For day hath naught to do what’s done by night.’

Thus cavils she with everything she sees:

True grief is fond and testy as a child

Who, wayward once, his mood with naught agrees;

Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild.

Continuance tames the one; the other wild,

Like an unpractised swimmer plunging still,

With too much labour drowns for want of skill.

So she, deep drenched in a sea of care,

Holds disputation with each thing she views,

And to herself all sorrow doth compare;

No object but her passion’s strength renews,

And as one shifts, another straight ensues.

Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words,

Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords.

The little birds that tune their morning’s joy

Make her moans mad with their sweet melody,

For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy;

Sad souls are slain in merry company;

Grief best is pleased with grief’s society.

True sorrow then is feelingly sufficed

When with like semblance it is sympathized.

’Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;

He ten times pines that pines beholding food;

To see the salve doth make the wound ache more;

Great grief grieves most at that would do it good;

Deep woes.roll forward like a gentle flood

Who, being stopped, the bounding banks o’erflows.

Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows.

‘You mocking birds,’ quoth she, ‘your tunes entomb

Within your hollow-swelling feathered breasts,

And in my hearing be you mute and dumb;

My restless discord loves no stops nor rests;

A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.

Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears;

Distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears.

‘Come, Philomel, that sing’st of ravishment,

Make thy sad grove in my dishevelled hair.

As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,

So I at each sad strain will strain a tear,

And with deep groans the diapason bear;

For burden-wise I’ll hum on Tarquin still,

While thou on Tereus descants better skill.

‘And whiles against a thorn thou bear’st thy part

To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,

To imitate thee well, against my heart

Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye,

Who if it wink shall thereon fall and die.

These means, as frets upon an instrument,

Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.

‘And for, poor bird, thou sing’st not in the day,

As shaming any eye should thee behold,

Some dark deep desert seated from the way,

That knows not parching heat nor freezing cold,

Will we find out, and there we will unfold

To creatures stern sad tunes to change their kinds.

Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.’

As the poor frighted deer that stands at gaze,

Wildly determining which way to fly,

Or one encompassed with a winding maze,

That cannot tread the way out readily,

So with herself is she in mutiny,

To live or die which of the twain were better

When life is shamed and death reproach’s debtor.

‘To kill myself,’ quoth she, ‘alack, what were it

But with my body my poor soul’s pollution?

They that lose half with greater patience bear it

Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion.

That mother tries a merciless conclusion

Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one

Will slay the other and be nurse to none.

‘My body or my soul, which was the dearer,

When the one pure the other made divine?

Whose love of either to myself was nearer,

When both were kept for heaven and Collatine?

Ay me, the bark peeled from the lofty pine

His leaves will wither and his sap decay;

So must my soul, her bark being peeled away.

‘Her house is sacked, her quiet interrupted,

Her mansion battered by the enemy,

Her sacred temple spotted, spoiled, corrupted,

Grossly engirt with daring infamy.

Then let it not be called impiety

If in this blemished fort I make some hole

Through which I may convey this troubled soul.

‘Yet die I will not till my Collatine

Have heard the cause of my untimely death,

That he may vow in that sad hour of mine

Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.

My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath,

Which by him tainted shall for him be spent,

And as his due writ in my testament.

‘My honour I’ll bequeath unto the knife

That wounds my body so dishonoured.

’Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life;

The one will live, the other being dead.

So of shame’s ashes shall my fame be bred,

For in my death I murder shameful scorn;

My shame so dead, mine honour is new born.

‘Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,

What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?

My resolution, love, shall be thy boast,

By whose example thou revenged mayst be.

How Tarquin must be used, read it in me.

Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe;

And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so.

‘This brief abridgement of my will I make:

My soul and body to the skies and ground;