Part 8

Lines 1471–1680

1471 'Show me the strumpet that began this stir,
1472 That with my nails her beauty I may tear.
1473 Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur
1474 This load of wrath that burning Troy doth bear;
1475 Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here:
1476 And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye,
1477 The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.
1478 'Why should the private pleasure of some one
1479 Become the public plague of many mo?
1480 Let sin, alone committed, light alone
1481 Upon his head that hath transgressed so.
1482 Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:
1483 For one's offence why should so many fall,
1484 To plague a private sin in general?
1485 'Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,
1486 Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds;
1487 Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies,
1488 And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,
1489 And one man's lust these many lives confounds:
1490 Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire,
1491 Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.'
1492 Here feelingly she weeps Troy's painted woes:
1493 For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,
1494 Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
1495 Then little strength rings out the doleful knell:
1496 So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell
1497 To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow;
1498 She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow.
1499 She throws her eyes about the painting round,
1500 And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament:
1501 At last she sees a wretched image bound,
1502 That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent:
1503 His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content;
1504 Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
1505 So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.
1506 In him the painter labour'd with his skill
1507 To hide deceit, and give the harmless show
1508 An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
1509 A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe;
1510 Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so
1511 That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
1512 Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.
1513 But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
1514 He entertain'd a show so seeming just,
1515 And therein so ensconc'd his secret evil,
1516 That jealousy itself cold not mistrust
1517 False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust
1518 Into so bright a day such black-fac'd storms,
1519 Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.
1520 The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
1521 For perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story
1522 The credulous Old Priam after slew;
1523 Whose words, like wildfire, burnt the shining glory
1524 Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,
1525 And little stars shot from their fixed places,
1526 When their glass fell wherein they view'd their faces.
1527 This picture she advisedly perus'd,
1528 And chid the painter for his wondrous skill;
1529 Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abus'd;
1530 So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill:
1531 And still on him she gaz'd; and gazing still,
1532 Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied,
1533 That she concludes the picture was belied.
1534 'It cannot be,' quoth she, 'that so much guile'—
1535 (She would have said) 'can lurk in such a look;'
1536 But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,
1537 And from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took;
1538 'It cannot be' she in that sense forsook,
1539 And turn'd it thus: 'It cannot be, I find,
1540 But such a face should bear a wicked mind:
1541 'For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,
1542 So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
1543 (As if with grief or travail he had fainted,)
1544 To me came Tarquin armed; so beguil'd
1545 With outward honesty, but yet defil'd
1546 With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,
1547 So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.
1548 'Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
1549 To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds.
1550 Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise?
1551 For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds;
1552 His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds;
1553 Those round clear pearls of his that move thy pity,
1554 Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.
1555 'Such devils steal effects from lightless hell;
1556 For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
1557 And in that cold hot-burning fire doth dwell;
1558 These contraries such unity do hold,
1559 Only to flatter fools, and make them bold;
1560 So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter,
1561 That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.'
1562 Here, all enrag'd, such passion her assails,
1563 That patience is quite beaten from her breast.
1564 She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
1565 Comparing him to that unhappy guest
1566 Whose deed hath made herself herself detest;
1567 At last she smilingly with this gives o'er;
1568 'Fool, fool!' quoth she, 'his wounds will not be sore.'
1569 Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,
1570 And time doth weary time with her complaining.
1571 She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,
1572 And both she thinks too long with her remaining:
1573 Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining.
1574 Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps;
1575 And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.
1576 Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought,
1577 That she with painted images hath spent;
1578 Being from the feeling of her own grief brought
1579 By deep surmise of others' detriment:
1580 Losing her woes in shows of discontent.
1581 It easeth some, though none it ever cur'd,
1582 To think their dolour others have endur'd.
1583 But now the mindful messenger, come back,
1584 Brings home his lord and other company;
1585 Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black:
1586 And round about her tear-distained eye
1587 Blue circles stream'd, like rainbows in the sky.
1588 These water-galls in her dim element
1589 Foretell new storms to those already spent.
1590 Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
1591 Amazedly in her sad face he stares:
1592 Her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw,
1593 Her lively colour kill'd with deadly cares.
1594 He hath no power to ask her how she fares,
1595 Both stood, like old acquaintance in a trance,
1596 Met far from home, wondering each other's chance.
1597 At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,
1598 And thus begins: 'What uncouth ill event
1599 Hath thee befall'n, that thou dost trembling stand?
1600 Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent?
1601 Why art thou thus attir'd in discontent?
1602 Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,
1603 And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.'
1604 Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire,
1605 Ere once she can discharge one word of woe:
1606 At length address'd to answer his desire,
1607 She modestly prepares to let them know
1608 Her honour is ta'en prisoner by the foe;
1609 While Collatine and his consorted lords
1610 With sad attention long to hear her words.
1611 And now this pale swan in her watery nest
1612 Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending:
1613 'Few words,' quoth she, 'shall fit the trespass best,
1614 Where no excuse can give the fault amending:
1615 In me more woes than words are now depending;
1616 And my laments would be drawn out too long,
1617 To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.
1618 'Then be this all the task it hath to say:—
1619 Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed
1620 A stranger came, and on that pillow lay
1621 Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head;
1622 And what wrong else may be imagined
1623 By foul enforcement might be done to me,
1624 From that, alas! thy Lucrece is not free.
1625 'For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight,
1626 With shining falchion in my chamber came
1627 A creeping creature, with a flaming light,
1628 And softly cried Awake, thou Roman dame,
1629 And entertain my love; else lasting shame
1630 On thee and thine this night I will inflict,
1631 If thou my love's desire do contradict.
1632 'For some hard-favour'd groom of thine, quoth he,
1633 Unless thou yoke thy liking to my will,
1634 I'll murder straight, and then I'll slaughter thee
1635 And swear I found you where you did fulfil
1636 The loathsome act of lust, and so did kill
1637 The lechers in their deed: this act will be
1638 My fame and thy perpetual infamy.
1639 'With this, I did begin to start and cry,
1640 And then against my heart he sets his sword,
1641 Swearing, unless I took all patiently,
1642 I should not live to speak another word;
1643 So should my shame still rest upon record,
1644 And never be forgot in mighty Rome
1645 The adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom.
1646 'Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,
1647 And far the weaker with so strong a fear:
1648 My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak;
1649 No rightful plea might plead for justice there:
1650 His scarlet lust came evidence to swear
1651 That my poor beauty had purloin'd his eyes;
1652 And when the judge is robb'd the prisoner dies.
1653 'O, teach me how to make mine own excuse!
1654 Or at the least this refuge let me find;
1655 Though my gross blood be stain'd with this abuse,
1656 Immaculate and spotless is my mind;
1657 That was not forc'd; that never was inclin'd
1658 To accessary yieldings, but still pure
1659 Doth in her poison'd closet yet endure.'
1660 Lo, here, the hopeless merchant of this loss,
1661 With head declin'd, and voice damm'd up with woe,
1662 With sad set eyes, and wretched arms across,
1663 From lips new-waxen pale begins to blow
1664 The grief away that stops his answer so:
1665 But wretched as he is he strives in vain;
1666 What he breathes out his breath drinks up again.
1667 As through an arch the violent roaring tide
1668 Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste;
1669 Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride
1670 Back to the strait that forc'd him on so fast;
1671 In rage sent out, recall'd in rage, being past:
1672 Even so his sighs, his sorrows make a saw.
1673 To push grief on, and back the same grief draw.
1674 Which speechless woe of his poor she attendeth,
1675 And his untimely frenzy thus awaketh:
1676 'Dear Lord, thy sorrow to my sorrow lendeth
1677 Another power; no flood by raining slaketh.
1678 My woe too sensible thy passion maketh
1679 More feeling-painful: let it then suffice
1680 To drown one woe, one pair of weeping eyes.

Notes

TLN 1471classical allusion
“strumpet that began this stir”
Lucrece is looking at a painted scene from the Trojan War. The 'strumpet' is Helen of Troy, whose elopement with the Trojan prince Paris launched the ten-year war. Paris's desire ('fond Paris') is held responsible for the entire catastrophe — the city burning, and the deaths of king, sons, queen, and daughters.
classical Helen of Troy
TLN 1478rhetorical device
“private pleasure of some one Become the public plague”
This stanza is a formal rhetorical complaint in Lucrece's voice as she addresses the painted Troy. She argues the injustice of collective punishment for one individual's sin: why should 'many mo' ('many more') suffer for a single man's transgression? The antithesis of 'private' versus 'public,' repeated across six lines, is the stanza's structural spine.
TLN 1493rhetorical device
“sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing”
The narrator compares grief to a bell: once a heavy bell is set swinging, its own weight keeps it going, needing only a light touch to sustain the tolling. So Lucrece, once started on the Troy painting's sorrows, pours out more grief than the picture needs — she lends the painted figures her own words, and borrows their painted looks. The simile explains the self-sustaining logic of lamentation.
TLN 1502classical allusion
“piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent”
Lucrece has spotted a figure in the painting being led toward Troy by 'blunt swains' — rough country people. He looks pitiful but content, patient as though suffering nobly. This is Sinon, the Greek spy who deceived the Trojans into accepting the wooden horse; 'Phrygian' means Trojan — Phrygia was the region of Asia Minor where Troy stood. The figure is not yet named but identified by context.
TLN 1521classical allusion
“perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story The credulous Old Priam after slew”
Sinon was the Greek spy who told Priam a false tale about the wooden horse, persuading the old king to accept it into Troy. 'After slew' means 'subsequently destroyed' — his words, spreading 'like wildfire,' burned Troy to the ground. 'Wildfire' was an incendiary substance in Elizabethan warfare, essentially a fire that cannot be quenched with water, making it a vivid metaphor for words that spread destruction. 'Ilion' is another name for Troy (from Ilium).
TLN 1529cultural context
“some shape in Sinon's was abus'd; So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill”
Lucrece accuses the painter of misrepresenting nature: so handsome a face cannot honestly contain so wicked a mind. 'Abus'd' means 'wrongly used' or 'misrepresented' (OED s.v. 'abuse' v. sense 3). The Elizabethan assumption that outward beauty mirrors inner virtue — the moral legibility of the face — is the belief being tested and exposed here, because the very point of Sinon is that it is not true.
TLN 1541classical allusion
“subtle Sinon here is painted, So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild”
Lucrece explicitly identifies Sinon with Tarquin and herself with Priam. Just as Priam took pity on Sinon's acted distress and opened the gates that destroyed Troy, Lucrece welcomed Tarquin as a guest and was destroyed by him. 'My Troy did perish' collapses her body, her household, and her honour into the burning city. The identification is the emotional climax of the Troy-painting digression.
classical Tarquin and the rape of Lucrece
TLN 1588archaic vocab
“water-galls in her dim element Foretell new storms”
'Water-galls' are secondary or incomplete rainbows, seen as omens of further rain and storms in Elizabethan weather-lore. The dark arcs around Lucrece's swollen eyes ('her dim element') look like these portent-arcs, predicting that her weeping is not over. The metaphor links the physical appearance of her face to the weather-omen tradition: the arriving Collatine sees distress written in her face before she speaks.
TLN 1592archaic vocab
“eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw”
'Sod' is the past participle of 'seethe' — literally 'boiled.' Her eyes are so steeped and scalded in tears that they appear red and raw, like something boiled. The word is not unusual in Elizabethan English but looks archaic now.
TLN 1598archaic vocab
“What uncouth ill event Hath thee befall'n”
'Uncouth' does not mean 'socially awkward' here. In Elizabethan English it meant 'unknown, strange, unfamiliar' (from Old English uncuth, 'unknown'). Collatine is asking what strange or terrible unknown thing has happened to her — he does not yet know any event has occurred; he sees only her grief. The word carries a full sense of strangeness and dread.
TLN 1611classical allusion
“this pale swan in her watery nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending”
The image draws on the classical belief that swans, normally silent, sing a single beautiful song just before they die — the 'swan song.' Lucrece, about to tell Collatine what happened and then kill herself, is cast as the dying swan; her prepared speech is the death-song, her 'watery nest' the flood of tears surrounding her. 'Certain ending' means her death, which she has already resolved upon.
TLN 1619cultural context
“in the interest of thy bed A stranger came”
Lucrece tells Collatine what happened without naming Tarquin, using legal language: 'in the interest of thy bed' means 'in what was rightfully yours, your conjugal right.' A 'stranger' is a guest — Tarquin was a guest in the house — who violated the bed. The phrase 'foul enforcement' (TLN 1623) is the legal term for rape: forced intercourse. Lucrece frames the crime in property and legal terms because in Roman law the violation of a wife's chastity was an injury to the husband's legal honour, not only to herself.
historical The founding of the Roman Republic
TLN 1626archaic vocab
“shining falchion in my chamber came A creeping creature”
A 'falchion' is a curved single-edged sword, broader toward the tip — a weapon designed for slashing. Tarquin entered Lucrece's bedroom at midnight carrying one. The combination of 'creeping creature' and 'shining falchion' is deliberately discordant: the stealth of an insect with the weapon of a warrior, the violation presented as both cowardly and armed.
TLN 1632cultural context
“hard-favour'd groom of thine”
Lucrece reports Tarquin's threat: unless she consents, he will murder one of her male servants ('a hard-favour'd groom' — an ugly or rough-featured male attendant), place his body in her bed, and swear he caught the two committing adultery. Tarquin's plan is to use the threat of public dishonour — being found dead with a lover — to coerce compliance. A 'groom' in Elizabethan English is a male servant or attendant, not specifically a bridegroom.
TLN 1648rhetorical device
“My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak”
Lucrece describes the assault using an extended legal metaphor: Tarquin is her 'judge' and she is the prisoner in a corrupt court. He forbids her to speak; his 'scarlet lust' (both red with passion and red like a judge's robe) serves as the false testimony against her. Because the judge himself is the criminal, no appeal is possible — 'when the judge is robb'd the prisoner dies.' The juridical frame is central to the poem's political argument: Rome's courts were corrupted from within.
TLN 1655cultural context
“Though my gross blood be stain'd with this abuse, Immaculate and spotless is my mind”
Lucrece distinguishes between her body ('gross blood' — the physical, material part of her) and her mind, which was never consenting and remains 'immaculate.' 'Gross' means bodily, earthy, material — not 'disgusting.' She is making the key philosophical claim of her defence: physical violation does not corrupt the will. 'Accessary yieldings' (TLN 1658) means voluntary cooperation with the crime — she did not yield in her will, only her body was taken. 'Closet' (TLN 1659) is a private inner room, here a metaphor for the mind.
TLN 1660rhetorical device
“Lo, here, the hopeless merchant of this loss”
The narrator calls Collatine a 'hopeless merchant of this loss' — a trader who has suffered a total, irreversible shipwreck of his goods. The commercial metaphor frames honour and chastity as tradeable assets, a common Elizabethan idiom. Collatine's arms are crossed, his head bowed, his lips pale and still: he cannot speak; each breath he draws back in is immediately consumed by grief, like someone trying to blow out a fire who only fans it.
TLN 1677syntax grammar
“no flood by raining slaketh. My woe too sensible thy passion maketh More feeling-painful”
Lucrece tells Collatine that his visible grief intensifies hers, not relieves it: 'no flood is slaked [put out] by more rain' — grief added to grief does not drain it but swells it. 'Sensible' means 'perceptible to the senses, keenly felt' (not 'reasonable'); 'too sensible' means 'made too acutely felt.' 'More feeling-painful' means 'more painfully felt.' The syntax is compressed: 'thy passion [your visible suffering] makes my woe too sensible [too keenly felt], [making it] more feeling-painful.'