With this, she falleth in the place she stood,
And stains her face with his congealed blood,

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;
She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,
As if they heard the woeful words she told;
She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,
Where, lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies!

Two glasses, where herself herself beheld
A thousand times, and now no more reflect;
Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell'd,
And every beauty robb'd of his effect:

"Wonder of time," quoth she, "this is my spite,
That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light.

"Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend!
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;
Ne'er settled equally, but high or low;

That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.

"It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud;
Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'da
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak.

"It shall be sparing, and too full of riot;
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures,"
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet;
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
It shall be raging-mad, and silly-mild,
Make the young old, the old become a child.

"It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful, and too severe,
And most deceiving when it seems most just;
Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward,
Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

"It shall be cause of war and dire events,
And set dissention 'twixt the son and sire;

o'erstraw'd-] O'erstrewed.

-to tread the measures,-] By "measures," dances of any kind are here meant, and not grave dances suitable to age, as some commentators explain it; the power of love is to be shown by its "confounding contres." See note (2), p. 145, Vol. I.

Subject and servile to all discontents,
As dry combustious matter is to fire;

Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy,
They that love best their loves shall not enjoy."

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd
Was melted like a vapour from her sight,
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill'd,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer'd with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis' breath;

And says, within her bosom it shall dwell,
Since he himself is reft from her by death:

She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears
Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

"Poor flower," quoth she, "this was thy father's guise,— Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire,

For every little grief to wet his eyes:

To grow unto himself was his desire,

And so 't is thine; but know, it is as good
To wither in my breast as in his blood.

"Here was thy father's bed, here in my breast;
Thou art the next of blood, and 't is thy right:
Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest,

My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night!
There shall not be one minute in an hour
Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love's flower."

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,
And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid
Their mistress, mounted, through the empty skies
In her light chariot quickly is convey'd ;

Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
Means to immure herself and not be seen.

LUCRECE.

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,

EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.

A

THE love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

The Argument.

LUCIUS TARQUINIUS,-for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus,— after he had caused his own father-in-law, Servius Tullius, to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people's suffrages, had possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of Rome, to besiege Ardea. During which siege the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son, in their discourses after supper, every one commended the virtues of his own wife; among whom, Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they all posted to Rome; and intending, by their secret and sudden arrival, to make trial of that which every one had before avouched, only Collatinus finds his wife (though it were late in the night) spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius, being inflamed with Lucrece' beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was (according to his estate) royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight, hastily dispatcheth messengers, one to Rome for her father, another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius; and, finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins; and bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the king; wherewith the people were so moved, that with one consent and a general acclamation, the Tarquins were all exiled, and the state government changed from kings to consuls.

LUCRECE.

THE entry of "Lucrece" on the Registers of the Stationers is as follows:

"9 May, 1594.

"Mr. Harrison, sen.]

A booke intitled the Ravyshement of Lucrece."

In the same year the first edition was issued, with the title of "Lucrece. London. Printed by Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, and are to be sold at the signe of the white Greyhound in Paules Church-yard, 1594." 4to. It was published again for the same bookseller in 8vo. in 1598, 1600, and 1607. In 1616 another edition, purporting to be "newly revised and corrected," was put forth; but this "corrected" edition is much more inaccurate than any of its predecessors. The next copy, which professes likewise to have been "newly revised," is dated 1624; and this is accompanied by explanatory notes, which, however, are neither interesting nor instructive.

The story on which the poem is based is told by Dion. Halicarnassensis, lib. iv. c. 72; by Livy, lib. i. c. 57, 58; and by Ovid, Fast. lib. ii. But Malone conjectures, and with probability, that the poet was indebted for his model to the legend of Lucrece as it is related in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1567.

Like his "Venus and Adonis," the "Lucrece" of Shakespeare appears to have been a universal favourite : it is mentioned by Drayton in his “Matilda,” 1594; and in the commendatory verses to the poem entitled "Willobie his Avisa, or the true picture of a modest Maide, and of a chast and constant wife," 1594; by Richard Barnefield, in " A Remembrance of some English Poets," at the conclusion of his "Complaints of Poetry," 1598; and by a host of contemporary writers.

[Our text in this poem is that of the quarto 1594, collated with the subsequent impressions already mentioned.]

FROM the besieged Ardea all in post,

Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire,

And girdle with embracing flames the waist
Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of "chaste" unhapp❜ly set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not leta
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,

Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

-- did not let-] Did not forbear