Page 2327 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

To chase injustice with revengeful arms:
Knights by their oaths should right poor ladies’ harms».

At this request, with noble disposition [1695]
Each present lord began to promise aid,
As bound in knighthood to her imposition,

Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray’d;
But she that yet her sad task hath not said,
The protestation stops. «O speak», quoth she: [1700]

«How may this forced stain be wip’d from me?

«What is the quality of my offence,

Being constrain’d with dreadful circumstance?
May my pure mind with the foul act dispense,
My low-declined honour to advance? [1705]

May any terms acquit me from this chance?
The poisoned fountain clears itself again,
And why not I from this compelled stain?»

With this they all at once began to say,
Her body’s stain her mind untainted clears, [1710]

While with a joyless smile she turns away
The face, that map which deep impression bears
Of hard misfortune, carv’d in it with tears.
«No, no», quoth she, «no dame hereafter living

By my excuse shall claim excuse’s giving». [1715]

Here with a sigh as if her heart would break,
She throws forth Tarquin’s name. «He, he», she says,
But more than «he» her poor tongue could not speak;
Till after many accents and delays,

Untimely breathings, sick and short assays, [1720]
She utters this: «He, he, fair lords, tis he,
That guides this hand to give this wound to me».

Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast
A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed;