Part 4

Lines 631–840

631 'Think but how vile a spectacle it were
632 To view thy present trespass in another.
633 Men's faults do seldom to themselves appear;
634 Their own transgressions partially they smother:
635 This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother.
636 O how are they wrapp'd in with infamies
637 That from their own misdeeds askaunce their eyes!
638 'To thee, to thee, my heav'd-up hands appeal,
639 Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier;
640 I sue for exil'd majesty's repeal;
641 Let him return, and flattering thoughts retire:
642 His true respect will 'prison false desire,
643 And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,
644 That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine.'
645 'Have done,' quoth he: 'my uncontrolled tide
646 Turns not, but swells the higher by this let.
647 Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide,
648 And with the wind in greater fury fret:
649 The petty streams that pay a daily debt
650 To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls' haste,
651 Add to his flow, but alter not his taste.'
652 'Thou art,' quoth she, 'a sea, a sovereign king;
653 And, lo, there falls into thy boundless flood
654 Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning,
655 Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood.
656 If all these petty ills shall change thy good,
657 Thy sea within a puddle's womb is hears'd,
658 And not the puddle in thy sea dispers'd.
659 'So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave;
660 Thou nobly base, they basely dignified;
661 Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler grave;
662 Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride:
663 The lesser thing should not the greater hide;
664 The cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot,
665 But low shrubs whither at the cedar's root.
666 'So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state'—
667 'No more,' quoth he; 'by heaven, I will not hear thee:
668 Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate,
669 Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee;
670 That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee
671 Unto the base bed of some rascal groom,
672 To be thy partner in this shameful doom.'
673 This said, he sets his foot upon the light,
674 For light and lust are deadly enemies;
675 Shame folded up in blind concealing night,
676 When most unseen, then most doth tyrannize.
677 The wolf hath seiz'd his prey, the poor lamb cries;
678 Till with her own white fleece her voice controll'd
679 Entombs her outcry in her lips' sweet fold:
680 For with the nightly linen that she wears
681 He pens her piteous clamours in her head;
682 Cooling his hot face in the chastest tears
683 That ever modest eyes with sorrow shed.
684 O, that prone lust should stain so pure a bed!
685 The spots whereof could weeping purify,
686 Her tears should drop on them perpetually.
687 But she hath lost a dearer thing than life,
688 And he hath won what he would lose again.
689 This forced league doth force a further strife;
690 This momentary joy breeds months of pain,
691 This hot desire converts to cold disdain:
692 Pure Chastity is rifled of her store,
693 And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before.
694 Look, as the full-fed hound or gorged hawk,
695 Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight,
696 Make slow pursuit, or altogether balk
697 The prey wherein by nature they delight;
698 So surfeit-taking Tarquin fares this night:
699 His taste delicious, in digestion souring,
700 Devours his will, that liv'd by foul devouring.
701 O deeper sin than bottomless conceit
702 Can comprehend in still imagination!
703 Drunken desire must vomit his receipt,
704 Ere he can see his own abomination.
705 While lust is in his pride no exclamation
706 Can curb his heat, or rein his rash desire,
707 Till, like a jade, self-will himself doth tire.
708 And then with lank and lean discolour'd cheek,
709 With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace,
710 Feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek,
711 Like to a bankrupt beggar wails his case:
712 The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with Grace,
713 For there it revels; and when that decays,
714 The guilty rebel for remission prays.
715 So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome,
716 Who this accomplishment so hotly chas'd;
717 For now against himself he sounds this doom,
718 That through the length of times he stands disgrac'd:
719 Besides, his soul's fair temple is defac'd;
720 To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares,
721 To ask the spotted princess how she fares.
722 She says, her subjects with foul insurrection
723 Have batter'd down her consecrated wall,
724 And by their mortal fault brought in subjection
725 Her immortality, and made her thrall
726 To living death, and pain perpetual;
727 Which in her prescience she controlled still,
728 But her foresight could not forestall their will.
729 Even in this thought through the dark night he stealeth,
730 A captive victor that hath lost in gain;
731 Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth,
732 The scar that will, despite of cure, remain;
733 Leaving his spoil perplex'd in greater pain.
734 She hears the load of lust he left behind,
735 And he the burthen of a guilty mind.
736 He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence;
737 She like a wearied lamb lies panting there;
738 He scowls, and hates himself for his offence;
739 She, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear;
740 He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear;
741 She stays, exclaiming on the direful night;
742 He runs, and chides his vanish'd, loath'd delight.
743 He thence departs a heavy convertite;
744 She there remains a hopeless castaway:
745 He in his speed looks for the morning light;
746 She prays she never may behold the day;
747 'For day,' quoth she, 'night's scapes doth open lay;
748 And my true eyes have never practis'd how
749 To cloak offences with a cunning brow.
750 'They think not but that every eye can see
751 The same disgrace which they themselves behold;
752 And therefore would they still in darkness be,
753 To have their unseen sin remain untold;
754 For they their guilt with weeping will unfold,
755 And grave, like water that doth eat in steel,
756 Upon my cheeks what helpless shame I feel.'
757 Here she exclaims against repose and rest,
758 And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind.
759 She wakes her heart by beating on her breast,
760 And bids it leap from thence, where it may find
761 Some purer chest, to close so pure a mind.
762 Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite
763 Against the unseen secrecy of night:
764 'O comfort-killing night, image of hell!
765 Dim register and notary of shame!
766 Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!
767 Vast sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame!
768 Blind muffled bawd! dark harbour for defame!
769 Grim cave of death, whispering conspirator
770 With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!
771 'O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night!
772 Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,
773 Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,
774 Make war against proportion'd course of time!
775 Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb
776 His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,
777 Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.
778 'With rotten damps ravish the morning air;
779 Let their exhal'd unwholesome breaths make sick
780 The life of purity, the supreme fair,
781 Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick;
782 And let thy misty vapours march so thick,
783 That in their smoky ranks his smother'd light
784 May set at noon and make perpetual night.
785 'Were Tarquin night (as he is but night's child),
786 The silver-shining queen he would distain;
787 Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defil'd,
788 Through Night's black bosom should not peep again:
789 So should I have co-partners in my pain:
790 And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
791 As palmers' chat makes short their pilgrimage.
792 'Where now I have no one to blush with me,
793 To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,
794 To mask their brows, and hide their infamy;
795 But I alone alone must sit and pine,
796 Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine,
797 Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,
798 Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
799 'O night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke,
800 Let not the jealous day behold that face
801 Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak
802 Immodesty lies martyr'd with disgrace!
803 Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,
804 That all the faults which in thy reign are made,
805 May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade!
806 'Make me not object to the tell-tale day!
807 The light will show, character'd in my brow,
808 The story of sweet chastity's decay,
809 The impious breach of holy wedlock vow:
810 Yea, the illiterate, that know not how
811 To cipher what is writ in learned books,
812 Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks.
813 'The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story
814 And fright her crying babe with Tarquin's name;
815 The orator, to deck his oratory,
816 Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame:
817 Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame,
818 Will tie the hearers to attend each line,
819 How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine.
820 'Let my good name, that senseless reputation,
821 For Collatine's dear love be kept unspotted:
822 If that be made a theme for disputation,
823 The branches of another root are rotted,
824 And undeserved reproach to him allotted,
825 That is as clear from this attaint of mine
826 As I, ere this, was pure to Collatine.
827 'O unseen shame! invisible disgrace!
828 O unfelt sore! crest-wounding, private scar!
829 Reproach is stamp'd in Collatinus' face,
830 And Tarquin's eye may read the mot afar,
831 How he in peace is wounded, not in war.
832 Alas, how many bear such shameful blows,
833 Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!
834 'If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me,
835 From me by strong assault it is bereft.
836 My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee,
837 Have no perfection of my summer left,
838 But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft:
839 In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept,
840 And suck'd the honey which thy chaste bee kept.

Notes

TLN 638rhetorical device
“my heav'd-up hands appeal, Not to seducing lust”
Lucrece raises her hands as a formal gesture of legal and moral appeal, directing her plea to Tarquin's reason rather than to his lust. 'Appeal' here is a legal term meaning to lodge a charge or demand redress — she is invoking his conscience as a court of justice.
TLN 640syntax grammar
“I sue for exil'd majesty's repeal: Let him return, and flattering thoughts retire”
'Repeal' does not mean cancellation here; it means recall from exile. Lucrece is asking that Tarquin's 'true respect' — his proper self-regard as a prince — be called back to govern him, while his 'flattering thoughts' (his rationalizing lust) be sent away. The syntax treats his better self as a banished monarch who needs to be restored.
TLN 643archaic vocab
“wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne”
'Eyne' is an archaic plural of 'eye,' preserved in poetry for its rhyme and metrical convenience well into the 17th century. 'Doting' means foolishly infatuated, not simply growing old — Lucrece tells Tarquin that his eyes have been clouded by desire into seeing wrongly.
TLN 645rhetorical device
“my uncontrolled tide Turns not, but swells the higher by this let”
Tarquin cuts Lucrece off ('Have done') and answers her argument with his own extended water metaphor: his desire is a tide that cannot be turned back; her opposition ('let' = obstruction) only makes it rise higher. 'Let' is an archaic noun meaning an obstacle or hindrance, now surviving only in the legal phrase 'without let or hindrance.'
TLN 664rhetorical device
“The cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot, But low shrubs whither at the cedar's root”
The cedar was the classical and biblical emblem of royal height and dignified power — kings are called cedars in Ezekiel. Lucrece's proverb argues that a great person (Tarquin, a prince) does not bend to what is base; instead, base things wither beneath the great, as undergrowth dies in the shade of a towering tree. The image works as both a natural metaphor and a moral argument: dignity should assert itself, not stoop.
TLN 668cultural context
“Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate, Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee”
Tarquin presents Lucrece with a coercive ultimatum: submit and the act will be styled 'love'; refuse and he will use violence ('enforced hate') and then publicly dishonour her by leaving her body with a male slave, so she will be blamed for adultery. This is the extortion structure the poem calls 'forced league' (TLN 689): there is no real choice. The threat to plant a dead slave beside her is a central point in Livy's account of the historical Lucrece.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrece
TLN 687cultural context
“she hath lost a dearer thing than life, And he hath won what he would lose again”
The 'dearer thing than life' is chastity — specifically the chaste reputation that, in Roman culture, was understood as inseparable from a woman's identity, honour, and her husband's honour. Lucrece herself will explain that she has lost a thing that cannot be returned, which is why she will kill herself. This is not simply a moral convention but the legal and social reality of the Roman shame-culture the poem inhabits.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrecehistorical The founding of the Roman Republic
TLN 692rhetorical device
“Pure Chastity is rifled of her store, And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before”
The narrator personifies Chastity as a victim and Lust as a thief who emerges from the robbery poorer, not richer. 'Rifled' means plundered, pillaged — a word with a military sense of looting a body or a treasury. The paradox is moral: Lust 'gains' nothing from the crime because what it wanted was not transferable; the stolen thing is destroyed in the taking.
TLN 694rhetorical device
“the full-fed hound or gorged hawk, Unapt for tender smell or speedy flight”
The narrator builds a formal simile comparing Tarquin after the assault to a hunting dog and hawk that have eaten too much to hunt: 'full-fed' and 'gorged' (with a crop full of meat), they cannot track a scent or fly. Just so, Tarquin is now useless — his desire satisfied and turned to disgust. The shift from predator to stuffed, slow animal deflates him.
TLN 707archaic vocab
“like a jade, self-will himself doth tire”
A 'jade' is a worn-out, broken-down horse — specifically one that has been overworked or driven too hard. The phrase means that lust, like a bad horse that runs itself into the ground, wears out the person who rides it. 'Self-will' both describes the headstrong quality of such a horse and personifies lust as willing its own destruction.
TLN 710archaic vocab
“Feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek”
'Recreant' means coward or traitor — one who cries for mercy and yields in a combat. It was originally the formal word for a knight who submitted in a judicial duel (see trial by combat), crying 'recreant!' to surrender. Here it deflates post-assault lust: desire, having acted like a tyrant, now grovels like a defeated coward.
TLN 743archaic vocab
“He thence departs a heavy convertite; She there remains a hopeless castaway”
A 'convertite' is a penitent — specifically a person recently converted to repentance after a life of sin. The word comes from religious usage; Tarquin departs as a man suddenly converted to guilt and sorrow. A 'castaway' is one beyond redemption or rescue, abandoned by fortune and possibly by God — a word with strong theological undertones in Protestant England (compare 1 Corinthians 9:27). The contrasting couplet measures the justice gap: he repents, she is left beyond hope.
TLN 764rhetorical device
“O comfort-killing night, image of hell! Dim register and notary of shame! Black stage for tragedies and murders fell”
Lucrece launches a formal apostrophe to Night — a direct address to an abstraction as if it were a person present. This is a recognised classical rhetorical figure (apostrophe). She heaps up eight vocatives in two stanzas (TLN 764-770), each naming Night's complicity in crime: image of hell, register of shame, stage for murders, chaos, bawd, conspirator. The rapid accumulation is the figure of congeries or enumeratio.
TLN 807cultural context
“The light will show, character'd in my brow, The story of sweet chastity's decay”
'Character'd' means inscribed or written — characters being the letters of writing. Lucrece fears that her face will function as a text legible even to illiterates ('the illiterate, that know not how / To cipher what is writ in learned books, / Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks'). This reflects the widespread Elizabethan belief that sin and guilt were physically visible in the face — that shame wrote itself on the body.
TLN 836rhetorical device
“My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which thy chaste bee kept”
Lucrece compares herself to a bee that has been robbed of its honey by a wasp and is now a drone — a male bee that does no work and makes no honey, kept only for reproduction and then expelled. She has lost the 'honey' of her chastity and with it her productive role in the 'hive' of Collatine's household. The wasp (Tarquin) is an intruder who takes without belonging.