Or kills his life or else his quality.

‘O opportunity, thy guilt is great!

’Tis thou that execut‘st the traitor’s treason;

Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get;

Whoever plots the sin, thou points the season.

’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;

And in thy shady cell where none may spy him

Sits sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.

‘Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath,

Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thawed,

Thou smother’st honesty, thou murd’rest troth,

Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd;

Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud.

Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,

Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief.

‘Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,

Thy private feasting to a public fast,

Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,

Thy sugared tongue to bitter wormwood taste.

Thy violent vanities can never last.

How comes it then, vile opportunity,

Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?

‘When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend,

And bring him where his suit may be obtained?

When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end,

Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained,

Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained?

The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee,

But they ne’er meet with opportunity.

‘The patient dies while the physician sleeps,

The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds,

Justice is feasting while the widow weeps,

Advice is sporting while infection breeds.

Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds.

Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages,

Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

‘When truth and virtue have to do with thee

A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid.

They buy thy help, but sin ne’er gives a fee;

He gratis comes, and thou art well appaid

As well to hear as grant what he hath said.

My Collatine would else have come to me

When Tarquin did, but he was stayed by thee.

‘Guilty thou art of murder and of theft,

Guilty of perjury and subornation,

Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift,

Guilty of incest, that abomination:

An accessory by thine inclination

To all sins past and all that are to come

From the creation to the general doom.

‘Misshapen time, copesmate of ugly night,

Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,

Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,

Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare,

Thou nursest all, and murd’rest all that are.

O hear me then, injurious shifting time;

Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

‘Why hath thy servant opportunity

Betrayed the hours thou gav’st me to repose,

Cancelled my fortunes, and enchained me

To endless date of never-ending woes?

Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes,

To eat up errors by opinion bred,

Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

‘Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

To wrong the wronger till he render right,

To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours

And smear with dust their glitt’ring golden towers;

‘To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,

To feed oblivion with decay of things,

To blot old books and alter their contents,

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,

To dry the old oak’s sap and blemish springs,

To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,

And turn the giddy round of fortune’s wheel;

‘To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,

To make the child a man, the man a child,

To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

To tame the unicorn and lion wild,

To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,

To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,

And waste huge stones with little water drops.

‘Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,

Unless thou couldst return to make amends?

One poor retiring minute in an age

Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,

Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends.

O this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come

back,

I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack!

‘Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,

With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight.

Devise extremes beyond extremity

To make him curse this cursed crimeful night.

Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,

And the dire thought of his committed evil

Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

‘Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances;

Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;

Let there bechance him pitiful mischances

To make him moan, but pity not his moans.

Stone him with hardened hearts harder than stones,

And let mild women to him lose their mildness,

Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

‘Let him have time to tear his curlèd hair,

Let him have time against himself to rave,