For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story

The credulous old Priam after slew;

Whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory

Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

And little stars shot from their fixed places

When their glass fell wherein they viewed their faces.

This picture she advisedly perused,

And chid the painter for his wondrous skill,

Saying some shape in Sinon’s was abused,

So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill;

And still on him she gazed, and gazing still,

Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied

That she concludes the picture was belied.

‘It cannot be,’ quoth she, ‘that so much guile’—

She would have said ‘can lurk in such a look’,

But Tarquin’s shape came in her mind the while,

And from her tongue ‘can lurk’ from ‘cannot’ took.

‘It cannot be’ she in that sense forsook,

And turned it thus: ‘It cannot be, I find,

But such a face should bear a wicked mind.

‘For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,

So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,

As if with grief or travail he had fainted,

To me came Tarquin armed, too beguiled

With outward honesty, but yet defiled

With inward vice. As Priam him did cherish,

So did I Tarquin, so my Troy did perish.

‘Look, look, how list’ning Priam wets his eyes

To see those borrowed tears that Sinon sheds.

Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise?

For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds.

His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds.

Those round clear pearls of his that move thy pity

Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.

‘Such devils steal effects from lightless hell,

For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,

And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell.

These contraries such unity do hold

Only to flatter fools and make them bold;

So Priam’s trust false Sinon’s tears doth flatter

That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.’

Here, all enraged, such passion her assails

That patience is quite beaten from her breast.

She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,

Comparing him to that unhappy guest

Whose deed hath made herself herself detest.

At last she smilingly with this gives o‘er:

‘Fool, fool,’ quoth she, ‘his wounds will not be sore.’

Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,

And time doth weary time with her complaining.

She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,

And both she thinks too long with her remaining.

Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining.

Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps,

And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.

Which all this time hath overslipped her thought

That she with painted images hath spent,

Being from the feeling of her own grief brought

By deep surmise of others’ detriment,

Losing her woes in shows of discontent.

It easeth some, though none it ever cured,

To think their dolour others have endured.

But now the mindful messenger come back

Brings home his lord and other company,

Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black,

And round about her tear-distained eye

Blue circles streamed, like rainbows in the sky.

These water-galls in her dim element

Foretell new storms to those already spent.

Which when her sad beholding husband saw,

Amazedly in her sad face he stares.

Her eyes, though sod in tears, looked red and raw,

Her lively colour killed with deadly cares.

He hath no power to ask her how she fares.

Both stood like old acquaintance in a trance,

Met far from home, wond’ring each other’s chance.

At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,

And thus begins: ‘What uncouth ill event

Hath thee befall’n, that thou dost trembling stand?

Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent?

Why art thou thus attired in discontent?

Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,

And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.’

Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire

Ere once she can discharge one word of woe.

At length addressed to answer his desire,

She modestly prepares to let them know

Her honour is ta’en prisoner by the foe,

While Collatine and his consorted lords

With sad attention long to hear her words.

And now this pale swan in her wat‘ry nest

Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.

‘Few words,’ quoth she, ‘shall fit the trespass best,

Where no excuse can give the fault amending.

In me more woes than words are now depending,

And my laments would be drawn out too long

To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.

‘Then be this all the task it hath to say:

Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed

A stranger came, and on that pillow lay

Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head;

And what wrong else may be imagined

By foul enforcement might be done to me,

From that, alas, thy Lucrece is not free.

‘For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight

With shining falchion in my chamber came

A creeping creature with a flaming light,

And softly cried, “Awake, thou Roman dame,