Guilty thou art of murder and of theft;
Guilty of perjury and subornation;
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift:
Guilty of incest, that abomination :
An accessary by thine inclination
To all sins past, and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.
Misshapen Time, copesmate of ugly night,
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 nursest all, and murderest all that are.
O hear me then, injurious, shifting time!
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?
Time's office is to find the hate of foes;
To eat up error 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,
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 glittering golden towers:
To feed 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;
To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
And turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel:
To shew the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
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,
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: [back,
O, this dread night, would'st thou one hour come
I could prevent this storm, and shun this wrack!
Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,
With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight.
Devise extremes beyond extremity,
To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:
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;
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.
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;
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
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 the abusing of his time. O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad, 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 As slanderous death's-man 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; 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; 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. Out idle words, servants to shallow fools! Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators! Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools, Debate where leisure serves with dull debators; To trembling clients be you mediators :
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, and uncheerful night;
In vain I cavil with my infamy,
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'st thou at this decree?
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 afraid to scratch her wicked foe,
Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.
This said, from her be-tumbled couch she starteth,
To find some desperate instrument of death.
But this no-slaughter-house no tool imparteth,
To make more vent for passage of her breath,
Which thronging through her lips so vanisheth
As smoke from Etna, 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.
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.
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
A badge of fame to slander's livery;
A dying life to living infamy;
Poor helpless help, the treasure stolen away,
To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!
Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know
The stained taste of violated troth;
I will not wrong thy true affection so,
To flatter thee with an infringed oath ;
This bastard graff shall never come to growth:
He shall not boast, who did thy stock pollute,
That thou art doting father of his fruit.
Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,
Nor laugh with his companions at thy state;
But thou shalt know thy interest was not bought
Basely with gold, but stolen from forth thy gate.
For me, I am the mistress of my fate,
| Come, Philomel, that sing'st of ravishment,
Make thy sad grove in my dishevell'd hair.
As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,
So I at each sad strain will strain a tear,
And with deep groans the diapason bear:
For burthen-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still.
While thou on Tereus descant'st, better skill.
And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part
To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,
To imitate thee well, against my heart
Will fix a sharp knife, to affright mine eye;
Who, if it wink, shall thereon fall and die.
These means, as frets upon an instrument,
Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.
And for, poor bird, thou sing'st not in the day,
As shaming any eye should thee behold,
Some dark deep desert, seated from the way,
That knows nor parching heat nor freezing cold,
Will we find out; and there we will unfold
To creatures stern sad tunes, to change their kinds:
Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds
As the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly,
Or one encompass'd with a winding maze,
That cannot tread the way out readily;
So with herself is she in mutiny,
And with my trespass never will dispense,
Till life to death acquit my forc'd offence.
I will not poison thee with my attaint,
Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin'd excuses;
My sable ground of sin I will not paint,
To hide the truth of this false night's abuses:
My tongue shall utter all; mine eyes like sluices,
As from a mountain-spring that feeds a dale,
Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.
By this, lamenting Philomel had ended
The well-tun'd warble of her nightly sorrow,
And solemn night with slow-sad gait descended
To ugly hell; when lo, the blushing morrow
Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow:
But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,
To live or die which of the twain were better,
And therefore still in night would cloister'd be. When life is sham'd, and Death Reproach's debtor.
Revealing day through every cranny spies,
To kill myself, quoth she, alack! what were it,
And seems to point her out where she sits weeping; But with my body my poor soul's pollution?
To whom she sobbing speaks: O eye of eyes, [ing; They that lose half, with greater patience bear it,
Why pry'st thou through my window? leave thy peep-Than they whose whole is swallow'd in confusion.
Mock with thy tickling beams eves that are sleeping:
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
For day hath nought to do what's done by night.
Thus cavils she with every thing she sees :
True grief is fond and testy as a child,
Who wayward once, his mind with nought agrees.
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild;
Continuance tames the one; the other wild,
Like an unpractis'd swimmer plunging still,
With too much labour drowns for want of skill.
So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care,
Holds disputation with each thing she views,
And to herself all sorrow doth compare ;
No object but her passion's strength renews;
And as one shifts, another straight ensues:
Sometime her grief is dumb, and hath no words;
Sometime 'tis mad, and too much talk affords.
The little birds that tune their morning's joy,
Make her moans mad with their sweet melody.
For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;
Sad souls are slain in merry company;
Grief best is pleas'd with grief's society:
True sorrow then is feelingly suffic'd,
When with like semblance it is sympathiz'd.
'Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;
He ten times pines, that pines beholding food:
To see the salve doth make the wound ache more ;
Great grief grieves most at that would do it good;
Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood,
Who being stopp'd, the bounding banks o'er-flows;
Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows.
You mocking birds, quoth she, your tunes entomb
Within your hollow swelling feather'd breasts,
And in my hearing be you mute and dumb!
(My restless discord loves no stops nor rests;
A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests :)
Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears;
Distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears.
That mother tries a merciless conclusion.
Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one,
Will slay the other, and be nurse to none.
My body or my soul, which was the dearer?
When the one pure, the other made divine.
Whose love of either to myself was nearer?
When both were kept for heaven and Collatine.
Ah me! the bark peel'd from the lofty pine,
His leaves will wither, and his sap decay;
So must my soul, her bark being peel'd away.
Her house is sack'd, her quiet interrupted,
Her mansion batter'd by the enemy;
Her sacred temple spotted, spoil'd, corrupted,
Grossly engirt with daring infamy :
Then let it not be call'd impiety,
If in this blemish'd fort I make some hole,
Through which I may convey this troubled soul.
Yet die I will not, till my Collatine
Have heard the cause of my untimely death;
That he may vow, in that sad hour of mine,
Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.
My stained blood to Tarquin I'll bequeath,
Which by him tainted, shall for him be spent,
And as his due, writ in my testament.
My honour I'll bequeath unto the knife
That wounds my body so dishonoured.
'Tis honour to deprive dishonour'd life;
The one will live, the other being dead:
So of shame's ashes shall my fame be bred;
For in my death I murder shameful scorn:
My shame so dead, mine honour is new-born.
Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,
What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?
My resolution, Love, shall be thy boast,
By whose example thou reveng'd may'st be.
How Tarquin must be us'd, read it in me:
Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe,
And, for my sake, serve thou false Tarquin so.
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