Page 2326 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Lo here the hopeless merchant of this loss, [1660]
With head declin’d and voice damm’d 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: [1665]
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 forc’d him on so fast, [1670]
In rage sent out, recall’d 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: [1675]
«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. [1680]

«And for my sake, when I might charm thee so,

For she that was thy Lucrece, now attend me:
Be suddenly revenged on my foe, −
Thine, mine, his own. Suppose thou dost defend me
From what is past: the help that thou shalt lend me [1685]

Comes all too late, yet let the traitor die,
For sparing justice feeds iniquity.

«But ere I name him, you fair lords», quoth she,
Speaking to those that came with Collatine,
«Shall plight your honourable faiths to me, [1690]

With swift pursuit to ’venge this wrong of mine;
For ’tis a meritorious fair design