Page 2308 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

«I will not poison thee with my attaint,
Nor fold my fault in cleanly-coin’d excuses;
My sable ground of sin I will not paint,
To hide the truth of this false night’s abuses. [1075]

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-tun’d warble of her nightly sorrow, [1080]
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 cloister’d be. [1085]

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; [1090]
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
For day hath naught to do what’s done by night».

Thus cavils she with every thing she sees.

True grief is fond and testy as a child,
Who wayward once, his mood with naught agrees; [1095]
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild.
Continuance tames the one; the other wild,

Like an unpractis’d swimmer plunging still,
With too much labour drowns for want of skill.

So she deep-drenched in a sea of care, [1100]
Holds disputation with each thing she views,
And to herself all sorrow doth compare;

No object but her passion’s strength renews,
And as one shifts another straight ensues.