Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding,

Hind’ring their present fall by this dividing;

So his unhallowed haste her words delays,

And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.

Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally

While in his holdfast foot the weak mouse panteth.

Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly,

A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth.

His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth

No penetrable entrance to her plaining.

Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.

Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed

In the remorseless wrinkles of his face.

Her modest eloquence with sighs is mixed,

Which to her oratory adds more grace.

She puts the period often from his place,

And midst the sentence so her accent breaks

That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.

She conjures him by high almighty Jove,

By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship’s oath,

By her untimely tears, her husband’s love,

By holy human law and common troth,

By heaven and earth and all the power of both,

That to his borrowed bed he make retire,

And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.

Quoth she, ‘Reward not hospitality

With such black payment as thou hast pretended.

Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;

Mar not the thing that cannot be amended;

End thy ill aim before thy shoot be ended.

He is no woodman that doth bend his bow

To strike a poor unseasonable doe.

‘My husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me.

Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me;

Myself a weakling; do not then ensnare me.

Thou look’st not like deceit; do not deceive me.

My sighs like whirlwinds labour hence to heave thee.

If ever man were moved with woman’s moans,

Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans.

‘All which together, like a troubled ocean,

Beat at thy rocky and wreck-threat’ning heart

To soften it with their continual motion,

For stones dissolved to water do convert.

O, if no harder than a stone thou art,

Melt at my tears, and be compassionate.

Soft pity enters at an iron gate.

‘In Tarquin’s likeness I did entertain thee.

Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?

To all the host of heaven I complain me.

Thou wrong’st his honour, wound‘st his princely name.

Thou art not what thou seem’st, and if the same,

Thou seem’st not what thou art, a god, a king,

For kings like gods should govern everything.

‘How will thy shame be seeded in thine age

When thus thy vices bud before thy spring?

If in thy hope thou dar’st do such outrage,

What dar’st thou not when once thou art a king?

O be remembered, no outrageous thing

From vassal actors can be wiped away;

Then kings’ misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.

’This deed will make thee only loved for fear,

But happy monarchs still are feared for love.

With foul offenders thou perforce must bear

When they in thee the like offences prove.

If but for fear of this, thy will remove;

For princes are the glass, the school, the book

Where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.

‘And wilt thou be the school where lust shall learn?

Must he in thee read lectures of such shame?

Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern

Authority for sin, warrant for blame,

To privilege dishonour in thy name?

Thou back‘st reproach against long-living laud,

And mak’st fair reputation but a bawd.

‘Hast thou command? By him that gave it thee,

From a pure heart command thy rebel will.

Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,

For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.

Thy princely office how canst thou fulfil

When, patterned by thy fault, foul sin may say

He learned to sin, and thou didst teach the way?

‘Think but how vile a spectacle it were

To view thy present trespass in another.

Men’s faults do seldom to themselves appear;

Their own transgressions partially they smother.

This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother.

O, how are they wrapped in with infamies

That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!

‘To thee, to thee my heaved-up hands appeal,

Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier.

I sue for exiled majesty’s repeal;

Let him return, and flatt’ring thoughts retire.

His true respect will prison false desire,

And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,

That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.’

‘Have done,’ quoth he; ‘my uncontrolled tide

Turns not, but swells the higher by this let.

Small lights are soon blown out; huge fires abide,

And with the wind in greater fury fret.

The petty streams, that pay a daily debt

To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls’ haste

Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.’

‘Thou art,’ quoth she, ‘a sea, a sovereign king,

And lo, there falls into thy boundless flood

Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning,

Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood.

If all these petty ills shall change thy good,

Thy sea within a puddle’s womb is hearsed,