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 cloist'red 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 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 mood with nought 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 dishevelled 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.
