Part 3

Lines 421–630

421 As the grim lion fawneth o'er his prey,
422 Sharp hunger by the conquest satisfied,
423 So o'er this sleeping soul doth Tarquin stay,
424 His rage of lust by grazing qualified;
425 Slack'd, not suppress'd; for standing by her side,
426 His eye, which late this mutiny restrains,
427 Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins:
428 And they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting,
429 Obdurate vassals. fell exploits effecting,
430 In bloody death and ravishment delighting,
431 Nor children's tears nor mothers' groans respecting,
432 Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting:
433 Anon his beating heart, alarum striking,
434 Gives the hot charge and bids them do their liking.
435 His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye,
436 His eye commends the leading to his hand;
437 His hand, as proud of such a dignity,
438 Smoking with pride, march'd on to make his stand
439 On her bare breast, the heart of all her land;
440 Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale,
441 Left their round turrets destitute and pale.
442 They, mustering to the quiet cabinet
443 Where their dear governess and lady lies,
444 Do tell her she is dreadfully beset,
445 And fright her with confusion of their cries:
446 She, much amaz'd, breaks ope her lock'd-up eyes,
447 Who, peeping forth this tumult to behold,
448 Are by his flaming torch dimm'd and controll'd.
449 Imagine her as one in dead of night
450 From forth dull sleep by dreadful fancy waking,
451 That thinks she hath beheld some ghastly sprite,
452 Whose grim aspect sets every joint a shaking:
453 What terror 'tis! but she, in worser taking,
454 From sleep disturbed, heedfully doth view
455 The sight which makes supposed terror true.
456 Wrapp'd and confounded in a thousand fears,
457 Like to a new-kill'd bird she trembling lies;
458 She dares not look; yet, winking, there appears
459 Quick-shifting antics, ugly in her eyes:
460 Such shadows are the weak brain's forgeries:
461 Who, angry that the eyes fly from their lights,
462 In darkness daunts them with more dreadful sights.
463 His hand, that yet remains upon her breast,
464 (Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall!)
465 May feel her heart, poor citizen, distress'd,
466 Wounding itself to death, rise up and fall,
467 Beating her bulk, that his hand shakes withal.
468 This moves in him more rage, and lesser pity,
469 To make the breach, and enter this sweet city.
470 First, like a trumpet, doth his tongue begin
471 To sound a parley to his heartless foe,
472 Who o'er the white sheet peers her whiter chin,
473 The reason of this rash alarm to know,
474 Which he by dumb demeanour seeks to show;
475 But she with vehement prayers urgeth still
476 Under what colour he commits this ill.
477 Thus he replies: 'The colour in thy face,
478 (That even for anger makes the lily pale,
479 And the red rose blush at her own disgrace)
480 Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale:
481 Under that colour am I come to scale
482 Thy never-conquer'd fort: the fault is thine,
483 For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine.
484 'Thus I forestall thee, if thou mean to chide:
485 Thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night,
486 Where thou with patience must my will abide,
487 My will that marks thee for my earth's delight,
488 Which I to conquer sought with all my might;
489 But as reproof and reason beat it dead,
490 By thy bright beauty was it newly bred.
491 'I see what crosses my attempt will bring;
492 I know what thorns the growing rose defends;
493 I think the honey guarded with a sting;
494 All this, beforehand, counsel comprehends:
495 But will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends;
496 Only he hath an eye to gaze on beauty,
497 And dotes on what he looks, 'gainst law or duty.
498 'I have debated, even in my soul,
499 What wrong, what shame, what sorrow I shall breed;
500 But nothing can Affection's course control,
501 Or stop the headlong fury of his speed.
502 I know repentant tears ensue the deed,
503 Reproach, disdain, and deadly enmity;
504 Yet strike I to embrace mine infamy.'
505 This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade,
506 Which, like a falcon towering in the skies,
507 Coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade,
508 Whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies:
509 So under his insulting falchion lies
510 Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells
511 With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells.
512 'Lucrece,' quoth he, 'this night I must enjoy thee:
513 If thou deny, then force must work my way,
514 For in thy bed I purpose to destroy thee;
515 That done, some worthless slave of thine I'll slay.
516 To kill thine honour with thy life's decay;
517 And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him,
518 Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him.
519 'So thy surviving husband shall remain
520 The scornful mark of every open eye;
521 Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain,
522 Thy issue blurr'd with nameless bastardy:
523 And thou, the author of their obloquy,
524 Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes,
525 And sung by children in succeeding times.
526 'But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend:
527 The fault unknown is as a thought unacted;
528 A little harm, done to a great good end,
529 For lawful policy remains enacted.
530 The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted
531 In a pure compound; being so applied,
532 His venom in effect is purified.
533 'Then, for thy husband and thy children's sake,
534 Tender my suit: bequeath not to their lot
535 The shame that from them no device can take,
536 The blemish that will never be forgot;
537 Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour's blot:
538 For marks descried in men's nativity
539 Are nature's faults, not their own infamy.'
540 Here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye
541 He rouseth up himself and makes a pause;
542 While she, the picture of pure piety,
543 Like a white hind under the grype's sharp claws,
544 Pleads in a wilderness where are no laws,
545 To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,
546 Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.
547 But when a black-fac'd cloud the world doth threat,
548 In his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding,
549 From earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get,
550 Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding,
551 Hindering their present fall by this dividing;
552 So his unhallow'd haste her words delays,
553 And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.
554 Yet, foul night-working cat, he doth but dally,
555 While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth;
556 Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly,
557 A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth:
558 His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth
559 No penetrable entrance to her plaining:
560 Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.
561 Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fix'd
562 In the remorseless wrinkles of his face;
563 Her modest eloquence with sighs is mix'd,
564 Which to her oratory adds more grace.
565 She puts the period often from his place,
566 And midst the sentence so her accent breaks,
567 That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.
568 She conjures him by high almighty Jove,
569 By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship's oath,
570 By her untimely tears, her husband's love,
571 By holy human law, and common troth,
572 By heaven and earth, and all the power of both,
573 That to his borrow'd bed he make retire,
574 And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.
575 Quoth she, 'Reward not hospitality
576 With such black payment as thou hast pretended;
577 Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;
578 Mar not the thing that cannot be amended;
579 End thy ill aim before the shoot be ended:
580 He is no woodman that doth bend his bow
581 To strike a poor unseasonable doe.
582 'My husband is thy friend; for his sake spare me;
583 Thyself art mighty; for thine own sake leave me;
584 Myself a weakling, do not then ensnare me;
585 Thou look'st not like deceit; do not deceive me;
586 My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee.
587 If ever man were mov'd with woman's moans,
588 Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans:
589 'All which together, like a troubled ocean,
590 Beat at thy rocky and wreck-threatening heart;
591 To soften it with their continual motion;
592 For stones dissolv'd to water do convert.
593 O, if no harder than a stone thou art,
594 Melt at my tears, and be compassionate!
595 Soft pity enters at an iron gate.
596 'In Tarquin's likeness I did entertain thee;
597 Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?
598 To all the host of heaven I complain me,
599 Thou wrong'st his honour, wound'st his princely name.
600 Thou art not what thou seem'st; and if the same,
601 Thou seem'st not what thou art, a god, a king;
602 For kings like gods should govern every thing.
603 'How will thy shame be seeded in thine age,
604 When thus thy vices bud before thy spring!
605 If in thy hope thou dar'st do such outrage,
606 What dar'st thou not when once thou art a king!
607 O, be remember'd, no outrageous thing
608 From vassal actors can he wip'd away;
609 Then kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.
610 'This deed will make thee only lov'd for fear,
611 But happy monarchs still are fear'd for love:
612 With foul offenders thou perforce must bear,
613 When they in thee the like offences prove:
614 If but for fear of this, thy will remove;
615 For princes are the glass, the school, the book,
616 Where subjects eyes do learn, do read, do look.
617 'And wilt thou be the school where Lust shall learn?
618 Must he in thee read lectures of such shame:
619 Wilt thou be glass, wherein it shall discern
620 Authority for sin, warrant for blame,
621 To privilege dishonour in thy name?
622 Thou back'st reproach against long-living laud,
623 And mak'st fair reputation but a bawd.
624 'Hast thou command? by him that gave it thee,
625 From a pure heart command thy rebel will:
626 Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,
627 For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.
628 Thy princely office how canst thou fulfill,
629 When, pattern'd by thy fault, foul Sin may say
630 He learn'd to sin, and thou didst teach the way?

Notes

TLN 428rhetorical device
“straggling slaves for pillage fighting”
Shakespeare extends the military metaphor: Tarquin's lusts are compared to undisciplined soldiers ('straggling slaves') who break ranks to loot ('pillage') and commit rape ('ravishment') after a battle. His heart then sounds the charge ('alarum') and his blood surges to the attack. The whole stanza turns sexual assault into siege warfare.
TLN 435rhetorical device
“His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye”
The narrator traces Tarquin's assault through a chain of body parts — heart, eye, hand — each commanding the next like officers passing orders down a chain of command. The body is at war with itself, and Tarquin functions as a passive observer of his own desire rather than its master. 'Smoking with pride' means his hand moves as if heated with arrogance or aroused excitement.
TLN 442archaic vocab
“mustering to the quiet cabinet”
'Cabinet' here does not mean a piece of furniture or a group of ministers — it means the innermost private room or chamber, specifically the heart. Lucrece's blood retreats inward to warn 'their dear governess and lady' (the heart) that she is under attack. The blood acts as loyal servants bearing alarming news to their mistress.
TLN 446archaic vocab
“breaks ope her lock'd-up eyes”
Lucrece wakes and opens her eyes ('breaks ope' = opens forcibly, like a lock broken). 'Winking' at TLN 458 does not mean giving a knowing wink — it means closing the eyes (the older sense). Even with eyes shut, she sees 'quick-shifting antics': grotesque, rapidly changing shapes that the frightened brain projects onto darkness.
TLN 464rhetorical device
“Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall”
A 'ram' is a battering ram — a heavy beam used to smash down city walls or gates in ancient and medieval siege warfare. The narrator's aside '(Rude ram, to batter such an ivory wall!)' is a parenthetical cry of outrage: Tarquin's hand on Lucrece's breast is savagely compared to a siege engine demolishing a beautiful fortification. 'Rude' means violent and unmannerly, not merely crude.
TLN 471archaic vocab
“sound a parley to his heartless foe”
A 'parley' is a formal call for a truce or negotiation between opposing forces, traditionally sounded by trumpet before a battle. Tarquin's tongue begins as a trumpet sounding the parley — he will speak before using force. 'Heartless foe' means a foe without courage (the archaic sense), not a foe without feeling — Lucrece is powerless, not cruel.
TLN 477wordplay
“The colour in thy face”
Tarquin puns on 'colour,' which Lucrece used to mean 'reason' or 'justification' ('Under what colour he commits this ill,' TLN 476). He responds that the literal colour of her face — the blush that mingles red and white — is his justification ('shall plead for me'). The pun lets him mock her demand for a reason by turning her own word against her.
TLN 495cultural context
“will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends”
Tarquin admits, with unusual self-awareness, that he knows his act is wrong and will bring consequences — yet he proceeds. 'Will' is his appetitive desire (the faculty that drives physical action), which overrides 'counsel' (reason, embodied in the friends' advice). The stanza is a compressed philosophical account of moral weakness: knowing the right thing and choosing wrong.
TLN 506rhetorical device
“like a falcon towering in the skies”
As Tarquin raises his sword, the narrator compares it to a falcon circling high above its prey — its shadow ('wings' shade') alone makes the quarry crouch ('Coucheth the fowl below'). Lucrece under the blade is the prey bird, 'trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon's bells': trained hawks wore bells so the falconer could track them; the sound signals death for what is hunted.
historical Falconry and the taming of the haggard
TLN 515historical topical
“some worthless slave of thine I'll slay”
Tarquin's threat is specific: if Lucrece refuses, he will kill one of her male slaves, place the body in her bed, and tell Collatine he found them together. The 'obloquy' (public disgrace) and 'nameless bastardy' (illegitimate children who cannot carry a family name) would ruin Lucrece, her husband, and her children's legal standing permanently. In Roman law and social practice, a wife's sexual dishonor destroyed the entire family's civic reputation.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrecehistorical The founding of the Roman Republic
TLN 530archaic vocab
“The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted”
A 'simple' is a medicinal herb or plant used in its raw, uncompounded form. Tarquin argues that a poisonous ingredient, when combined ('compacted') into a compound medicine, has its venom neutralized ('purified'). He is using a pharmacological analogy to justify a 'little harm' done for 'a great good end' — standard sophistical moral reasoning that the poem's context clearly rejects.
TLN 540classical allusion
“cockatrice' dead-killing eye”
The cockatrice (also called a basilisk) was a legendary serpent-like creature — sometimes depicted as half-cock, half-serpent — whose glance or breath was said to kill instantly. The narrator calls Tarquin's gaze a 'dead-killing eye' on the model of the cockatrice: one look is enough to destroy. The creature appears in Pliny and was a Renaissance commonplace for a look that petrifies or slays.
TLN 543archaic vocab
“white hind under the grype's sharp claws”
A 'hind' is a female deer; 'white' marks purity and innocence. A 'grype' is a griffin — a mythological creature with an eagle's head and wings on a lion's body — and was a standard emblem of ferocity. Lucrece is a white, gentle creature pinned under a monster's talons, 'pleading in a wilderness where are no laws': there is no court, no authority, nothing to appeal to.
TLN 553classical allusion
“moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays”
Orpheus was a legendary musician of such power that when he descended to the underworld to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice, even Pluto (Hades, king of the dead) was moved by his playing and allowed Eurydice to return. Here the line means: just as Pluto briefly relaxed his grim rule when Orpheus's music charmed him, so Tarquin is momentarily stalled by Lucrece's words — but only momentarily. 'Winks' means closes his eyes (the older sense).
classical Ovid's Metamorphoses
TLN 577rhetorical device
“Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee”
Lucrece deploys a series of proverb-like maxims built on violated hospitality: do not muddy a spring that quenched your thirst; do not ruin what cannot be repaired; the deer-hunter who shoots a doe out of season ('unseasonable doe') is no true woodman. Each image frames Tarquin's act as a violation of natural, practical, and social law simultaneously.
TLN 604rhetorical device
“thy vices bud before thy spring”
Lucrece argues that Tarquin is committing in his youth ('before thy spring') sins that will 'seed' as the harvest of his old age ('seeded in thine age'). The agricultural metaphor — budding vices that will ripen into shame — reinforces her political argument: a prince who sins as a young man will face the full crop of those sins when he rules. 'In thy hope' (TLN 605) means 'while you are still only heir, not yet king.'
historical The founding of the Roman Republic
TLN 611historical topical
“happy monarchs still are fear'd for love”
Lucrece draws a political distinction: a tyrant is 'only lov'd for fear' — that is, obeyed only because subjects are afraid — while a good king is 'fear'd for love,' meaning respected because his subjects love him and fear to lose his regard. 'Still' means 'always.' The argument is a compressed version of standard Renaissance political theory: tyranny rules by terror; legitimate monarchy earns voluntary obedience.
historical The founding of the Roman Republic