Part 5

Lines 841–1050

841 'Yet am I guilty of thy honour's wrack;—
842 Yet for thy honour did I entertain him;
843 Coming from thee, I could not put him back,
844 For it had been dishonour to disdain him:
845 Besides, of weariness he did complain him,
846 And talk'd of virtue:—O unlook'd-for evil,
847 When virtue is profan'd in such a devil!
848 'Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
849 Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests?
850 Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?
851 Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?
852 Or kings be breakers of their own behests?
853 But no perfection is so absolute,
854 That some impurity doth not pollute.
855 'The aged man that coffers up his gold
856 Is plagued with cramps, and gouts, and painful fits;
857 And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold,
858 But like still-pining Tantalus he sits,
859 And useless barns the harvest of his wits;
860 Having no other pleasure of his gain
861 But torment that it cannot cure his pain.
862 'So then he hath it when he cannot use it,
863 And leaves it to be master'd by his young;
864 Who in their pride do presently abuse it:
865 Their father was too weak, and they too strong,
866 To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long.
867 The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours,
868 Even in the moment that we call them ours.
869 'Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;
870 Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers;
871 The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;
872 What virtue breeds iniquity devours:
873 We have no good that we can say is ours,
874 But ill-annexed Opportunity
875 Or kills his life or else his quality.
876 'O Opportunity, thy guilt is great:
877 'Tis thou that executest the traitor's treason;
878 Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
879 Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season;
880 'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason;
881 And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
882 Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.
883 'Thou mak'st the vestal violate her oath;
884 Thou blow'st the fire when temperance is thaw'd;
885 Thou smother'st honesty, thou murther'st troth;
886 Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd!
887 Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud:
888 Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,
889 Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief!
890 'Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,
891 Thy private feasting to a public fast;
892 Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,
893 Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste:
894 Thy violent vanities can never last.
895 How comes it then, vile Opportunity,
896 Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
897 'When wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend,
898 And bring him where his suit may be obtain'd?
899 When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end?
900 Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain'd?
901 Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain'd?
902 The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;
903 But they ne'er meet with Opportunity.
904 'The patient dies while the physician sleeps;
905 The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
906 Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;
907 Advice is sporting while infection breeds;
908 Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds:
909 Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages,
910 Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.
911 'When truth and virtue have to do with thee,
912 A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid;
913 They buy thy help; but Sin ne'er gives a fee,
914 He gratis comes; and thou art well appay'd
915 As well to hear as grant what he hath said.
916 My Collatine would else have come to me
917 When Tarquin did, but he was stay'd by thee.
918 'Guilty thou art of murder and of theft;
919 Guilty of perjury and subornation;
920 Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift;
921 Guilty of incest, that abomination:
922 An accessory by thine inclination
923 To all sins past, and all that are to come,
924 From the creation to the general doom.
925 'Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly night,
926 Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,
927 Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
928 Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare;
929 Thou nursest all and murtherest all that are:
930 O hear me then, injurious, shifting Time!
931 Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.
932 'Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,
933 Betray'd the hours thou gav'st me to repose?
934 Cancell'd my fortunes, and enchained me
935 To endless date of never-ending woes?
936 Time's office is to fine the hate of foes;
937 To eat up errors by opinion bred,
938 Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.
939 'Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
940 To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,
941 To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
942 To wake the morn, and sentinel the night,
943 To wrong the wronger till he render right;
944 To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
945 And smear with dust their glittering golden towers:
946 'To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
947 To feed oblivion with decay of things,
948 To blot old books and alter their contents,
949 To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,
950 To dry the old oak's sap and cherish springs;
951 To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
952 And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel;
953 'To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
954 To make the child a man, the man a child,
955 To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
956 To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
957 To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil'd;
958 To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
959 And waste huge stones with little water-drops.
960 'Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
961 Unless thou couldst return to make amends?
962 One poor retiring minute in an age
963 Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,
964 Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends:
965 O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back,
966 I could prevent this storm, and shun thy wrack!
967 'Thou cease!ess lackey to eternity,
968 With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight:
969 Devise extremes beyond extremity,
970 To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:
971 Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright;
972 And the dire thought of his committed evil
973 Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.
974 'Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,
975 Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;
976 Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
977 To make him moan; but pity not his moans:
978 Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones;
979 And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
980 Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.
981 'Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
982 Let him have time against himself to rave,
983 Let him have time of Time's help to despair,
984 Let him have time to live a loathed slave,
985 Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave;
986 And time to see one that by alms doth live
987 Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.
988 'Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
989 And merry fools to mock at him resort;
990 Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
991 In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
992 His time of folly and his time of sport:
993 And ever let his unrecalling crime
994 Have time to wail the abusing of his time.
995 'O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,
996 Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill!
997 At his own shadow let the thief run mad!
998 Himself himself seek every hour to kill!
999 Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill:
1000 For who so base would such an office have
1001 As slanderous deathsman to so base a slave?
1002 The baser is he, coming from a king,
1003 To shame his hope with deeds degenerate.
1004 The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
1005 That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate;
1006 For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
1007 The moon being clouded presently is miss'd,
1008 But little stars may hide them when they list.
1009 'The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
1010 And unperceived fly with the filth away;
1011 But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
1012 The stain upon his silver down will stay.
1013 Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day:
1014 Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
1015 But eagles gazed upon with every eye.
1016 'Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!
1017 Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!
1018 Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
1019 Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
1020 To trembling clients be you mediators:
1021 For me, I force not argument a straw,
1022 Since that my case is past the help of law.
1023 'In vain I rail at Opportunity,
1024 At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful night;
1025 In vain I cavil with mine infamy,
1026 In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite:
1027 This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
1028 The remedy indeed to do me good
1029 Is to let forth my foul-defil'd blood.
1030 'Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree?
1031 Honour thyself to rid me of this shame;
1032 For if I die, my honour lives in thee;
1033 But if I live, thou livest in my defame:
1034 Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame,
1035 And wast afear'd to scratch her wicked foe,
1036 Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.'
1037 This said, from her be-tumbled couch she starteth,
1038 To find some desperate instrument of death:
1039 But this no slaughter-house no tool imparteth,
1040 To make more vent for passage of her breath;
1041 Which, thronging through her lips, so vanisheth
1042 As smoke from Aetna, that in air consumes,
1043 Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.
1044 'In vain,' quoth she, 'I live, and seek in vain
1045 Some happy mean to end a hapless life.
1046 I fear'd by Tarquin's falchion to be slain,
1047 Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife:
1048 But when I fear'd I was a loyal wife:
1049 So am I now:—O no, that cannot be;
1050 Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.

Notes

TLN 841archaic vocab
“guilty of thy honour's wrack”
'Wrack' means ruin or destruction (related to 'wreck'). Lucrece blames herself for the damage done to her honour by having welcomed Tarquin into the house as her husband Collatine's friend and fellow-soldier.
TLN 858classical allusion
“like still-pining Tantalus he sits”
Tantalus was a figure from Greek myth condemned to stand in a pool of water beneath fruit-laden branches; whenever he reached for food or drink they pulled away, leaving him perpetually hungry and thirsty. 'To tantalize' comes from his name. The miser — surrounded by gold he is too ill to enjoy — is in the same trap: possessing what he cannot use.
TLN 863syntax grammar
“leaves it to be master'd by his young”
'His young' means 'his heirs' or 'his children' — not a child but the next generation collectively. The stanza argues that inherited wealth is squandered by those too vigorous (and too proud) to hold it long. The point connects to Lucrece's theme: pleasure seized by force or haste turns immediately to regret, 'even in the moment that we call them ours.'
TLN 874archaic vocab
“ill-annexed Opportunity”
'Ill-annexed' means 'wrongly attached to' or 'joined in bad company.' Opportunity — here personified as a figure — is always on the side of vice rather than virtue: it 'kills his life or else his quality,' meaning it destroys either the person or the good in them. This begins Lucrece's extended apostrophe (direct address) to Opportunity as the enabler of Tarquin's crime.
TLN 876rhetorical device
“O Opportunity, thy guilt is great”
This begins a sustained apostrophe — a direct address to an absent or personified thing (here, Opportunity itself). For nine stanzas (TLN 876-924) Lucrece blames Opportunity for every crime committed when the right moment was given to the wrong person. The device lets her express grief and rage indirectly: she cannot yet say plainly what has happened, so she indicts the circumstances that made it possible.
TLN 883historical topical
“Thou mak'st the vestal violate her oath”
A Vestal Virgin was a Roman priestess sworn to thirty years of chastity in the service of the goddess Vesta (guardian of the sacred hearth-fire of Rome). Breaking the oath was a capital crime: the priestess was buried alive. Lucrece accuses Opportunity of making even the most solemnly sworn chastity breakable — a direct index to her own situation.
TLN 886archaic vocab
“thou notorious bawd”
A 'bawd' is a procurer or go-between in sexual crime — a pimp or a madam who arranges prostitution. Calling Opportunity a 'bawd' and a 'ravisher' in the same breath indicts it both as the arranger of the crime and as the criminal itself.
TLN 904rhetorical device
“The patient dies while the physician sleeps”
This stanza is a set of four parallel clauses (parallelism / isocolon) each built on the same pattern: the person who needs help suffers while the person who could provide it is occupied elsewhere — feasting, sleeping, sporting. The accumulated examples (patient, orphan, widow, the infected) make the argument that Opportunity never comes when justice, charity, or healing needs it.
TLN 914archaic vocab
“He gratis comes; and thou art well appay'd”
'Gratis' means 'free of charge' (Latin). 'Appay'd' means 'satisfied' or 'contented' (from Old French apaier, to please). Lucrece's point: when Virtue needs Opportunity's help it must buy it with effort, but Sin gets Opportunity for free — and Opportunity is perfectly happy with the arrangement. The sarcasm is pointed.
TLN 919archaic vocab
“Guilty of perjury and subornation”
'Perjury' is lying under oath; 'subornation' is the crime of bribing or inducing someone else to commit perjury or another crime. The legal vocabulary here is precise: Lucrece frames Opportunity not as a vague abstraction but as a criminal defendant facing specific charges, as if in a Roman court — fitting for a poem rooted in Roman law and political accountability.
TLN 924biblical allusion
“From the creation to the general doom”
'The general doom' is the Last Judgment — the final day when, according to Christian belief, God judges all the dead. The phrase sweeps from the beginning of the world (the Creation in Genesis) to its end (Judgment), making Opportunity guilty as an accessory to every sin ever committed throughout all of human time.
TLN 925rhetorical device
“Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly night”
Lucrece now turns her apostrophe from Opportunity to Time itself, piling up abusive epithets: 'mis-shapen' (deformed), 'copesmate' (companion or partner), 'swift subtle post' (a fast-riding messenger), 'Eater of youth,' 'pack-horse' (a beast of burden for sin). Personified Time was a Renaissance commonplace — usually depicted as old Saturn with a scythe — but here given only destructive qualities.
TLN 936archaic vocab
“Time's office is to fine the hate of foes”
'Fine' here means 'to bring to an end, to finish' (from Latin finis, end) — not to impose a monetary penalty. Lucrece is listing Time's proper, constructive offices: ending enmities, correcting errors shaped by public opinion, and — crucially — preserving the sanctity of a marriage bed. Time has instead betrayed all of those functions in allowing this night.
TLN 939rhetorical device
“Time's glory is to calm contending kings”
This three-stanza catalogue (TLN 939-959) lists Time's proper glories through anaphora — every line begins 'To...' The tasks given to Time run from the political (calm kings, unmask falsehood) to the natural (dry oak-sap, cherish springs, wear stones with water-drops) to the cosmic (turn Fortune's wheel). The sustained list is a formal set-piece of praise for Time's rightful power, whose purpose is ironic: Lucrece praises what Time should do precisely because it failed her.
TLN 952classical allusion
“turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel”
Fortune was imagined as a goddess spinning a wheel: those at the top (the powerful, the lucky) are flung down and the lowly are raised up, blind to merit. Lucrece lists turning Fortune's wheel among Time's proper works — a reminder that even the mighty Tarquins, now at the height of their power, will be brought down.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 967archaic vocab
“Thou cease!ess lackey to eternity”
A 'lackey' is a servant — specifically, a footman or menial attendant who follows his master wherever he goes (the word carries a slightly contemptuous edge). Calling Time a 'ceaseless lackey to eternity' pictures it as eternity's running servant, never stopping. Lucrece now switches from describing Time's proper duties to cursing Tarquin through Time's power.
TLN 1002historical topical
“The baser is he, coming from a king”
Lucrece argues that Tarquin's crime is worse because he is of royal blood: great men are watched by all (like the moon, noticed the moment it is clouded) while lesser men may sin unnoticed (like 'little stars'). The principle is that rank multiplies both honour and scandal. This is the poem's political argument in miniature: the tyrant's crime cannot be hidden.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrece
TLN 1009rhetorical device
“The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire”
The crow and the swan make the same point as the moon and stars: a black bird can roll in mud and fly away unnoticed, but a mud-stained swan — white and conspicuous by nature — carries the stain permanently. The three-stanza catalogue of natural pairings (moon/stars; crow/swan; gnat/eagle) is a sustained illustration of one argument through accumulated analogy, the figure of similitude.
TLN 1016rhetorical device
“Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools”
Lucrece dismisses her own rhetoric in an apostrophe to 'idle words' — 'Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools; / Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters.' This is a sudden, self-aware turn: after ninety lines of elaborate formal complaint, she recognises that all this verbal artistry cannot help her. The gesture belongs to a tradition of recusatio, a rhetorical refusal of rhetoric itself, which paradoxically keeps the poem going.
TLN 1029historical topical
“to let forth my foul-defil'd blood”
Lucrece resolves to bleed herself — to spill her own 'defiled' blood. In Roman shame-culture, blood was understood as the physical carrier of honour and purity; violated blood had to be expiated by its own shedding. Her suicide is not despair but a Roman legal and moral act: self-execution to restore the family's honour and compel the men of her house to act. Livy presents her death explicitly as a political event, not only a personal one.
historical The founding of the Roman Republic
TLN 1030rhetorical device
“Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree”
Lucrece turns now to apostrophize her own hand — addressing it as a separate agent that failed to scratch or fight her 'wicked foe' and must now redeem itself by killing both herself and the dishonour. The hand is simultaneously accused (for yielding) and instructed (to take the knife). The device allows the poem to dramatize her internal division — one part of her still flinching, another part relentlessly urging action.
TLN 1046archaic vocab
“I fear'd by Tarquin's falchion to be slain”
A 'falchion' is a short, broad-bladed sword with a curved edge — a standard military weapon. Tarquin threatened Lucrece at sword-point (Livy 1.58 specifies a drawn sword), so the word here is precise and not decorative: the assault was rape accomplished by the threat of death.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrece
TLN 1050archaic vocab
“Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me”
'Type' here means 'defining emblem' or 'mark of identity' — the quality that stamps a thing as what it is. 'Rifled' means 'plundered' or 'stripped by force' (as one rifles a safe or a corpse). Lucrece is saying Tarquin has robbed her of the very mark that made her a 'loyal wife' — her chastity, which was both the social proof and the personal reality of that identity. The scene ends on this recognition: the word that defined her has been stripped away.