The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

Will couple my reproach to Tarquin’s shame.

  Feast-finding minstrels tuning my defame

  Will tie the hearers to attend each line,

  How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.

  ‘Let my good name, that senseless reputation,

  For Collatine’s dear love be kept unspotted;

  If that be made a theme for disputation,

  The branches of another root are rotted,

  And undeserved reproach to him allotted

  That is as clear from this attaint of mine

  As I ere this was pure to Collatine.

  ‘O unseen shame, invisible disgrace!

  O unfelt sore, crest-wounding private scar!

  Reproach is stamped in Collatinus’ face,

  And Tarquin’s eye may read the mot afar,

  How he in peace is wounded, not in war.

  Alas, how many bear such shameful blows,

  Which not themselves but he that gives them knows!

  ‘If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me,

  From me by strong assault it is bereft;

  My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee,

  Have no perfection of my summer left,

  But robbed and ransacked by injurious theft.

  In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept,

  And sucked the honey which thy chaste bee kept.

  ‘Yet am I guilty of thy honour’s wrack;

  Yet for thy honour did I entertain him.

  Coming from thee, I could not put him back,

  For it had been dishonour to disdain him.

  Besides, of weariness he did complain him,

  And talked of virtue—O unlooked-for evil,

  When virtue is profaned in such a devil!

  ‘Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud,

  Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests,

  Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud,

  Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts,

  Or kings be breakers of their own behests?

  But no perfection is so absolute

  That some impurity doth not pollute.

  ‘The aged man that coffers up his gold

  Is plagued with cramps, and gouts, and painful fits,

  And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold,

  But like still-pining Tantalus he sits,

  And useless barns the harvest of his wits,

  Having no other pleasure of his gain

  But torment that it cannot cure his pain.

  ‘So then he hath it when he cannot use it,

  And leaves it to be mastered by his young,

  Who in their pride do presently abuse it.

  Their father was too weak and they too strong

  To hold their cursèd-blessèd fortune long.

  The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours

  Even in the moment that we call them ours.

  ‘Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring,

  Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers,

  The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing,

  What virtue breeds, iniquity devours.

  We have no good that we can say is ours

  But ill-annexed opportunity

  Or kills his life or else his quality.

  ‘O opportunity, thy guilt is great!

  ’Tis thou that execut‘st the traitor’s treason;

  Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get;

  Whoever plots the sin, thou points the season.

  ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;

  And in thy shady cell where none may spy him

  Sits sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.

  ‘Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath,

  Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thawed,

  Thou smother’st honesty, thou murd’rest troth,

  Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd;

  Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud.

  Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,

  Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.

  ‘Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,

  Thy private feasting to a public fast,

  Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,

  Thy sugared tongue to bitter wormwood taste.

  Thy violent vanities can never last.

  How comes it then, vile opportunity,

  Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?

  ‘When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend,

  And bring him where his suit may be obtained?

  When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end,

  Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained,

  Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained?

  The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee,

  But they ne’er meet with opportunity.

  ‘The patient dies while the physician sleeps,

  The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds,

  Justice is feasting while the widow weeps,

  Advice is sporting while infection breeds.

  Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds.

  Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages,

  Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

  ‘When truth and virtue have to do with thee

  A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid.

  They buy thy help, but sin ne’er gives a fee;

  He gratis comes, and thou art well appaid

  As well to hear as grant what he hath said.

  My Collatine would else have come to me

  When Tarquin did, but he was stayed by thee.

  ‘Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,

  Guilty of perjury and subornation,

  Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,

  Guilty of incest, that abomination:

  An accessory by thine inclination

  To all sins past and all that are to come

  From the creation to the general doom.

  ‘Misshapen time, copesmate of ugly night,

  Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,

  Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,

  Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare,

  Thou nursest all, and murd’rest all that are.

  O hear me then, injurious shifting time;

  Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

  ‘Why hath thy servant opportunity

  Betrayed the hours thou gav’st me to repose,

  Cancelled my fortunes, and enchained me

  To endless date of never-ending woes?

  Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes,

  To eat up errors by opinion bred,

  Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

  ‘Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

  To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

  To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

  To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

  To wrong the wronger till he render right,

  To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours

  And smear with dust their glitt’ring golden towers;

  ‘To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,

  To feed oblivion with decay of things,

  To blot old books and alter their contents,

  To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,

  To dry the old oak’s sap and blemish springs,

  To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,

  And turn the giddy round of fortune’s wheel;

  ‘To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,

  To make the child a man, the man a child,

  To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

  To tame the unicorn and lion wild,

  To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,

  To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

  And waste huge stones with little water drops.

  �
��Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,

  Unless thou couldst return to make amends?

  One poor retiring minute in an age

  Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,

  Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends.

  O this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come

  back,

  I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack!

  ‘Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,

  With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight.

  Devise extremes beyond extremity

  To make him curse this cursed crimeful night.

  Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,

  And the dire thought of his committed evil

  Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

  ‘Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances;

  Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;

  Let there bechance him pitiful mischances

  To make him moan, but pity not his moans.

  Stone him with hardened hearts harder than stones,

  And let mild women to him lose their mildness,

  Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

  ‘Let him have time to tear his curlèd hair,

  Let him have time against himself to rave,

  Let him have time of time’s help to despair,

  Let him have time to live a loathed slave,

  Let him have time a beggar’s orts to crave,

  And time to see one that by alms doth live

  Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

  ‘Let him have time to see his friends his foes,

  And merry fools to mock at him resort.

  Let him have time to mark how slow time goes

  In time of sorrow, and how swift and short

  His time of folly and his time of sport;

  And ever let his unrecalling crime

  Have time to wail th’abusing of his time.

  ‘O time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

  Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill;

  At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

  Himself himself seek every hour to kill;

  Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill,

  For who so base would such an office have

  As sland’rous deathsman to so base a slave?

  ‘The baser is he, coming from a king,

  To shame his hope with deeds degenerate.

  The mightier man, the mightier is the thing

  That makes him honoured or begets him hate,

  For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

  The moon being clouded presently is missed,

  But little stars may hide them when they list.

  ‘The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire

  And unperceived fly with the filth away,

  But if the like the snow-white swan desire,

  The stain upon his silver down will stay.

  Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day.

  Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly,

  But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

  ‘Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools,

  Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!

  Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools,

  Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters,

  To trembling clients be you mediators;

  For me, I force not argument a straw,

  Since that my case is past the help of law.

  ‘In vain I rail at opportunity,

  At time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night.

  In vain I cavil with mine infamy,

  In vain I spurn at my confirmed despite.

  This helpless smoke of words doth me no right;

  The remedy indeed to do me good

  Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.

  ‘Poor hand, why quiver’st thou at this decree?

  Honour thyself to rid me of this shame,

  For if I die, my honour lives in thee,

  But if I live, thou liv’st in my defame.

  Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame,

  And wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe,

  Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.’

  This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth,

  To find some desp’rate instrument of death.

  But this, no slaughterhouse, no tool imparteth

  To make more vent for passage of her breath,

  Which thronging through her lips so vanisheth

  As smoke from Etna that in air consumes,

  Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.

  ‘In vain,’ quoth she, ‘I live, and seek in vain

  Some happy mean to end a hapless life.

  I feared by Tarquin’s falchion to be slain,

  Yet for the selfsame purpose seek a knife.

  But when I feared I was a loyal wife;

  So am I now—O no, that cannot be,

  Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

  ‘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 graft 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,r />
  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.

  ‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb

  Within your hollow-swelling feathered breasts,

  And in my hearing be you mute and dumb;

  My restless discord loves no stops nor rests;

  A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.

  Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears;

  Distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears.

  ‘Come, Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment,

  Make thy sad grove in my dishevelled hair.