Who like a late-sack'd island vastly 1 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 putrefied.
⚫ 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 predecease progenitors,
We are their offspring, and they none of ours.
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 bareboned death by time outwoin;
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 no
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 see
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
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 poor 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, Which she too early and too late 1 hath spill'd.'
Woe, woe!' quoth Collatine; she was my wife;
I owed her, and 'tis mine that she hath kill'd.'
My daughter!' and 'My wife!' with clamors
The dispersed air, who, holding Lucrece' life, Answer'd their cries, My daughter!' and 'My wife!'
Brutus, who pluck'd the knife from Lucrece' side,
Seeing such emulation in their woe,
Began to clothe his wit in state and pride,
Burying in Lucrece' wound his folly's show.
He with the Romans was esteemed so
As silly-jeering idiots are with kings,
For sportive words, and uttering foolish things:
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