
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For Collatine’s dear love be kept unspotted.
If that be made a theme for disputation,
The branches of another root are rotted,
And undeserv’d reproach to him allotted
That is as clear from this attaint of mine
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As I ere this was pure to Collatine.
‘O unseen shame, invisible disgrace!
O unfelt sore, crest-wounding private scar!
Reproach is stamp’d in Collatinus’ face,
And Tarquin’s eye may read the mot afar,
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How he in peace is wounded, not in war:
Alas how many bear such shameful blows,
Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!
If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me,
From me by strong assault it is bereft:
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