And now this pale swan in her wat’ry nest
Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending:
“Few words,” quoth she, “shall fit the trespass best,
Where no excuse can give the fault amending.
In me more woes than words are now depending;
And my laments would be drawn out too long,
To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.
“Then be this all the task it hath to say:
Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed
A stranger came, and on that pillow lay
Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head;
And what wrong else may be imagined
By foul enforcement might be done to me,
From that, alas, thy Lucrece is not free.
“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.
“‘For some hard-favoured 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,
I should not live to speak another word;
So should my shame still rest upon record,
And never be forgot in mighty Rome
The adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom.
“Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,
And far the weaker with so strong a fear.
My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak;
No rightful plea might plead for justice there.
His scarlet lust came evidence to swear
That my poor beauty had purloined his eyes;
And when the judge is robbed, the prisoner dies.
“O, teach me how to make mine own excuse,
Or at the least, this refuge let me find:
Though my gross blood be stained with this abuse,
Immaculate and spotless is my mind;
That was not forced; that never was inclined
To accessary yieldings, but still pure
Doth in her poisoned closet yet endure.”
Lo, here the hopeless merchant of this loss,
With head declined and voice dammed up with woe,
With sad set eyes and wretched arms across,
From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow
The grief away that stops his answer so.
But wretched as he is, he strives in vain;
What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.
As through an arch the violent roaring tide
Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste,
Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride
Back to the strait that forced him on so fast,
In rage sent out, recalled in rage, being past:
Even so his sighs, his sorrows make a saw,
To push grief on, and back the same grief draw.
Which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth,
And his untimely frenzy thus awaketh:
“Dear lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth
Another power; no flood by raining slaketh.
My woe too sensible thy passion maketh
More feeling-painful. Let it then suffice
To drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes.