To jump up higher seemed, to mock the mind.

Here one man’s hand leaned on another’s head,

His nose being shadowed by his neighbour’s ear;

Here one being thronged bears back, all boll’n and red;

Another, smothered, 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 seemed they would debate with angry swords.

For much imaginary work was there;

Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,

That for Achilles’ image stood his spear

Gripped 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-besiegèd Troy

When their brave hope, bold Hector, marched to field,

Stood many Trojan mothers sharing joy

To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield;

And to their hope they such odd action yield

That through their light joy seemed to appear,

Like bright things stained, a kind of heavy fear.

And from the strand 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 then

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 stelled.

Many she sees where cares have carved some,

But none where all distress and dolour dwelled

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 anatomized

Time’s ruin, beauty’s wreck, and grim care’s reign.

Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised;

Of what she was no semblance did remain.

Her blue blood changed to black in every vein,

Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,

Showed life imprisoned 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

And 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.

‘Show 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;

Thine eye kindled the fire 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 someone

Become the public plague of many moe?

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 swoons,

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 checked 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 pencilled pensiveness and coloured sorrow.

She lends them words, and she their looks doth

borrow.

She throws her eyes about the painting round,

And who 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 showed content.

Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,

So mild that patience seemed to scorn his woes.

In him the painter laboured with his skill

To hide deceit and give the harmless show

An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,

A brow unbent that seemed 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 entertained a show so seeming just,

And therein so ensconced his secret evil

That jealousy itself could not mistrust

False creeping craft and perjury should thrust

Into so bright a day such blackfaced storms,

Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.

The well skilled workman this mild image drew