'For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight,
With shining falchion in my chamber came
A creeping creature, with a flaming light,
And softly cried "Awake, thou Roman dame,
And entertain my love; else lasting shame

On thee and thine this night I will inflict,
If thou my love's desire do contradict. 1631

"For some hard-favour'd groom of thine," quoth he,

"Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will, I'll murder straight, and then I'll slaughter thee

And swear I found you where you did fulfil
The loathsome act of lust, and so did kill

The lechers in their deed: this act will be
My fame and thy perpetual infamy."

With this, I did begin to start and cry;
And then against my heart he sets his sword,
Swearing, unless I took all patiently, 1641
I should not live to speak another word;
So should my shame still rest upon record,
And never be forgot in mighty Rome
Th' adulterate death of Lucrece and her

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 says,

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 sheathed 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 winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly

Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.

Stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed, Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew; 1731 Till Lucrece' father, that beholds her bleed, Himself on her self-slaughter'd 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-sack'd island, vastly stood
Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
Some of her blood still pure and red
remain'd,

And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd.

About the mourning and congealed face
Of that black blood a watery rigol 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 putrified. 1750

'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 pre-decease progenitors,
We
We are their offspring, and they none of our

'Poor broken 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 out

worn:

O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn. And shiver'd all the beauty of my glass, That I no more can see what once I was!

O time, cease thou thy course and last n 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 Lucrece, live again and se Thy father die, and not thy father thee!'

By this, starts Collatine as from a dream, And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place; And then in key-cold Lucrece' 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 revenged on her death.

The deep vexation of his inward soul 1779 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 Weak words, so thick come in his poo: heart's aid,

That no man could distinguish what he said.

Yet sometime 'Tarquin' was pronounced plain. But through his teeth, as if the name he tore This windy tempest, till it blow up rain, Held back his sorrow's tide, to make it more: At last it rains, and busy winds give o'er: Then son and father weep with equal strife Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.

The one doth call her his, the other his, Yet neither may possess the claim they lay. The father says 'She's mine.' 'O, mine she is Replies her husband: 'do not take away My sorrow's interest; let no mourner say

He weeps for her, for she was only mine, And only must be wail'd by Collatine.'

'O,' quoth Lucretius, 'I did give that life 180 Which she too early and too late hath spill'd'

As silly-jeering idiots are with kings,
For sportive words and uttering foolish
things:

But now he throws that shallow habit by,
Wherein deep policy did him disguise;
And arm'd his long-hid wits advisedly,
To check the tears in Collatinus' eyes.
Thou wronged lord of Rome,' quoth he,
*arise:

Let my unsounded self, supposed a fool,
Now set thy long-experienced wit to school.

Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds?

3 it revenge to give thyself a blow

or his foul act by whom thy fair wife bleeds? uch childish humour from weak minds proceeds:

Thy wretched wife mistook the matter so, To slay herself, that should have slain her foe.

Courageous Roman, do not steep thy heart In such relenting dew of lamentations; 1829 But kneel with me and help to bear thy part, To rouse our Roman gods with invocations, That they will suffer these abominations,

Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced,

By our strong arms from forth her fair streets chased.

'Now, by the Capitol that we adore, And by this chaste blood so unjustly stain'd, By heaven's fair sun that breeds the fat earth's store,

By all our country rights in Rome maintain'd, And by chaste Lucrece' soul that late complain'd

Her wrongs to us, and by this bloody knife, We will revenge the death of this true wife.'

This said, he struck his hand upon his breast,
And kiss'd the fatal knife, to end his vow;
And to his protestation urged the rest,
Who, wondering at him, did his words allow:
Then jointly to the ground their knees they
bow;

And that deep vow, which Brutus made before,

He doth again repeat, and that they swore.

When they had sworn to this advised doom, They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence;

To show her bleeding body thorough Rome,
And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence:
Which being done with speedy diligence,

The Romans plausibly did give consent
To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.

1.

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial
fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

II.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's

use,

If thou couldst answer "This fair child of mine Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,' Proving his beauty by succession thine!

This were to be new made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

III.

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend
And being frank she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd wit

thee,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distill'd, though they with win-

ter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

VI.

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some
place

With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.
That use is not forbidden usury

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do, if thou shouldst
depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

VII.

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Ooth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from highmost pitch, with weary

car,

Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day, The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are From his low tract and look another way:

So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon, Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.

VIII.

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lovest thou that which thou receivest 1 not gladly,

Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear, They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering, Resembling sire and child and happy mother

Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.'

IX.

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consumest thyself in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shall hap to die,
The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes her husband's shape in
mind.

Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it.

No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murderous shame commits.

X.

For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to

any,

Who for thyself art so unprovident.
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lovest is most evident;
For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to con-
spire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
O, change thy thought, that I
may change

my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:

As

Make thee another self, for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

XI.

fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest

In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest

Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth

convertest.

Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase;
Without this, folly, age and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world

away.