The Complete Works of William Shakespeare · Chapter 227The Argument. (2)
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“In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee. Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame? To all the host of heaven I complain me, Thou wrong’st his honour, wound’st his princely name. Thou art not what thou seem’st; and if the same, Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king; For kings like gods should govern everything.
“How will thy shame be seeded in thine age, When thus thy vices bud before thy spring? If in thy hope thou dar’st do such outrage, What dar’st thou not when once thou art a king? O, be remembered, no outrageous thing From vassal actors can be wiped away; Then kings’ misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.
“This deed will make thee only loved for fear, But happy monarchs still are feared for love. With foul offenders thou perforce must bear, When they in thee the like offences prove. If but for fear of this, thy will remove, For princes are the glass, the school, the book, Where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.
“And wilt thou be the school where Lust shall learn? Must he in thee read lectures of such shame? Wilt thou be glass, wherein it shall discern Authority for sin, warrant for blame, To privilege dishonour in thy name? Thou back’st reproach against long-living laud, And mak’st fair reputation but a bawd.
“Hast thou command? By him that gave it thee, From a pure heart command thy rebel will. Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity, For it was lent thee all that brood to kill. Thy princely office how canst thou fulfill, When, patterned by thy fault, foul Sin may say He learned to sin, and thou didst teach the way?
“Think but how vile a spectacle it were To view thy present trespass in another. Men’s faults do seldom to themselves appear; Their own transgressions partially they smother. This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother. O how are they wrapped in with infamies That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!
“To thee, to thee, my heaved-up hands appeal, Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier. I sue for exiled majesty’s repeal; Let him return, and flatt’ring thoughts retire. His true respect will prison false desire, And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne, That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.”
“Have done,” quoth he. “My uncontrolled tide Turns not, but swells the higher by this let. Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide, And with the wind in greater fury fret. The petty streams that pay a daily debt To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls’ haste Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.”
“Thou art,” quoth she, “a sea, a sovereign king, And, lo, there falls into thy boundless flood Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning, Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood. If all these petty ills shall change thy good, Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hearsed, And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed.
“So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave; Thou nobly base, they basely dignified; Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave; Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride. The lesser thing should not the greater hide; The cedar stoops not to the base shrub’s foot, But low shrubs wither at the cedar’s root.
“So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state”— “No more,” quoth he, “by heaven, I will not hear thee. Yield to my love. If not, enforced hate, Instead of love’s coy touch, shall rudely tear thee. That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee Unto the base bed of some rascal groom, To be thy partner in this shameful doom.”
This said, he sets his foot upon the light, For light and lust are deadly enemies. Shame folded up in blind concealing night, When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize. The wolf hath seized his prey, the poor lamb cries, Till with her own white fleece her voice controlled Entombs her outcry in her lips’ sweet fold.
For with the nightly linen that she wears He pens her piteous clamours in her head, Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed. O, that prone lust should stain so pure a bed! The spots whereof could weeping purify, Her tears should drop on them perpetually.
But she hath lost a dearer thing than life, And he hath won what he would lose again. This forced league doth force a further strife; This momentary joy breeds months of pain; This hot desire converts to cold disdain. Pure Chastity is rifled of her store, And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before.
Look as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk, Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight, Make slow pursuit, or altogether balk The prey wherein by nature they delight; So surfeit-taking Tarquin fares this night. His taste delicious, in digestion souring, Devours his will, that lived by foul devouring.
O deeper sin than bottomless conceit Can comprehend in still imagination! Drunken desire must vomit his receipt, Ere he can see his own abomination. While lust is in his pride no exclamation Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire, Till, like a jade, self-will himself doth tire.
And then with lank and lean discoloured cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, Feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek, Like to a bankrout beggar wails his case. The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with Grace, For there it revels; and when that decays, The guilty rebel for remission prays.
So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, Who this accomplishment so hotly chased; For now against himself he sounds this doom, That through the length of times he stands disgraced. Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced, To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, To ask the spotted princess how she fares.
She says her subjects with foul insurrection Have battered down her consecrated wall, And by their mortal fault brought in subjection Her immortality, and made her thrall To living death and pain perpetual, Which in her prescience she controlled still, But her foresight could not forestall their will.
E’en in this thought through the dark night he stealeth, A captive victor that hath lost in gain, Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth, The scar that will, despite of cure, remain; Leaving his spoil perplexed in greater pain. She bears the load of lust he left behind, And he the burden of a guilty mind.
He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence; She like a wearied lamb lies panting there; He scowls, and hates himself for his offence; She, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear. He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear; She stays, exclaiming on the direful night; He runs, and chides his vanished, loathed delight.
He thence departs a heavy convertite; She there remains a hopeless castaway. He in his speed looks for the morning light; She prays she never may behold the day. “For day,” quoth she, “night’s scapes doth open lay, And my true eyes have never practised how To cloak offences with a cunning brow.
“They think not but that every eye can see The same disgrace which they themselves behold; And therefore would they still in darkness be, To have their unseen sin remain untold. For they their guilt with weeping will unfold, And grave, like water that doth eat in steel, Upon my cheeks what helpless shame I feel.”
Here she exclaims against repose and rest, And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind. She wakes her heart by beating on her breast, And bids it leap from thence, where it may find Some purer chest, to close so pure a mind. Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite Against the unseen secrecy of night.
“O comfort-killing night, image of hell, Dim register and notary of shame, Black stage for tragedies and murders fell, Vast sin-concealing chaos, nurse of blame, Blind muffled bawd, dark harbour for defame, Grim cave of death, whisp’ring conspirator With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!
“O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night, Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime, Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light, Make war against proportioned course of time; Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed, Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.
“With rotten damps ravish the morning air; Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick The life of purity, the supreme fair, Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick. And let thy misty vapours march so thick, That in their smoky ranks his smothered light May set at noon and make perpetual night.
“Were Tarquin night, as he is but night’s child, The silver-shining queen he would distain; Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled, Through Night’s black bosom should not peep again. So should I have co-partners in my pain; And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage, As palmers’ chat makes short their pilgrimage.
“Where now I have no one to blush with me, To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine, To mask their brows, and hide their infamy; But I alone alone must sit and pine, Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine, Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans, Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
“O night, thou furnace of foul reeking smoke, Let not the jealous day behold that face Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak Immodesty lies martyred with disgrace! Keep still possession of thy gloomy place, That all the faults which in thy reign are made May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade.
“Make me not object to the tell-tale day. The light will show charactered in my brow The story of sweet chastity’s decay, The impious breach of holy wedlock vow. Yea, the illiterate, that know not how To cipher what is writ in learned books, Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks.
“The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story And fright her crying babe with Tarquin’s name. The orator, to deck his oratory, Will couple my reproach to Tarquin’s shame. Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, Will tie the hearers to attend each line, How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.
“Let my good name, that senseless reputation, For Collatine’s dear love be kept unspotted. If that be made a theme for disputation, The branches of another root are rotted, And undeserved reproach to him allotted That is as clear from this attaint of mine As I, ere this, was pure to Collatine.
“O unseen shame, invisible disgrace! O unfelt sore, crest-wounding, private scar! Reproach is stamped in Collatinus’ face, And Tarquin’s eye may read the mot afar, How he in peace is wounded, not in war. Alas, how many bear such shameful blows, Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!
“If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robbed and ransacked by injurious theft. In thy weak hive a wand’ring wasp hath crept, And sucked the honey which thy chaste bee kept.
“Yet am I guilty of thy honour’s wrack; Yet for thy honour did I entertain him. Coming from thee, I could not put him back, For it had been dishonour to disdain him. Besides, of weariness he did complain him, And talked of virtue. O unlooked-for evil, When virtue is profaned in such a devil!
“Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests? Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud? Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts? Or kings be breakers of their own behests? But no perfection is so absolute That some impurity doth not pollute.
“The aged man that coffers up his gold Is plagued with cramps, and gouts and painful fits, And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold, But like still-pining Tantalus he sits, And useless barns the harvest of his wits, Having no other pleasure of his gain But torment that it cannot cure his pain.
“So then he hath it when he cannot use it, And leaves it to be mastered by his young, Who in their pride do presently abuse it. Their father was too weak, and they too strong, To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long. The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours Even in the moment that we call them ours.
“Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing; What virtue breeds iniquity devours. We have no good that we can say is ours, But ill-annexed Opportunity Or kills his life or else his quality.
“O Opportunity, thy guilt is great! ’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason; Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get; Whoever plots the sin, thou ’point’st the season. ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason; And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.
“Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath; Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thawed; Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth, Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd! Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud. Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief, Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.
“Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugared tongue to bitter wormwood taste. Thy violent vanities can never last. How comes it then, vile Opportunity, Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
“When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend, And bring him where his suit may be obtained? When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end, Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained? Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained? The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee; But they ne’er meet with Opportunity.
“The patient dies while the physician sleeps; The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds; Justice is feasting while the widow weeps; Advice is sporting while infection breeds. Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds. Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages, Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.
“When truth and virtue have to do with thee, A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid; They buy thy help; but Sin ne’er gives a fee; He gratis comes, and thou art well appaid As well to hear as grant what he hath said. My Collatine would else have come to me When Tarquin did, but he was stayed by thee.
“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 accessory 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 murd’rest all that are. O hear me then, injurious, shifting Time! Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.
“Why hath thy servant, Opportunity Betrayed the hours thou gav’st me to repose, Cancelled my fortunes, and enchained me To endless date of never-ending woes? Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes, To eat up errors 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 glitt’ring golden towers;
“To fill 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 hammered steel, And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;
“To show the beldam 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 beguiled, 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 couldst 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. O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back, I could prevent this storm and shun thy 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 hard’ned 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 th’ 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 sland’rous deathsman 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 honoured or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. The moon being clouded presently is missed, But little stars may hide them when they list.
“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived 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 gazed 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 debaters; 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 mine infamy, In vain I spurn at my confirmed 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 couldst not defend thy loyal dame, And wast afeared to scratch her wicked foe, Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.”
This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth, To find some desp’rate instrument of death; But this no slaughterhouse no tool imparteth To make more vent for passage of her breath, Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth As smoke from Ætna, 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 feared by Tarquin’s falchion to be slain, Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife. But when I feared 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 stol’n 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 int’rest was not bought Basely with gold, but stol’n from forth thy gate. For me, I am the mistress of my fate, And with my trespass never will dispense, Till life to death acquit my forced offence.
“I will not poison thee with my attaint, Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coined 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-tuned 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, And therefore still in night would cloistered be.
Revealing day through every cranny spies, And seems to point her out where she sits weeping, To whom she sobbing speaks: “O eye of eyes, Why pry’st thou through my window? Leave thy peeping, Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping. Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light, For day hath naught to do what’s done by night.”
Thus cavils she with everything she sees. True grief is fond and testy as a child, Who wayward once, his mood with naught agrees. Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild. Continuance tames the one; the other wild, Like an unpractised 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 pleased with grief’s society; True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed When with like semblance it is sympathized.
’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 stopped, the bounding banks o’erflows; Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows.
“You mocking birds,” quoth she, “your tunes entomb Within your hollow-swelling feathered 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.
“Come, Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment, Make thy sad grove in my disheveled 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 burden-wise I’ll hum on Tarquin still, While thou on Tereus descants 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 not 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 encompassed with a winding maze, That cannot tread the way out readily; So with herself is she in mutiny, To live or die which of the twain were better, When life is shamed and Death reproach’s debtor.
“To kill myself,” quoth she, “alack, what were it, But with my body my poor soul’s pollution? They that lose half with greater patience bear it Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion. 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? Ay me, the bark pilled from the lofty pine, His leaves will wither and his sap decay; So must my soul, her bark being pilled away.
“Her house is sacked, her quiet interrupted, Her mansion battered by the enemy, Her sacred temple spotted, spoiled, corrupted, Grossly engirt with daring infamy. Then let it not be called impiety, If in this blemished 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 dishonoured 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 revenged mayst be. How Tarquin must be used, read it in me; Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe, And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.
“This brief abridgement of my will I make: My soul and body to the skies and ground; My resolution, husband, do thou take; Mine honour be the knife’s that makes my wound; My shame be his that did my fame confound; And all my fame that lives disbursed be To those that live and think no shame of me.
“Thou, Collatine, shalt oversee this will; How was I overseen that thou shalt see it! My blood shall wash the slander of mine ill; My life’s foul deed my life’s fair end shall free it. Faint not, faint heart, but stoutly say, ‘So be it.’ Yield to my hand; my hand shall conquer thee. Thou dead, both die, and both shall victors be.”
This plot of death when sadly she had laid, And wiped the brinish pearl from her bright eyes, With untuned tongue she hoarsely called her maid, Whose swift obedience to her mistress hies; For fleet-winged duty with thought’s feathers flies. Poor Lucrece’ cheeks unto her maid seem so As winter meads when sun doth melt their snow.
Her mistress she doth give demure good-morrow, With soft slow tongue, true mark of modesty, And sorts a sad look to her lady’s sorrow, For why her face wore sorrow’s livery, But durst not ask of her audaciously Why her two suns were cloud-eclipsed so, Nor why her fair cheeks over-washed with woe.
But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set, Each flower moistened like a melting eye, Even so the maid with swelling drops ’gan wet Her circled eyne, enforced by sympathy Of those fair suns set in her mistress’ sky, Who in a salt-waved ocean quench their light, Which makes the maid weep like the dewy night.