Page 2299 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

«With rotten damps ravish the morning air;
Let their exhal’d unwholesome breaths make sick
The life of purity, the supreme fair, [780]
Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick.

And let thy musty vapours march so thick,
That in their smoky ranks his smother’d light
May set at noon and make perpetual night.

«Were Tarquin night, as he is but night’s child, [785]

The silver-shining queen he would distain;
Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defil’d,
Through night’s black bosom should not peep again.
So should I have co-partners in my pain;
And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage, [790]

As palmers’ chat makes short their pilgrimage.

«Where now I have no one to blush with me,
To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,
To mask their brows and hide their infamy;
But I alone, alone must sit and pine, [795]

Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine,
Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,
Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.

«O night, thou furnace of foul reeking smoke,

Let not the jealous day behold that face [800]
Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
Immodestly lies martyr’d with disgrace!
Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,

That all the faults which in thy reign are made
May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade. [805]

«Make me not object to the tell-tale day:
The light will show character’d in my brow
The story of sweet chastity’s decay,

The impious breach of holy wedlock vow;
Yea, the illiterate that know not how [810]