The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  My honey lost, and I a drone-like bee,

  Have no perfection of my summer left,

  But robb’d and ransack’d by injurious theft;

  In thy weak hive a wand’ring wasp hath crept,

  And suck’d the honey which thy chaste bee kept.

  840

  ‘Yet am I guilty of thy honour’s wrack;

  Yet for thy honour did I entertain him:

  Coming from thee I could not put him back,

  For it had been dishonour to disdain him.

  Besides, of weariness he did complain him,

  845

  And talk’d of virtue: O unlook’d-for evil,

  When virtue is profan’d in such a devil!

  ‘Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud,

  Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?

  Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud,

  850

  Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?

  Or kings be breakers of their own behests?

  But no perfection is so absolute

  That some impurity doth not pollute.

  ‘The aged man that coffers up his gold

  855

  Is plagu’d with cramps and gouts and painful fits,

  And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold;

  But like still-pining Tantalus he sits,

  And useless barns the harvest of his wits,

  Having no other pleasure of his gain

  860

  But torment that it cannot cure his pain.

  ‘So then he hath it when he cannot use it,

  And leaves it to be master’d by his young,

  Who in their pride do presently abuse it;

  Their father was too weak, and they too strong,

  865

  To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long:

  The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours

  Even in the moment that we call them ours.

  ‘Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;

  Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;

  870

  The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;

  What virtue breeds iniquity devours.

  We have no good that we can say is ours,

  But ill-annexed opportunity

  Or kills his life, or else his quality.

  875

  ‘O opportunity, thy guilt is great!

  ’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason;

  Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get;

  Whoever plots the sin, thou poinst the season.

  ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;

  880

  And in thy shady cell where none may spy him,

  Sits sin to seize the souls that wander by him.

  ‘Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath;

  Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thaw’d;

  Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth,

  885

  Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd!

  Thou plantest scandal, and displacest laud:

  Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief!

  Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.

  ‘Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,

  890

  Thy private feasting to a public fast,

  Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,

  Thy sugar’d tongue to bitter wormwood taste;

  Thy violent vanities can never last.

  How comes it then, vile opportunity,

  895

  Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?

  ‘When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend,

  And bring him where his suit may be obtained?

  When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end,

  Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained?

  900

  Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained?

  The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;

  But they ne’er meet with opportunity.

  ‘The patient dies while the physician sleeps;

  The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;

  905

  Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;

  Advice is sporting while infection breeds.

  Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds;

  Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages,

  Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

  910

  ‘When truth and virtue have to do with thee,

  A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid;

  They buy thy help, but sin ne’er gives a fee:

  He gratis comes, and thou art well appaid,

  As well to hear as grant what he hath said.

  915

  My Collatine would else have come to me

  When Tarquin did, but he was stay’d by thee.

  ‘Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,

  Guilty of perjury and subornation,

  Guilty of treason, forgery and shift,

  920

  Guilty of incest, that abomination:

  An accessory by thine inclination

  To all sins past and all that are to come

  From the creation to the general doom.

  ‘Mis-shapen time, copesmate of ugly night,

  925

  Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,

  Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,

  Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare!

  Thou nurses all, and murder’st all that are:

  O hear me then, injurious shifting time!

  930

  Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

  ‘Why hath thy servant opportunity

  Betray’d the hours thou gav’st me to repose,

  Cancell’d my fortunes and enchained me

  To endless date of never-ending woes?

  935

  Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes,

  To eat up errors by opinion bred,

  Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

  ‘Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

  To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

  940

  To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

  To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

  To wrong the wronger till he render right,

  To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

  And smear with dust their glitt’ring golden tow’rs;

  945

  ‘To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,

  To feed oblivion with decay of things,

  To blot old books and alter their contents,

  To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,

  To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs,

  950

  To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel,

  And turn the giddy round of fortune’s wheel;

  ‘To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,

  To make the child a man, the man a child,

  To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

  955

  To tame the unicorn and lion wild,

  To mock the subtle in themselves beguil’d,

  To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

  And waste huge stones with little water-drops.

  ‘Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,

  960

  Unless thou could’st return to make amends?

  One poor retiring minute in an age

  Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,

  Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends:

  O this dread night, would’st thou one hour come back,

  965

  I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack!

  ‘Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,

  With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight;

&
nbsp; Devise extremes beyond extremity,

  To make him curse this cursed crimeful night.

  970

  Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,

  And the dire thought of his committed evil

  Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

  ‘Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,

  Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;

  975

  Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,

  To make him moan, but pity not his moans.

  Stone him with harden’d hearts harder than stones,

  And let mild women to him lose their mildness,

  Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

  980

  ‘Let him have time to tear his curled hair,

  Let him have time against himself to rave,

  Let him have time of time’s help to despair,

  Let him have time to live a loathed slave,

  Let him have time a beggar’s orts to crave,

  985

  And time to see one that by alms doth live

  Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

  ‘Let him have time to see his friends his foes,

  And merry fools to mock at him resort;

  Let him have time to mark how slow time goes

  990

  In time of sorrow, and how swift and short

  His time of folly and his time of sport:

  And ever let his unrecalling crime

  Have time to wail th’abusing of his time.

  ‘O time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

  995

  Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill!

  At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

  Himself, himself seek every hour to kill:

  Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill,

  For who so base would such an office have

  1000

  As sland’rous deathsman to so base a slave?

  ‘The baser is he, coming from a king,

  To shame his hope with deeds degenerate;

  The mightier man the mightier is the thing

  That makes him honour’d or begets him hate,

  1005

  For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

  The moon being clouded presently is miss’d,

  But little stars may hide them when they list.

  ‘The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,

  And unperceiv’d fly with the filth away;

  1010

  But if the like the snow-white swan desire,

  The stain upon his silver down will stay.

  Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day;

  Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly,

  But eagles gaz’d upon with every eye.

  1015

  ‘Out idle words, servants to shallow fools,

  Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!

  Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools,

  Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;

  To trembling clients be you mediators:

  1020

  For me, I force not argument a straw,

  Since that my case is past the help of law.

  ‘In vain I rail at opportunity,

  At time, at Tarquin, at uncheerful night;

  In vain I cavil with mine infamy,

  1025

  In vain I spurn at my confirm’d despite;

  This helpless smoke of words doth me no right:

  The remedy indeed to do me good

  Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.

  ‘Poor hand, why quiver’s thou at this decree?

  1030

  Honour thyself to rid me of this shame:

  For if I die, my honour lives in thee,

  But if I live, thou liv’st in my defame.

  Since thou could’st not defend thy loyal dame,

  And wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe,

  1035

  Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.’

  This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth,

  To find some desp’rate instrument of death;

  But this no slaughterhouse no tool imparteth

  To make more vent for passage of her breath,

  1040

  Which thronging through her lips so vanisheth

  As smoke from Aetna, that in air consumes,

  Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.

  ‘In vain,’ quoth she, ‘I live, and seek in vain

  Some happy mean to end a hapless life.

  1045

  I fear’d by Tarquin’s falchion to be slain,

  Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife;

  But when I fear’d I was a loyal wife:

  So am I now, – O no, that cannot be!

  Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

  1050

  ‘O that is gone for which I sought to live,

  And therefore now I need not fear to die!

  To clear this spot by death, at least I give