Medea’s magic, and Calypso’s drugs,
Circe’s enchantments, Hecate’s triform
Weans my soul, sucking at revenge’s dugs,
To feed upon the air. What wind, what storm
Blew my dissevered limbs into this form,
And from the virgin paradise of death
Conjures my ghost with poetizing breath?
The candle of my shame burns in the sky,
Set on the cross-poles of the firmament
To fear away divine virginity
And light this world below, that being bent
To follow me, they go not as I went.
But when I hope to see the candle wane,
Then Tarquin’s spirit falls on the snuff again,
So that the snuff, the savour of my shame
That stinks before the throne of chastity,
Is still rekindled with venereal flame
To show that Tarquin’s planet plants in me
The root of fiery blood and luxury,
First forcing with his breath one flame’s retire,
Then takes my blood for oil, his lust for fire.
Now burns the beacon of my soul indeed
Too high for fame, but low enough for fume.
Saints, keep your cloister-house. Vesta, make speed,
Take in thy flowers, for fear the fire consume
Thy eternal sweet virginity-perfume.
For lust and blood are mingled in one lamp
To seal my soul with rape and murder’s stamp.
Before my shame, you candle had no fire,
Vestals nil feared me, the world saw me not.
Shame was the tinder, and the flint desire
That struck in Tarquin’s bosom and begot
A child of fire, a firebrand, and so hot
That it consumed my chastity to dust,
And on my heart painted the mouth of lust.
Was I the cradle, O my chastity,
To rock and lull this bastard firebrand,
Nursed with my blood, weaned with my tragedy,
Fed at my knife’s sharp point upon my hand,
Born and reborn where’er my spirits stand?
I was the cradle. See the fiery dart
That burns Diana’s temples in my heart.
Behold this blade, varnished with blood and tears,
Blood from my heart, tears from my stilling eyes.
Behold, I say, this knife, whereon appears
Vesta’s vermilion, melting from her skies,
And tears of pearls in bloody mysteries.
This is the tragic knife. Here you may see
Tears strive for fame, and blood for chastity.
Right hand, thou act’st revenge’s hand aright.
This knife and thou have sworn to kiss my breast.
Thou art my Vesta’s antidote, to fright
Lust from the bed of Collatinus’ rest.
Performer of thy vow, hand, be thou blest,
For thou in this hast shown me what thou art,
Driving the foe from scaling of my heart.
Come, spirit of fire, bred in a womb of blood,
Forged in a furnace by the smith of hell,
Begot and formed in that burning flood
Where Pluto’s Phlegethontic tenants dwell,
And scalded spirits in their fiery cell
Breathes from their soul the flame of luxury.
From that luxurious clime I conjure thee.
Now is my tide of blood. Come, quench thy soul.
The sluices of my spirit now runs again.
Come, I have made my breast an ivory bowl
To hold the blood that streameth from my vein.
Drink to my chastity, which thou hast slain.
But woe the while, that labour is in vain,
To drink to that which cannot pledge again.
Quaff thine own fill and let that lustful flame
That circuits in the circle of thy spirit
Pledge thy desire, carousing off my shame
Which swims amidst my blood and doth inherit
The portion of my soul without a merit.
And if this spring of blood cannot suffice,
I’ll rain down tears from my elemental eyes.
Thou art my nurse-child, Tarquin, thou art he.
Instead of milk, suck blood and tears and all.
In lieu of teats, Lucrece thy nurse, even she,
By tragic art seen through a crystal wall,
Hath carved with her knife thy festival.
Here’s blood for milk; suck till thy veins run over,
And such a teat which scarce thy mouth can cover.
Tarquin the ravisher: O, at that name
See how mine eyes dissolveth into tears!
Tarquin the Roman: I describe my shame.
From Rome it came, a Roman name it bears.
Tarquin my guest: lo, here began my fears.
Tarquin from Ardea posts. Hence sprang the fire,
For Ardea’s name sounds ardent hot desire.
Tarquin my kinsman: O divinity,
Where art thou fled? Hast thou forsook thy sphere?
Where’s virtue, knighthood and nobility?
Faith? Honour? Piety? They should be near,
For ‘kinsman’ sounds all these. They are not here.
Tarquin my kinsman: was it thou didst come
To sack my Collatine’s Collatium?
Tarquin my kinsman: too unkindly done,
And by a kinsman too, my ghost avers it.
Doth therefore that same name of kindred run
To see their kin red, and with blood prefers it?
O enemy to faith, that still defers it!
Had Tarquin never lustful Tarquin been,
Lucrece the chaste should have chaste Lucrece seen.
Tarquin the prince: had Rome no better heirs?
Thou mistress of the world, no better men?
Thou prodigality of nature’s fairs,
Are tigers kings? Mak’st thou thy throne a den?
Thy silver glittering streams black Lerna’s fen?
Thy seven hills that should o’erlook thy evils
Like seven hells to nurse up Roman devils?
To thee, that mak’st the moon thy looking-glass
To view thy triple crown and seven-fold head,
To thee, I say, the ghost of what I was
Plains me and it, sith thou so long hast fed
The ravisher and starved the ravished.
If Vesta’s lines were ever writ in thee,
Then weigh the blotting of those lines in me.
Tarquin the prince: sham’st thou to hear thy name?
Rome, ’tis thy heir. Sham’st thou to call him son?
Tarquin the prince: lo, I’ll repeat thy shame.
A Roman heir, from him to thee I run.
I’ll shame you both before my shame be done.
Tarquin the prince, Tarquin the Roman heir:
Thus will I haunt and hunt you to despair.
Tarquin the traitor: bid my spirit rise
And call up all the senses of my soul,
For treason should be guarded with more eyes
Than was Jove’s lo under his control,
For treason’s guile doth win the traitor’s goal.
Tarquin the traitor: watch when time’s in season,
For treason doth betray all things to treason.
Tarquin the lecher: virgin chastity
Melts at the heat of that luxurious word,
Like maiden snow upon a promontory,
Kissing the sun, her heavenly lovely lord,
Then dies, and melts into a wat’ry ford.
So did my chastity’s white-snow attire
Dissolve in blood at Tarquin’s lustful fire.
Tarquin the night-owl: chastity, beware.
Thou art beset with millions of deceits.
Thy eyes have leaden lids, they take no care;
Thy senses, rocked asleep, and thy conceits,
Tempered with silence, fear nor snares nor baits.
Only the vestal pureness of thy soul
Bade me beware that night-observing owl.
Tarquin the night-owl: in whose flaming eyes
Lust and desire bandied their balls of blood,
Chasing my spirit with fiery mysteries
Unto the hazard where destruction stood
Ready to strike my soul into a cloud,
So, when the sun had seen my vapour rise,
Then with his beams to dash me from the skies.
Tarquin the night-owl: watch destruction.
What, hath the eyes of lust no lids at all,
Or do they hover for confusion,
Answering in silence when affections call?
When lust awakes, the eyelids never fall,
But, like a courser holding reason’s rein,
Doth shut the eyes and opens them again.
Tarquin the night-owl: Vesta, look about.
The fourth alarum of my fears now rings,
And yet the hour of dread is scarce run out,
For midnight’s face more force of terror brings.
To think on that, my sinews shake like strings,
And chastity, which yet had spirit and breath,
Lay quavering at my heart to tune her death.
Tarquin the night-owl: turn the glass again.
Five times my tongue, the hammer of my soul,
That beats upon my breath and strikes a strain
Sounding all quavers — that’s the song of dole —
Five times my tongue did even my tongue control,
For fear is such a slave and coward elf,
That, fearing others, runs and fears himself.
Tarquin the night-owl: enter treachery.
Sextus Tarquinius, this sixth hour is thine.
Farewell my life, farewell my chastity,
Farewell, though not mine now, that which was mine.
Thy grapes are now devoured. Alas, poor vine.
The tyrant, with his force of luxury,
Tires me an aunt, through imbecility.
Now enters on the stage of Lucrece’ heart
Black appetites in flamed habiliments.
When they have acted all, then they depart.
Rape ent’ring next, armed in murder’s tents,
Racks Vesta’s tenants and takes all her rents.
This shows that Vesta’s deity is poor:
She hath the stalk, but Venus hath the store.
This is the tragic scene. Bleed heart, weep eyes,
Fly soul from body, spirit from my veins.
Follow my chastity where’er it lies,
Which my unhallowed body now refrains.
Look to the lamp of chastity, it wanes.
The star which guided all my elements
Pulls in her head and leaves the firmaments.
Rape, in his paws of blood and fangs of lust,
Hath stained th’ immaculate lily of my field,
And hath sepulchred in the shade of dust
Diana’s milken robe, and Vesta’s shield.
When tigers prey, the seely lambs must yield;
When Tarquin posts from Ardea, by and by
Lucrece must lose her life and chastity.
O Collatine, where sleeps thy troubled spirit?
What new-come Morpheus hath arrested thee?
Doth thy heart soundly sleep? Doth nothing stir it?
Dear Collatine, awake! Wert thou with me,
The arches of mine eyes would waken thee,
For tears like waves rush at my eyelids’ door,
Striving together who should go before.
Come, Collatine, the foe hath sacked thy city.
Collatium goes to wrack. Come, Collatine.
Come, Collatine, all piety and pity
Is turned to petty treason. What is thine
Is seized upon long since, and what is mine
Carried away. True man, thou sleep’st at Rome
Even while a Roman thief robs thee at home.
Come, Collatine, ’tis Lucrece bids thee come,
Or shall I send my pursuivant of groans
Unto proud Rome from poor Collatium
To make all private means by public moans,
Discoursing my black story to the stones?
Come, Collatine, ’tis Tarquin’s dreadful drum
That conjures me to call, and thee to come.
Thy Lucrece’ bed, which had fair canopies
Spangled with stars like to the firmament,
And curtains wrought with many deities,
Resembling Jove’s white lacteal element,
Are stained now by lust and ravishment,
The stars out-stared, the deities defied.
These I had stored, the other deified.
The night before Tarquin and lust came hither-
Ill token for a chaste memorial —
My maids and I, poor maid, did spin together
Like the three sisters which the fates we call,
And fortune lent us wheels to turn withal.
Round goes our wheels like worlds. On mine alone
Stood fortune reeling on a rolling stone.
Yet was my heart so light that still I said,
‘Sing merrily, my maids, our wheels go round.
Who would not sing and spin and be a maid,
To serve so sweet a goddess, and be bound
Apprentice where such mistresses abound?
Sing merrily, my maids,’ (again she says)
‘For Vesta is the goddess of our lays.
‘Maidens,’ quoth I, ‘but think what maidens be:
They are the very string that ties their hearts,
The pillars of their souls’ pure purity,
The distillations of th’ essential parts,
Both good deservers and the good deserts.
Then, seeing Vesta hath so many trades,
Go round, our wheels. Sing merrily, my maids.
‘What nimble fingers hath virginity,
To twist the thread and turn the wheel about!
O virgins, that same pearl of chastity
Shines like the moon to light your thoughts throughout.
Pure cogitations never harbours doubt,
But like the fairest purest chrysolite,
Admits no bruise without a crack with it.
‘Spin merrily, my maiden paradise.’
Thus with a merry cheer I whirled their wheels,
And made them rid at once more than at twice.
Such pretty pleasure true affection feels
That time’s old head runs swifter than his heels,
For mirth’s fledged wings are of so quick a flight
That makes the morn seem noon, the noon seem
night.
‘My maids, those airy sinews in your hands
Were of a finer thread than that you spin.
It was a merry age in golden bands
When Saturn sowed the earth and did begin
To teach bad husbands a new way to win.
Then was true labour exercised and done,
When gods did reel what goddesses had spun.’
Those times are waxen bald. A prouder air
Blows in the heaven and breathes upon the earth.
That age is out of date. Another heir
Claims his possession by an iron birth,
And in an iron throne of death and dearth
Rules this young age, sucking until it whine
Even at the dugs of Pluto’s Proserpine.
Thus, like Diana by a lily fount,
Sat I amidst my vestal elements.
Thus did myself still with myself account,
To free my thoughts from chained discontents
And stir up mirth, the nurse of nourishments.
Thus with a lightsome spirit and soul’s carouse,
I like a housewife cherished up my house.
When Roman dames, tickled with pride and lust,
Ravished with amorous philosophy,
Printed the measures of their feet in dust,
Temp’ring their blood with music’s harmony —
The very synod-house of venery —
Then I at home, instead of melody,
Grated my wheel upon the axletree.
How like Arachne turned I my wheel!
Each of my maids how like a shepherdess!
Had Collatine, my shepherd, held the reel,
We four might well have made a country mess.
But one abroad makes one at home the less.
My Collatine, my shepherd, was at Rome,
And left poor me to feed his flock at home.
Is Venus made a laundress to the court?
Cupid, her son, elected for a page?
No marvel if Diana’s stars do sport
With Venus’ planets upon Cupid’s stage.
Iron must have fire. This is an iron age.
Our souls, like smiths, with anvils of desire,
Beat on our flesh, and still we sparkle fire.
The prince’s court is ev’n a firmament
All wrought with beams by day and stars by night;
The prince himself the sunny element
From whence all beams and stars do borrow light
To paint their faces with a red and white;
Those beams ambassadors of his bright array,
Those stars his counsellors by night and day.
How comes it then — speak, speak, iniquity,
Thou blur of kingdoms and thou blot of kings,
Thou metamorphosis of purity,
That shap’st the greater things to lesser things —
How comes it then that Cupid’s bow-string swings
About the heels of time? Iniquity,
It is the halter of thy luxury.
Thou hast burnt out the humour of thy bones,
And made them powders of impiety
To strew about the earth as thick as stones,
Like wombs of lust in tombs of lechery;
And all thy sinews, O iniquity,
Are so dried up, and now so slender spun,
That Venus makes them bow-strings for her son.
Where is the spring of blood’s virginity
That wont to serve thy veins like conduit heads
And cleanse thy cistern of iniquity
With maiden humours from chaste Flora’s meads?
Then slept’st thou like a lord in honour’s beds.
Then virtue was thy bedfellow. Now know,
As great an ebb follows as great a flow.
Lo, under that base type of Tarquin’s name
I cipher figures of iniquity.
He writes himself the shamer, I the shame,
The actor he, and I the tragedy.
The stage am I, and he the history,
The subject I, and he the ravisher.
He, murd’ring me, made me my murderer.
O lust, this pen of mine that writes thee ‘lust’
Lies blasted at the sulphur of thy fire.
The quill and feathers, burnt to ashy dust,
Like dust and ashes flies before desire,
Unable to endure thy flamed attire;
For, in the sky of contrariety,
The winner’s life is when the losers die.
If I proceed, O fiery incolants
Of that vast hell which Pluto terms his hall,
Tarquin’s companions, ye, I say, that haunts
The banks of burning baths, to you I call:
Send me Prometheus’ heart t’ indite withal,
And from his vulture’s wings a pen of blood
Thrice steeped and dipped in Phlegethontic flood.
Then shall I stamp the figure of the night
On Tarquin’s brow, and mark him for her son,
The heir of darkness, bastard of the light,
The cloud of heaven, th’ eclipser of the sun,
The stain in Vesta’s cheeks which first begun
In Tarquin’s flesh, begot of fiery dust.
O thou the hell of love, untutored lust!
It bribes the flesh to war against the spirit
With tickling blood must’ring in every vein.
It weans the conscience from her heavenly merit,
Depraving all chaste thoughts, her maiden train.
It makes the heart think and unthink again.
It taints the breath with fire, the brain with blood,
And sets a devil where a god had stood.
Being in the eye, lust is a cockatrice,
Hemlock in taste, a canker in the thought,
And in the life a moth, which in a trice
Consumes that treasure which so dear was bought
And cost so many drops of blood, for naught;
So many streams of blood and baths of sweat,
To bathe our spirits and to quench our heat.
O hell-eyed lust, when I behold thy face
Prefigured in my ghost, drawn in my mind,
I think of Sidon’s flowers that grow apace
And favour thee by quality and kind:
They look like faith before, and fame behind,
But if thou savour these well-favoured evils,
They have the sight of gods, the scent of devils.
If I had, like a curious herbalist,
Measured thy quantity by quality,
Or Aesculapius-wise, on reason’s fist
Had planted virtue by the property,
Or with the lapidary’s policy
Made choice by insight — that’s the note of wit,
And not by outward hue to judge of it —
Then, like that skilful Aesculapius,
Setting apart the colour of deceit,
I might have known Tarquin from Tereus,
And Lucrece’ bed from Philomela’s bait.
Vesta conceived what Venus did conceit,
But, wanting Aesculapius in my choice,
I left sweet verdure for a flattering voice.
Did beauty, that same bavin’s blaze, incense thee,
That flower of time, which buds with vanity,
That string of fortune’s wheel, which doth commence thee
The graduate of hell-born iniquity?
Was beauty made the mark of luxury?
Then, heavens, from henceforth let the world behold
Beauty in lead, deformity in gold.
Say beauty’s beams dazzled thy cloudy eyes;
This beauty hangs but at the heels of time,
And when time’s wings a loftier measure flies
Then beauty like poor Icarus must climb,
Or plunge into the puddle of her slime;
For beauty’s limbs are of a waxen frame,
And melts like Icarus’ wings at every flame.
Saw’st thou the colours which quaint Phidias drew
In dead-live pictures with a touch of art?
Such red and white hath beauty being new,
Made only to amaze th’ amazer’s heart.
Yet Phidias’ colours, piercing like a dart,
Were stained with every breath, and lost their prime.
So beauty’s blot drops from the pen of time.
But O my heaven, shall I forget thy spheres?
O spheres of heaven, shall I let pass your skies?
O skies which wears out time, and never wears,
Shall I make dim the tapers of your eyes?
O eyes of heaven, sun, moon, and stars that rise
To wake the day, and free imprisoned night,
Shall my oblivious vapour cloud your light?
’Tis thou, O chastity. Shall I forsake thee,
Or drown thy memory in my bloody stream?
Remember, O my soul, did she not make thee
Out of Diana’s ribs? Did not that beam
Which glisters in thy spirit like Jove’s eye-gleam
Reflect from Vesta’s face upon thy heart,
Like Phoebus’ brow, the pride of heaven’s art?
O thou that mak’st the Via Lactea whiter,
That virgin gallery of majestic Jove,
Fair Juno’s maze — to foot it doth delight her —
The silver path of heaven, and bath of love;
There sits the Iamb, the swan, the turtle dove,
Ensigns of peace, of faith, and chastity:
O silver stage to golden harmony.
That choir of saints in virgin ornament
Where angels sing like choristers of heaven,
Where all the martyrs kneel, the element
Where Cynthia’s robe and great Apollo’s steven
Hangs at the altar of this milken haven —
And to conclude, not able to begin,
I write of that which flesh hath never seen.
’Twas thou, O chastity, m’ eternal eye,
The want of thee made my ghost reel to hell.
’Twas thou, O chastity, that gild’st the sky
With beams of virtue. It is thou dost dwell
In that white milken crystal silver cell,
Thou laundress to the gods and goddesses,
Washing their souls in fonts of holiness.
O thou that deck’st our Phoebus in the east,
Circling his temples with spiritual beams,
And guides his vestal chariot to the west
Through that pure crystal track of lacteal streams,
Silvering his wheels with alabaster gleams,
Then temp’ring the bright porphyry of his face
With chaste Endymion’s blush, the dye of grace,
That doing duty to his father Jove
Upon his knee of fire, bids him arise,
And blessing all his beams with kissing love,
Like a majestic father gilds his eyes
To add a rarer shine unto the skies,
Then takes his chariot with a brighter pride,
And cries aloud, ‘Saint Vesta be my guide!’
Saint Vesta, O thou sanctifying saint,
That lends a beam unto the clearest sun,
Which else within his fiery course would faint
And end his race ere he had half begun,
Making the world believe his power were done,
His oil burnt out, his lamp returned to slime,
His fires extinguished by the breath of time,
O thou, the pearl that hangs on Juno’s brow,
Like to the moon, the massy pearl of night,
Thou jewel in the ear of Jove, to show
The pride of love, the purity of light,
Thou Atlas of both worlds, umpire of right,
Thou haven of heaven, th’ assigner of each sign,
Sanctity’s saint, divinity’s divine,
O thou, the silver taper of the moon,
Set in an alabaster candlestick
That by the bed of heaven at afternoon
Stands like a lily which fair virgins pick
To match it with the lily of their cheek,
Thou lily lamb, thou crystal-feathered dove
That nestles in the palace of thy Jove,
O touch my veins again, thou blood divine.
O feed my spirit, thou food angelical,
And all chaste functions with my soul combine.
Colour my ghost with chastity, whose all
Feeds fat lean death and time in general.
Come, silver dove, heaven’s alabaster nun,
I’ll hug thee more than ever I have done.
Lucrece, alas, thou picture of thyself,
Drawn poor and pale by that old painter, time,
And overdashed by death, that meagre elf
Which dries our element of blood to thyme,
And temp’reth our old ashes with new slime;
Lucrece, I say, how canst thou Lucrece be,
Wanting a god to give a life to thee?
Bleed no more lines, my heart. This knife, my pen,
This blood, my ink, hath writ enough to lust.
Tarquin, to thee, thou very devil of men,
I send these lines. Thou art my fiend of trust.
To thee I dedicate my tomb of dust.
To thee I consecrate this little-most
Writ by the bloody fingers of my ghost.
This little scroll of fire that burns my hand
In repetition of thy fiery name
I fold upon my heart, my bloody land,
And to thy ghost my ghost doth send the same,
Intituled The Lines of Blood and Flame:
The ghost of Lucrece, that’s the ghost of blood;
The ghost of Tarquin, that’s the fiery flood.
Now for thy title and deserved style,
In dedication to thy worthiness:
To thee the second of Cocytus’ isle,
Chief seignior to the Phlegethontic mess,
High steward unto Pluto’s holiness,
Temp’rer of flames, the Lord Tisiphone,
My bloody fires begs patronage of thee.
Now lack I nothing but the post of hell
To fly like Vesta’s arrow from my bow
With these my red-hot news, and then to tell
How many times my heart did ebb and flow
Like seas, with tears above and blood below.
And from poor Lucrece’ mouth tell Tarquin thus,
That Philomel hath writ to Tereus.
Here stops the stream of tragic blood and fire,
And now Melpomene hales my spirit in.
The stage is down, and Philomela’s choir
Is hushed from pricksong. Acheron’s bells begin
To call our ghosts, clad in the spirits of sin.
Now Tereus meets with ravished Philomel,
Lucrece with Tarquin in the hall of hell.