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"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."

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

To pencil'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; [row.
She lends them words, and she their looks doth bor-

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 show'd content:
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild, that patience seem'd to scorn his woes.

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
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-creeping 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.

"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 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,
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."

Here, all enrag'd, 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; (sore."
"Fool! fool!" quoth she, "his wounds will not be

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..

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.

The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew For perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story

The credulous old Príam after slew;

But now the mindful messenger, come back,
Brings home his lord and other company;
Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black;

Whose words, like wild-fire, burnt the shining glory And round about her tear-distained eye

Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

Blue circles stream'd, like rain-bows in the sky.

And little stars shot from their fixed places,

These water-galls in her dim element

When their glass fell wherein they view'd their faces. Foretell new storms to those already spent.

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 spy'd,
That she concludes the picture was bely'd.

" 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 ev'n 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 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.

Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
Amazedly in her sad face he stares :
Her eyes, though sad 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,
But stood, like old acquaintance in a trance,
Met far from home, wondering each other's chance.

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 attir'd in discontent ?
Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,
And tell thy grief, that we may give redress."

Three times with sighs she gives her sorrows 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.

And now this pale swan in her watery nest
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending: [best
"Few words," quoth she, "shall fit the trespass
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 tired tongue.

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

"For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight,
With shining falchion in my chamber came
A creeping creature, with a flaming light,
And softly cry'd, '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.

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.

"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 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.

"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 't is a meritorious fair design,
To chase injustice with revengeful arms: [harms."
Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies'

"For some hard-favour'd groom of thine,' quoth | At this request, with noble disposition

• Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will,
[he,
I'll murder straight, and then I'll slaughter thee,
And swear I found you where you did fulfill
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

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
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."

Io here, the hopeless merchant of this loss,
With head declin'd, and voice dam'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:
But wretched as he is, he strives in vain ;
What he breathes out, his breath drinks up again.

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 forc'd 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.

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 wip'd from me?

"What is the quality of mine offence,
Being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance?
May my pure mind with the foul act dispense,
My low-declined 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?"

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,” quóth she, "no dame, hereafter living,
By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving."

Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, [says,
She throws forth Tarquin's name: "He, he," she
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, 't is he,
That guides this hand to give this wound to me."

Ev'n 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 cancel'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.
The murderous knife, and as it left the place,
Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase;....

1

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.

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 shows;
And blood untainted still doth red abide,
Blushing at that which is so putrify'd.

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

We are their offspring, and they none of ours.

"Poor broken glass, I often did behold
In thy sweet semblance my old age new-born;
But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old,
Shows me a bare-bon'd 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.

"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!"

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.

The deep vexation of his inward soul

Hath serv'd a dumb arrest upon his tongue;
Who mad that sorrow should his use control,
Or keep him from heart-easing words so long,
Begins to talk: but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart's aid,
That no man could distinguish what he said.

Yet sometime Tarquin was pronounced plain,
But through his teeth, as if the name he tore.
This windy tempest, till it blow up rain,
Held back his sorrow's tide, to make it more;
At last it rains, and busy winds give o'er:
Then son and father weep with equal strife,
Who should weep most for daughter or for wife.

The one doth call her his, the other his,

Yet neither may possess the claim they lay.
The father says, "She 's mine:" "Omine she is,"
Replies her husband: "Do not take away
My sorrow's interest; let no mourner say
He weeps for her, for she was only mine,
And only must be wail'd by Collatine."

O," quoth Lucretius, "I did give that life,
Which she too early and too late hath spill'd."
"Woe, woe," quoth Collatine, " she was my wife,
I owed her, and 't is mine that she hath kill'd."
My daughter and my wife with clamours fill'd
The dispers'd air, who holding Lucrece' life,
Answer'd their cries, my daughter and my wife.

Brutus, who pluck'd the knife from Lucrece' side,
Seeing such emulation in their woe,
Began to clothe his wit in state and pride,
Burying in Lucrece' wound his folly's show.
He with the Romans was esteemed so
As silly-jeering idiots are with kings,

For sporting words, and uttering foolish things:

But now he throws that shallow habit by,
Wherein deep policy did him disguise;
And arm'd his long-hid wits advisedly,
To check the tears in Collatinus' eyes.
"Thou wronged lord of Rome," quoth he, "arise;
Let my unsounded self, suppos'd a fool,
Now set thy long-experienc'd wit to school.

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Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds? Is it revenge to give thyself a blow, For his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds ? Such childish humour from weak minds proceeds; Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so,

To slay herself, that should have slain her foe.

"Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart
In such relenting dew of lamentations,
But kneel with me, and help to bear thy part,
To rouse our Roman gods with invocations,
That they will suffer these abominations,
Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced,
By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased.

"Now by the Capitol that we adore,
And by this chaste blood so unjustly stained,
By Heaven's fair Sun, that breeds the fat Earth's

store,

By all our country rights in Rome maintained,
And by chaste Lucrece' soul that late complained
Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife,
We will revenge the death of this true wife,"

This said, he struck his hand upon his breast,
And kiss'd the fatal knife to end his vow;
And to his protestation urg'd the rest,
Who wondering at him, did him words allow:
Then jointly to the ground their knees they bow;
And that deep vow which Brutus made before,
He doth again repeat, and that they swore.

When they had sworn to this advised doom,
They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence;
To show the bleeding body thorough Rome,
And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence:
Which being done with speedy diligence,
The Romans plausibly did give consent
To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.

SONNETS.

SONNET IV.

TO THE ONLY BEGETTER

OF THESE ENSUING SONNETS,

MR. W. H.

ALL HAPPINESS AND THAT ETERNITY PROMISED

BY OUR EVER-LIVING POET

WISHETH THE WELL-WISHING ADVENTURER

IN SETTING FORTH,

т. т.

UNTHRIFTY loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Natures 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, us'd, lives thy executor to be.

SONNET 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.

SONNET V.

THOSE howers, 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 excell;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideons winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd, and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walis 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.

SONNET 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.

SONNET 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;
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee:
Then, what could death do if thou should'st 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 beir.

SONNET III.

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 un-eard 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, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

SONNET VII.

Lo, in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
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, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.

SONNET VIII.

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 glad-
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy? [ly?
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 should'st 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."

SONNET XII.

WHEN I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I bebold the violet past prime,

And sable curls, all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defen
Save breed, to brave him, when he takes thee hen

SONNET IX.

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thyself in single life ?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep,
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep,
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind.
Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend,
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unus'd, the user so destroys it.
No love toward others in that bosom sits,
That on himself such murderous shame commits.

SONNET XIII.

O THAT you were yourself! but, love, you are
No longer your's, than you yourself here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
So should that beauty which you hold in lease,
Find no determination: then you were
Yourself again, after yourself's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which busbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day,
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
O! none but unthrifts:-Dear my love, you know,
You had a father; let your son say so.

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Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

Or say, with princes if it shall go well,

O change thy thought, that I may change my mind! By oft predict that I in Heaven find:

Shall hate be fairer lodg'd than gentle love?

Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

Or to thyself, at least, kind-hearted prove: Make thee another self, for love of me,

That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And (constant stars) in them I read such art,
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou would'st convert:
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

SONNET XI.

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st,
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou may'st call thine, when thou from youth con-
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase; [vertest.
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay:

If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore years would make the world away.
Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endow'd, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou should'st in bounty che-

rish:

She carv'd thee for her seal, and meant thereby, Thou should'st print more, nor let that copy die.

SONNET XV.

WHEN I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge state presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd ev'n by the self-same sky;
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful time debateth with decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And, all in war with time, for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

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