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 purloined his eyes,
And when the judge is robbed, 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 stained with this abuse,
Immaculate and spotless is my mind;
That was not forced; that never was inclined
To accessory yieldings, but still pure
Doth in her poisoned closet yet endure.”
Lo here, the hopeless merchant of this loss,
With head declined, and voice dammed up with
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 forced him on so fast;
In rage sent out, recalled in rage, being past:
Even so he 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 revengéd 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 honorable faiths to me,
With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine;
For 'tis 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 bewrayed.
But she, that yet her sad task hath not said,
The protestation stops. "O speak," quoth she,
"How may this forcéd stain be wiped from me?
"What is the quality of mine offence,
Being constrained with dreadful circumstance?
May my pure mind with the foul act dispense,
My low-declinéd honor to advance?
May any terms acquit me from this chance?
The poisoned fountain clears itself again;
And why not I from this compelléd 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," quoth she; "no dame, hereafter living,
By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving."
Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break,
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, 'tis he,
That guides this hand to give this wound to me.
Even here she sheathéd 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 wingéd sprite, and through her wounds doth
Life's lasting date from cancelled destiny.
Stone-still, astonished with this deadly deed,
Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew;
Till Lucrece' father, that beholds her bleed,
Himself on her self-slaughtered 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-sacked island vastly1 stood
Bare and unpeopled, in this fearful flood.
Some of her blood still pure and red remained,
And some looked black, and that false Tarquin stained.
About the mourning and congealéd face
Of that black blood a watery rigol2 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 putrefied.
Daughter, dear daughter," old Lucretius cries, "That life was mine which thou hast here deprived If in the child the father's image lies,
Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived?
Thou wast not to this end from me derived.
If children predecease progenitors,
We are their offspring, and they none of ours.
"Peor boken 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 boned death by time outworn;
O, from thy cheek my image thou hast torn!
And shivered all the beauty of my glass,
That I no mon 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 Luc ece, live again, and see
Thy father die, and noi thy father thee."
By this starts Collatine a.. from a dream,
And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place,
And then in key-cold' Luciece' 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 revengéd on her death.
The deep vexation of his inward soul
Hath served 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
1 Key-cold. So in Richard III. Act 1. S1. :— "Poor key-cold figure of a hol, king.”
See note on that passage; which, however, we do not strictly ad here to, conceiving, upon some discussion of the matter with a friend, that key-cold simply means cold as a key.
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