But, lady, if your maid may be so bold,
She would request to know your heaviness."
"O peace!" quoth Lucrece; "if it should be told,
The repetition cannot make it less;
For more it is than I can well express:

And that deep torture may be call'd a hell,
When more is felt than one hath power to tell.

Go, get me hither paper, ink, and pen-
Yet save that labor, for I have them here.
What should I say?-One of my husband's men
Bid thou be ready, by and by, to bear
A letter to my lord, my love, my dear;

Bid him with speed prepare to carry it:

The cause craves haste, and it will soon be writ." Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write, First hovering o'er the paper with her quill: Conceit and grief an eager combat fight; What wit sels down is blotted straight with will; This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill:

Much like a press of people at a door, Throng her inventions, which shall be before. At last she thus begins: "Thou worthy lord Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee, Health to thy person! next vouchsafe to afford (If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see) Some present speed to come and visit me:

So I commend me from our house in grief;
My woes are tedious, though my words are brief."
Here folds she up the tenor of her woe,
Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly.
By this short schedule Collatine may know
Her grief, but not her grief's true quality;
She dares not thereof make discovery,

Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse,
Ere she with blood hath stain'd her stain'd ex-

To shun this blot, she would not blot the letter With words, till action might become them better. To see sad sights moves more than hear them told; For then the eye interprets to the ear The heavy motion that it doth behold, When every part a part of woe doth bear. 'Tis but a part of sorrow that we hear:

Deep sounds make lesser noise than shallow fords,

And sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.

Her letter now is seal'd, and on it writ, "At Ardea to my lord with more than haste: The post attends, and she delivers it, Charging the sour-faced groom to hie as fast As lagging fowls before the northern blast. Speed more than speed but dull and slow she deems:

Extremity still urgeth such extremes.
The homely villein court'sies to her low;
And blushing on her, with a steadfast eye
Receives the scroll, without or yea or no,
And forth with bashful innocence doth hie.
But they whose guilt within their bosons lie,
Imagine every eye beholds their blame;
For Lucrece thought he blush'd to see her shame;
When, silly groom! God wot, it was defect
Of spirit, life, and bold audacity.

Such harmless creatures have a true respect
To talk in deeds, while others saucily
Promise more speed, but do it leisurely:

Even so, this pattern of the worn-out age
Pawn'd honest looks, but laid no words to gage.
His kindled duty kindled her mistrust,
That two red fires in both their faces blazed;
She thought he blush'd as knowing Tarquin's lust,
And, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed;
Her earnest eye did make him more amazed:

The more she saw the blood his cheeks replenish. The more she thought he spied in her some blemish.

But long she thinks till he return again,
And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone.
The weary time she cannot entertain,
For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, and groan:
So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan,

That she her plaints a little while doth stay,
Pausing for means to mourn some newer way.
At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece
Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy;
Before the which is drawn the power of Greece,
For Helen's rape the city to destroy,
Threat'ning cloud-kissing lion with annoy;

Which the conceited painter drew so proud, As heaven (it seem'd) to kiss the turrets bow'd. A thousand lamentable objects there, In scorn of Nature, Art gave lifeless life: Many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear, Shed for the slaughtered husband by the wife. The red blood reek'd to show the painter's strife; And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. There might you see the laboring pioneer Begrim'd with sweat, and smeared all with dust; And from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men through loop-holes thrust, Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust:

Such sweet observance in this work was had.
That one might see those far-off eyes look sad.

In great commanders grace and majesty
You might behold, triumphing in their faces;
In youth, quick bearing and dexterity;
And here and there the painter interlaces
Pale cowards, marching on with trembling paces;
Which heartless peasants did so well resemble,
That one would swear he saw them quake and
tremble.

In Ajax and Ulysses, O what art
Of physiognomy might one behold!
The face of either 'cipher'd either's heart;
Their face their manners most expressly told:
In Ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigor roll'd;

But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent
Show'd deep regard and smiling government.
There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand,
Making such sober action with his hand
As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight;
That it beguil'd attention, charm'd the sight:
In speech, it seem'd, his beard all silver white,
Wagg'd up and down, and from his lips did fly
Thin winding breath, which purl'd up to the sky
About him were a press of gaping faces,
Which seem'd to swallow up his sound advice;
All jointly listening, but with several graces,
As if some mermaid did their cars entice;
Some high, some low, the painter was so nice:
The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
To jump up higher seem'd to mock the mind.
Here one man's hand lean'd on another's head,
His nose being shadow'd by his neighbor's ear;
Here one being throng'd bears back, all boll'n and
red;

Another, smother'd, seems to pelt and swear;
And in their rage such signs of rage they bear,
As, but for loss of Nestor's golden words,
It seem'd they would debate with angry swords.
For much imaginary work was there;
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,s
That for Achilles' image stood his spear,
Grip'd in an armed hand; himself, behind,
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,
Stood for the whole to be imagined.
And from the walls of strong-besieged Troy,
When their brave hope, bold Hector, march'd to
field,

Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy
To see their youthful sons btight weapons wield;
And to their hope they such add action yield,

That through their light joy seemed to appear
(Like bright things stain'd) a kind of heavy fear
And, from the strond of Dardan where they fought,
To Simois' reedy banks the red blood ran,

Whose waves to imitate the battle sought
With swelling ridges; and their ranks began
To break upon the galled shore, and than9
Retire again, till meeting greater ranks
They join, and shoot their foam at Simois' banks.
To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come,
To find a face where all distress is stel'd.
Many she sees where cares have carved some,
But none where all distress and dolor dwell'd,
Till she despairing Hecuba beheld

Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes, Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies. In her the painter had anatomiz'd

Time's ruin, beauty's wrack, and grim care's reign;
Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguis'd;
Of what she was no semblance did remain:
Her blue blood, chang'd to black in every vein,
Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had
fed,

Show'd life imprison'd in a body dead.

On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes,
And shapes her sorrow to the beldame's woes,
Who nothing wants to answer her but cries,
The bitter words to ban her cruel foes:
The painter was no god to lend her those;

And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong,
To give her so much grief, and not a tongue.
"Poor instrument," quoth she, "without a sound,
I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue:
And drop sweet balm in Priam's painted wound,
And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong,
And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long;
And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes
Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.
Shew me the strumpet that began this stir,
That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur
This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear;
Thy eye kindled the tire that burneth here:

And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,
The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter, die.
Why should the private pleasure of some one
Become the public plague of many mo?!
Let sin, alone committed, light alone
Upon his head that hath transgressed so.
Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
For one's offence why should so many fall,
To plague a private sin in general?
Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds;
Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,
And one man's lust these many lives confounds:
Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame, and not with
fire."

Here feelingly she weeps Troy's painted woes:
For sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell,

Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
Then little strength rings out the doleful knell:
So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell

To pencill'd pensiveness and color'd sorrow: She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow.

She throws her eyes about the painting, round,
And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament:
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent;
His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content:
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.
In him the painter labor'd with his skill
To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing Still,
A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe;
Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so

That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.
But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
He entertain'd a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconced his secret evil,
That jealousy itself could not mistrust
• Then.

1 More.

False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust
Into so bright a day such black-faced storms,
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.
The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
For perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story
The credulous old Priam after slew;
Whose words, like wildfire, burnt the shining glory
Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,
And little stars shot from their fixed places,
When their glass fell wherein they view'd their
faces.

This picture she advisedly perus'd,
Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abus'd,
And chid the painter for his wondrous skill;
So fair a form lodg'd not a mind so ill;
And still on him she gaz'd, and gazing still,
Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,
That she concludes the picture was belied.

"It cannot be," quoth she, "that so much guile"(She would have said) "can lurk in suen a look ;” But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue "can lurk" from "cannot" took;..

"It cannot be" she in that sense forsook,

And turn'd it thus: "It cannot be, I find,
But such a face should bear a wicked mind:

For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,
So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
(As if with grief or travail he had fainted,)
To me came Tarquin armed; so beguil'd
With outward honesty, but yet defil'd

With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,
So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.
Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds.
Priam, why art thou old, and yet not wise?
For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds;
His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds:
Those round clear pearls of his that move thy pity
Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.
Such devils steal effects from lightless hell;
For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell;
These contraries such unity do hold
Only to flatter fools, and make them bold:

So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter,,
That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.'

Here, all enrag'd, such passion her assails,
That patience is quite beaten from her breast.
She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
Comparing him to that unhappy guest,
Whose deed hath made herself herself detest;
At last she smilingly with this gives o'er;
"Fool! fool!" quoth she, "his wounds will not
be sore.'

Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,
And time doth weary time with her complaining.
She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,
And both she thinks too long with her remaining:
Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining.
Though woe be heavy yet it seldom sleeps;
And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.
Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought,
That she with painted images hath spent;
Being from the feeling of her own grief brought
By deep surmise of others' detriment;
Losing her woes in shows of discontent,
It easeth some, though none it ever cured,
To think their dolor others have endur'd.

But now the mindful messenger, come back,
Brings home his lord and other company;
Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black;
And round about her tear-distained eye,
Blue circles stream'd, like rainbows in the sky.
These water-galls in her dim element
Foretell new storms to those already spent.

Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
Amazedly in her sad face he stares:

Her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw,
Her lively color kill'd with deadly cares.
He hath no power to ask her how she fares,