At this request, with noble disposition Each present lord began to promise aid, As bound in knighthood to her imposition, Longing to hear the hateful foe bewray'd. But she, that yet her sad task hath not said, The protestation stops. 'O, speak,' quoth she, 'How may this forced stain be wiped from me?
'What is the quality of mine offence, Being constrain'd with dreadful circumstance? May my pure mind with the foul act dispense, My low-declined honour to advance? May any terms acquit me from this chance? The poison'd fountain clears itself again; And why not I from this compelled stain?
With this, they all at once began to say, Her body's stain her mind untainted clears; While with a joyless smile she turns away The face, that map which deep impression bears Of hard misfortune, carved in it with tears. 'No, no,' quoth she, 'no dame, hereafter living, By my excuse shall claim excuses giving.
Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, She throws forth Tarquin's name: 'He, he,' she says, But more than 'he' her poor tongue could not speak; Till after many accents and delays, Untimely breathings, sick and short assays, She utters this, 'He, he, fair lords, 'tis he, That guides this hand to give this wound to me.'
Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed: That blow did bail it from the deep unrest Of that polluted prison where it breathed: Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeathed Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.
Stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed, Stood Collatine and all his lordly crew; Till Lucrece' father, that beholds her bleed, Himself on her self-slaughter'd body threw; And from the purple fountain Brutus drew The murderous knife, and, as it left the place, Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase;
And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd, And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd.
About the mourning and congealed face Of that black blood a watery rigol goes, Which seems to weep upon the tainted place: And ever since, as pitying Lucrece' woes, Corrupted blood some watery token shows; And blood untainted still doth red abide, Blushing at that which is so putrified.
'Daughter, dear daughter,' old Lucretius cries, 'That life was mine which thou hast here deprived. If in the child the father's image lies, Where shall I live now Lucrece is unlived? Thou wast not to this end from me derived If children pre-decease progenitors, We are their offspring, and they none of ours.
'Poor broken glass, I often did behold In thy sweet semblance my old age new born; But now that fair fresh mirror, dim and old, Shows me a bare-boned death by time outworn: O, from thy cheeks my image thou hast torn, And shiver'd all the beauty of my glass, That I no more can see what once I was!
'O time, cease thou thy course and last no longer, If they surcease to be that should survive. Shall rotten death make conquest of the stronger And leave the faltering feeble souls alive? The old bees die, the young possess their hive: Then live, sweet Lucrece, live again and see Thy father die, and not thy father thee!'
By this, starts Collatine as from a dream, And bids Lucretius give his sorrow place; And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face, And counterfeits to die with her a space; Till manly shame bids him possess his breath And live to be revenged on her death.
The deep vexation of his inward soul Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue: Who, mad that sorrow should his use control, Or keep him from heart-easing words so long, Begins to talk; but through his lips do throng Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart's aid, That no man could distinguish what he said.
Yet sometime 'Tarquin' was pronounced plain, But through his teeth, as if the name he tore. This windy tempest, till it blow up rain, Held back his sorrow's tide, to make it more; At last it rains, and busy winds give o'er: Then son and father weep with equal strife Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.