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.

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.

Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
Amazedly in her sad face he stares:

Her eyes, though sod 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 befall'n, 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 sorrow fire,
Ere once she can discharge one word of woe:c
At length address'dd 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:
"Few words," quoth she, "shall fit the trespass best,
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.

water-galls-] Secondary rainbows.

b uncouth-] Unknown, strange.

c

Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire,

Ere once she can discharge one word of woe :]

The allusion here is to the manner of discharging ancient fire-arms by means of a match

d

address'd-] Prepared, ready.

"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 cried, '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.

"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

Th' 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.

66 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 accessory 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:

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.

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:

Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies' harms."

At this request, with noble disposition
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, carv'd in it with tears.
"No, no," quoth she, "no dame, hereafter living,
By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving."a

Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break,
She throws forth Tarquin's name :
"He! he!" she says,

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!"

Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast
A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheath'd:
That blow did bail it from the deep unrest

Of that polluted prison where it breath'd:
Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeath'd

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

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

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 rigole goes,

Which seems to weep upon the tainted place:

Compare"

b=

66 no dame, hereafter living,

By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving."]

nec ulla deinde impudica exemplo Lucretia vivet." Liv. lib. i. c. 58. - astonish'd-] To say we are astonished expresses little more now than that we are surprised, but formerly the meaning of astonish was in nearer accordance with its etymology, attonare, thunderstruck. So in Pliny, N. H. Vol. I. p. 261. "The crampefish, torped, knoweth her own force and power; and being herself not benummed is able to astonish others."

e-rigol-] See note (c), p. 313, Vol. II.

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 putrified.

"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.

b

- depriv'd.] Deposed; as in "Hamlet," Act I. Sc. 4,

46 some other horrible form,

Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason," &c.

so thick,-] So rapidly. Thus in "Cymbeline," Act III. Sc. 2,—