Let him have time of time’s help to despair,

Let him have time to live a loathed slave,

Let him have time a beggar’s orts to crave,

And time to see one that by alms doth live

Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

‘Let him have time to see his friends his foes,

And merry fools to mock at him resort.

Let him have time to mark how slow time goes

In time of sorrow, and how swift and short

His time of folly and his time of sport;

And ever let his unrecalling crime

Have time to wail th’abusing of his time.

‘O time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

Teach me to curse him that thou taught’st this ill;

At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

Himself himself seek every hour to kill;

Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill,

For who so base would such an office have

As sland’rous deathsman to so base a slave?

‘The baser is he, coming from a king,

To shame his hope with deeds degenerate.

The mightier man, the mightier is the thing

That makes him honoured or begets him hate,

For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

The moon being clouded presently is missed,

But little stars may hide them when they list.

‘The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire

And unperceived fly with the filth away,

But if the like the snow-white swan desire,

The stain upon his silver down will stay.

Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day.

Gnats are unnoted wheresoe’er they fly,

But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

‘Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools,

Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!

Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools,

Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters,

To trembling clients be you mediators;

For me, I force not argument a straw,

Since that my case is past the help of law.

‘In vain I rail at opportunity,

At time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night.

In vain I cavil with mine infamy,

In vain I spurn at my confirmed despite.

This helpless smoke of words doth me no right;

The remedy indeed to do me good

Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.

‘Poor hand, why quiver’st thou at this decree?

Honour thyself to rid me of this shame,

For if I die, my honour lives in thee,

But if I live, thou liv’st in my defame.

Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame,

And wast afeard to scratch her wicked foe,

Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.’

This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth,

To find some desp’rate instrument of death.

But this, no slaughterhouse, no tool imparteth

To make more vent for passage of her breath,

Which thronging through her lips so vanisheth

As smoke from Etna that in air consumes,

Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.

‘In vain,’ quoth she, ‘I live, and seek in vain

Some happy mean to end a hapless life.

I feared by Tarquin’s falchion to be slain,

Yet for the selfsame purpose seek a knife.

But when I feared I was a loyal wife;

So am I now—O no, that cannot be,

Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

‘O, that is gone for which I sought to live,

And therefore now I need not fear to die.

To clear this spot by death, at least I give

A badge of fame to slander’s livery,

A dying life to living infamy.

Poor helpless help, the treasure stol’n away,

To burn the guiltless casket where it lay!

‘Well, well, dear Collatine, thou shalt not know

The stained taste of violated troth.

I will not wrong thy true affection so

To flatter thee with an infringed oath.

This bastard graft shall never come to growth.

He shall not boast, who did thy stock pollute,

That thou art doting father of his fruit,

‘Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,

Nor laugh with his companions at thy state.

But thou shalt know thy int’rest was not bought

Basely with gold, but stol’n from forth thy gate.

For me, I am the mistress of my fate,

And with my trespass never will dispense

Till life to death acquit my forced offence.

‘I will not poison thee with my attaint,

Nor fold my fault in cleanly coined excuses.

My sable ground of sin I will not paint

To hide the truth of this false night’s abuses.

My tongue shall utter all; mine eyes, like sluices,

As from a mountain spring that feeds a dale

Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.’

By this, lamenting Philomel had ended

The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow,

And solemn night with slow sad gait descended

To ugly hell, when lo, the blushing morrow

Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow.

But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,

And therefore still in night would cloistered be.

Revealing day through every cranny spies,

And seems to point her out where she sits weeping;

To whom she sobbing speaks, ‘O eye of eyes,

Why pry’st thou through my window? Leave thy

peeping,

Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping,

Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,