In a pure compound; being so applied,
His venom in effect is purified.o

"Then, for thy husband and thy children's sake,
Tender my suit: 3 bequeath not to their lot
The shame that from them no device can take,
The blemish that will never be forgot;

Worse than a slavish wipe or birth-hour's blot :
For marks descried in men's nativity

Are Nature's faults, not their own infamy."

Here with a cockatrice' dead-killing eye 5
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause;
While she, the picture of true piety,

6

Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws,
Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws,

To the rough beast that knows no gentle right,
Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite.

As, when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat,
In his dim mist th' aspiring mountains hiding,
From earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get,
Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding,
Hindering their present fall by this dividing;

So his unhallow'd haste her words delays,
And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.

Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally,
While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth:

2 His, again, for its. Purified is here equivalent to neutralized. 3 To regard, to favour, to have concern for, are old senses of to tender. 4 Wipe, Malone says, is "the brand with which slaves were marked." 5 Shakespeare has many allusions to the "death-darting eye" of this fabulous beast. See vol. ix. page 235, note 4.

6 Gripe is, properly, griffin, a fabulous bird; but was used for vulture. 7 To wink sometimes means to sleep. See vol. xiii. page 188, note 1.

Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly,

A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth :
His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth
No penetrable entrance to her plaining:

Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.

Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fix'd
In the remorseless wrinkles of his face;
Her modest eloquence with sighs is mix'd,
Which to her oratory adds more grace.
She puts the period often from his place;

And midst the sentence so her accent breaks,
That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.

She conjures him by high almighty Jove,

By knighthood, gentry, and sweet friendship's oath,
By her untimely tears, her husband's love,
By holy human law, and common troth,

By Heaven and Earth, and all the power of both,
That to his borrow'd bed he make retire,
And stoop to honour, not to foul desire.

Quoth she, "Reward not hospitality

With such black payment as thou hast pretended;8
Mud not the fountain that gave drink to thee;

Mar not the thing that cannot be amended;
End thy ill aim before thy shoot be ended;
He is no woodman that doth bend his bow
To strike a poor unseasonable doe.

"My husband is thy friend, for his sake spare me ; Thyself art mighty, - for thine own sake leave me ;

Myself a weakling, - - do not, then, ensnare me;

8 Pretended for purposed or intended. See vol. xix. page 146, note 24

Thou look'st not like deceit,

do not deceive me.

My sighs, like whirlwinds, labour hence to heave thee:

If ever man were moved with woman's moans,
Be moved with my tears, my sighs, my groans:

"All which together, like a troubled ocean,
Beat at thy rocky and wreck-threatening heart,
To soften it with their continual motion;
For stones, dissolved, to water do convert.
O, if no harder than a stone thou art,
Melt at my tears, and be compassionate!
Soft pity enters at an iron gate.

"In Tarquin's likeness I did entertain thee:
Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?
To all the host of Heaven I complain me,
Thou wrong'st his honour, wound'st his princely name.
Thou art not what thou seem'st; and, if the same,
Thou seem'st not what thou art, a god, a king;
For kings like gods should govern every thing.

"How will thy shame be seeded in thine age,
When thus thy vices bud before thy spring!
If in thy hope thou darest do such outrage,
What darest thou not when once thou art a king?
O, be remember'd, no outrageous thing

From vassal actors can be wiped away;
Then kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.

"This deed will make thee only loved for fear;
But happy monarchs still are fear'd for love:
With foul offenders thou perforce must bear,
When they in thee the like offences prove :
If but for fear of this, thy will remove ;

For princes are the glass, the school, the book, Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look.

"And wilt thou be the school where Lust shall learn? Must he in thee read lectures of such shame?

Wilt thou be glass wherein it shall discern
Authority for sin, warrant for blame,

To privilege dishonour in thy name?

Thou back'st reproach against long-living laud,
And makest fair reputation but a bawd.

"Hast thou command? by him that gave it thee,
From a pure heart command thy rebel will:
Draw not thy sword to guard iniquity,

For it was lent thee all that brood to kill.

Thy princely office how canst thou fulfil,

When, pattern'd by thy fault, foul Sin may say, He learn'd to sin, and thou didst teach the way?

"Think but how vile a spectacle it were,
To view thy present trespass in another.
Men's faults do seldom to themselves appear;
Their own transgressions partially they smother:
This guilt would seem death-worthy in thy brother.
O, how are they wrapp'd in with infamies

That from their own misdeeds askance their eyes!

"To thee, to thee, my heaved-up hands appeal, Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier:

I sue for exiled majesty's repeal;

Let him return, and flattering thoughts retire:
His true respect will prison false desire,

And wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne,
That thou shalt see thy state, and pity mine."

"Have done," quoth he: "

my uncontrolled tide
Turns not, but swells the higher by this let.

Small lights are soon blown out, huge fires abide,
And with the wind in greater fury fret:

The petty streams that pay a daily debt

To their salt sovereign, with their fresh falls' haste
Add to his flow, but alter not his taste."

"Thou art," quoth she, "a sea, a sovereign king;
And, lo, there falls into thy boundless flood
Black lust, dishonour, shame, misgoverning,
Who seek to stain the ocean of thy blood.
If all these petty ills shall change thy good,
Thy sea within a puddle's womb is hearsed,
And not the puddle in thy sea dispersed.

"So shall these slaves be king, and thou their slave;
Thou nobly base, they basely dignified;
Thou their fair life, and they thy fouler, grave;9
Thou loathed in their shame, they in thy pride:
The lesser thing should not the greater hide;

The cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot,
But low shrubs wither at the cedar's root.

"So let thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state

66

No more," quoth he; "by Heaven, I will not hear thee:

Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate,

Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee;

That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee

Unto the base bed of some rascal groom,

To be thy partner in this shameful doom."

9 Grave is here a verb, meaning to bury or be the death of. See vol. xix. page 166, note 3.