There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand,
As ’twere encouraging the Greeks to fight,
Making such sober action with his hand
That it beguiled attention, charmed the sight.
In speech, it seemed, his beard, all silver white,
Wagged up and down, and from his lips did fly
Thin winding breath, which purled up to the sky.
About him were a press of gaping faces,
Which seemed to swallow up his sound advice,
All jointly list’ning, but with several graces,
As if some mermaid did their ears entice;
Some high, some low, the painter was so nice.
The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
To jump up higher seemed to mock the mind.
Here one man’s hand leaned on another’s head,
His nose being shadowed by his neighbour’s ear;
Here one being thronged bears back, all boll’n and red;
Another smothered seems to pelt and swear;
And in their rage such signs of rage they bear
As, but for loss of Nestor’s golden words,
It seemed they would debate with angry swords.
For much imaginary work was there,
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,
That for Achilles’ image stood his spear
Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind,
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind.
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined.
And from the walls of strong-besieged Troy,
When their brave hope, bold Hector, marched to field,
Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy
To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield;
And to their hope they such odd action yield
That through their light joy seemed to appear,
Like bright things stained, a kind of heavy fear.
And from the strand of Dardan, where they fought,
To Simois’ reedy banks the red blood ran,
Whose waves to imitate the battle sought
With swelling ridges, and their ranks began
To break upon the galled shore, and then
Retire again till, meeting greater ranks,
They join, and shoot their foam at Simois’ banks.
To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,
To find a face where all distress is stelled.
Many she sees where cares have carved some,
But none where all distress and dolour dwelled,
Till she despairing Hecuba beheld,
Staring on Priam’s wounds with her old eyes,
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus’ proud foot lies.
In her the painter had anatomized
Time’s ruin, beauty’s wrack, and grim care’s reign.
Her cheeks with chops and wrinkles were disguised;
Of what she was no semblance did remain.
Her blue blood, changed to black in every vein,
Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,
Showed life imprisoned in a body dead.
On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes,
And shapes her sorrow to the beldam’s woes,
Who nothing wants to answer her but cries
And bitter words to ban her cruel foes.
The painter was no god to lend her those,
And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,
To give her so much grief, and not a tongue.
“Poor instrument,” quoth she, “without a sound,
I’ll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue,
And drop sweet balm in Priam’s painted wound,
And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong,
And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long,
And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes
Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.