Page 2328 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

That blow did bail it from the deep unrest [1725]
Of that polluted prison where it breathed.
Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed
Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly

Life’s lasting date from cancell’d destiny.

Stone-still, astonish’d with this deadly deed, [1730]
Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew,
Till Lucrece’ father that beholds her bleed,

Himself on her self-slaughter’d body threw,
And from the purple fountain Brutus drew
The murd’rous knife, and as it left the place, [1735]
Her blood in poor revenge held it in chase.

And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide

In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
Circles her body in on every side,
Who like a late-sack’d island vastly stood [1740]
Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.
Some of her blood still pure and red remain’d,

And some look’d black, and that false Tarquin stain’d.

About the mourning and congealed face
Of that black blood a watery rigol goes, [1745]
Which seems to weep upon the tainted place;

And ever since, as pitying Lucrece’ woes,
Corrupted blood some watery token shows,
And blood untainted still doth red abide,
Blushing at that which is so putrified. [1750]

«Daughter, dear daughter», old Lucretius cries,

«That life was mine which thou hast here deprived;
If in the child the father’s image lies,
Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived?
Thou wast not to this end from me derived: [1755]

If children predecease progenitors,
We are their offspring, and they none of ours.