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"More I could tell, but more I dare not say;
The text is old, the orator too green.
Therefore, in sadness, now I will away;
My face is full of shame, my heart of teen;

Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended,
Do burn themselves for having so offended."

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;
Leaves Love upon her back deeply distressed.

Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye;

Which after him she darts, as one on shore
Gazing upon a late-embarkèd friend,

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:
So did the merciless and pitchy night
Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood,
Or 'stonished as night-wandrers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

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1593.

FROM

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE

By this, lamenting Philomel had ended

The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow,
And solemn Night with slow sad gait descended
To ugly hell; when, lo, the blushing morrow
Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow:
But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,
And therefore still in night would cloistered be.

Revealing Day through every cranny spies,
And seems to point her out where she sits weeping;
To whom she sobbing speaks: "O eye of eyes,

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Why pry'st thou through my window? leave thy peeping;
Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping;

Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
For day hath naught to do what's done by night.”

Thus cavils she with everything she sees:
True grief is fond and testy as a child,
Who wayward once, his mood with naught agrees.
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild:
Continuance tames the one; the other wild,

Like an unpractised swimmer plunging still,

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With too much labour drowns for want of skill.

So she, deep-drenched in a sea of care,
Holds disputation with each thing she views,
And to herself all sorrow doth compare:
No object but her passion's strength renews;
And as one shifts, another straight ensues.
Sometime her grief is dumb, and hath no words;
Sometime 't is mad, and too much talk affords.

The little birds that tune their morning's joy
Make her moans mad with their sweet melody;
For mirth doth search the bottom of annoy:
Sad souls are slain in merry company;
Grief best is pleased with grief's society;

True sorrow then is feelingly sufficèd
When with like semblance it is sympathizèd.

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'Tis double death to drown in ken of shore;
He ten times pines that pines beholding food;
To see the salve doth make the wound ache more;
Great grief grieves most at that would do it good:
Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood,

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Who, being stopped, the bounding banks o'erflows;
Grief dallied with nor law nor limit knows.

"You mocking birds," quoth she, "your tunes entomb
Within your hollow-swelling feathered breasts,
And in my hearing be you mute and dumb:

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My restless discord loves no stops nor rests;
A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests.

Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears:
Distress likes dumps when time is kept with tears.

"Come, Philomel, that sing'st of ravishment,
Make thy sad grove in my dishevelled hair:
As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment,
So I at each sad strain will strain a tear,
And with deep groans the diapason bear;

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For burden-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still,
While thou on Tereus descant'st better skill.

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"And whiles against a thorn thou bear'st thy part,
To keep thy sharp woes waking, wretched I,
To imitate thee well, against my heart
Will fix a sharp knife to affright mine eye;
Who, if it wink, shall thereon fall and die.

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These means, as frets upon an instrument,

Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.

"And for, poor bird, thou sing'st not in the day,
As shaming any eye should thee behold,
Some dark deep desert, seated from the way,
That knows not parching heat nor freezing cold,

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Will we find out; and there we will unfold

To creatures stern sad tunes, to change their kinds :

Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds." 70

As the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,

Wildly determining which way to fly,

Or one encompassed with a winding maze,
That cannot tread the way out readily,

So with herself is she in mutiny,

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To live or die which of the twain were better,
When life is shamed and death reproach's debtor.

"To kill myself," quoth she, "alack, what were it
But with my body my poor soul's pollution?
They that lose half with greater patience bear it

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Than they whose whole is swallowed in confusion.
That mother tries a merciless conclusion

Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one
Will slay the other and be nurse to none.

"My body or my soul, which was the dearer,
When the one pure, the other made divine?
Whose love of either to myself was nearer,
When both were kept for heaven and Collatine?
Ay me! the bark peeled from the lofty pine,
His leaves will wither and his sap decay;
So must my soul, her bark being peeled away.

"Her house is sacked, her quiet interrupted, Her mansion battered by the enemy,

Her sacred temple spotted, spoiled, corrupted,
Grossly engirt with daring infamy;
Then let it not be called impiety,

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If in this blemished fort I make some hole
Through which I may convey this troubled soul.

"Yet die I will not till my Collatine

Have heard the cause of my untimely death;
That he may vow, in that sad hour of mine,
Revenge on him that made me stop my breath.
My stained blood to Tarquin I'll bequeath,

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Which, by him tainted, shall for him be spent,
And as his due writ in my testament.

"My honour I'll bequeath unto the knife
That wounds my body so dishonourèd.
'Tis honour to deprive dishonoured life:
The one will live, the other being dead.
So of shame's ashes shall my fame be bred:

For in my death I murther shameful scorn;
My shame so dead, mine honour is new-born.

"Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost, What legacy shall I bequeath to thee? My resolution, love, shall be thy boast,

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By whose example thou revenged mayst be.
How Tarquin must be used, read it in me:
Myself, thy friend, will kill myself, thy foe;
And for my sake serve thou false Tarquin so."

1594.

FROM

SONNETS

XII

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

XVIII

Shall I compare thee to à summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or Nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st :

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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