“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.