This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade,
Which like a falcon tow’ring in the skies
Coucheth the fowl below with his wings’ 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 falcons’ 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 honour 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,
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 sometime is compacted
In a pure compound; being so applied,
His venom in effect is purified.
‘Then for thy husband and thy children’s sake
Tender 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;
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 gripe’s sharp claws,
Pleads in a wilderness where are no laws
To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,
Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.
But when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat,
In his dim mist th‘aspiring mountains hiding,
From earth’s dark womb some gentle gust doth get
Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding,
Hind’ring their present fall by this dividing;
So his unhallowed haste her words delays,
And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.
Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally
While in his holdfast foot the weak mouse panteth.
Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly,
A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth.
His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth
No penetrable entrance to her plaining.
Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.
Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed
In the remorseless wrinkles of his face.
Her modest eloquence with sighs is mixed,
Which to her oratory adds more grace.
She puts the period often from his place,
And midst the sentence so her accent breaks
That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.
She conjures him by high almighty Jove,
By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship’s oath,
By her untimely tears, her husband’s love,
By holy human law and common troth,
By heaven and earth and all the power of both,
That to his borrowed bed he make retire,
And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.
Quoth she, ‘Reward not hospitality
With such black payment as thou hast pretended.
Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
Mar not the thing that cannot be amended;
End thy ill aim before thy shoot be ended.
He is no woodman that doth bend his bow
To strike a poor unseasonable doe.
‘My husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me.
Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me;
Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me.
Thou look’st not like deceit; do not deceive me.
My sighs like whirlwinds labour hence to heave thee.
If ever man were moved with woman’s moans,
Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans.
‘All which together, like a troubled ocean,
Beat at thy rocky and wreck-threat’ning heart
To soften it with their continual motion,
For stones dissolved to water do convert.
O, if no harder than a stone thou art,
Melt at my tears, and be compassionate.
Soft pity enters at an iron gate.
‘In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee.
Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?
To all the host of heaven I complain me.
Thou wrong’st his honour, wound‘st his princely name.
Thou art not what thou seem’st, and if the same,
Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king,
For kings like gods should govern everything.
‘How will thy shame be seeded in thine age
When thus thy vices bud before thy spring?
If in thy hope thou dar’st do such outrage,
What dar’st thou not when once thou art a king?
O be remembered, no outrageous thing
From vassal actors can be wiped away;
Then kings’ misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.
’This deed will make thee only loved for fear,
But happy monarchs still are feared for love.
With foul offenders thou perforce must bear
When they in thee the like offences prove.
If but for fear of this, thy will remove;
For princes are the glass, the school, the book
Where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.
‘And wilt thou be the school where lust shall learn?
Must he in thee read lectures of such shame?
Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern
Authority for sin, warrant for blame,
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.
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, patterned by thy fault, foul sin may say
He learned to sin, and thou didst teach the way?
‘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.
O, how are they wrapped in with infamies
That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!
‘To thee, to thee my heaved-up hands appeal,
Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier.
I sue for exiled majesty’s repeal;
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
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
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.
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;
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.
‘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
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
When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize.
The wolf hath seized his prey, the poor lamb cries,
Till with her own white fleece her voice controlled
Entombs her outcry in her lips’ sweet fold.
For with the nightly linen that she wears
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,
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;
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,
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 lived by foul devouring.
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
Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire,
Till like a jade self-will himself doth tire.
And then with lank and lean discoloured cheek,
With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace,
Feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek,
Like to a bankrupt 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
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
To ask the spotted princess how she fares.
She says her subjects with foul insurrection
Have battered down her consecrated wall,
And by their mortal fault brought in subjection
Her immortality, and made her thrall
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,
Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth,
The scar that will, despite of cure, remain;
Leaving his spoil perplexed in greater pain.
She bears the load of lust he left behind,
And he the burden of a guilty mind.
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;
She stays, exclaiming on the direful night.
He runs, and chides his vanished loathed delight.
He thence departs, a heavy convertite;
She there remains, a hopeless castaway.
He in his speed looks for the morning light;
She prays she never may behold the day.
‘For day,’ quoth she, ‘night’s scapes doth open lay,
And my true eyes have never practised how
To cloak offences with a cunning brow.
‘They think not but that every eye can see
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,
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
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,
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!
‘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 proportioned course of time.
Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb
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 exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick
The life of purity, the supreme fair,
Ere he arrive his weary noon-tide prick;
And let thy musty vapours march so thick
That in their smoky ranks his smothered light
May set at noon, and make perpetual night.
‘Were Tarquin night, as he is but night’s child,
The silver-shining queen he would distain;
Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled,
So should I have co-partners in my pain,
And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
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,
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
Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
Immodestly lies martyred 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.
‘Make me not object to the tell-tale day:
The light will show charactered in my brow
The story of sweet chastity’s decay,
The impious breach of holy wedlock vow.
Yea, the illiterate that know not how
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
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 88
