Rhamnusia in a chariot of revenge,
Heaped up with ghosts of blood and spirits of lire,
Hath pilled up Lucrece’ ghost, so to avenge
Her chaste untimely blood of flamed desire.
Now at the bar of hell, revenge’s choir,
Pleads Lucrece with a tongue of tears and bloods.
First speaks her heart, and then her eyes in floods.
Can death, that shrimp of spirits, that bony wretch,
That meagre element, that beggar god,
From Lucrece’ sky such heavenly colours fetch,
From beauty’s wrist so wrest that golden rod
Which makes all red and white disperse abroad?
Death’s power is come, and beauty’s triumph past.
She was as chaste as fair, as fair as chaste.
Her hair, which in Arachne’s finest loom
Was kissed with silver shuttles, O that hair
Which made Collatium shine in spite of Rome,
Combing her tresses like Jove’s golden heir —
He made Rome bright, she made Collatium fair —
That hair which danced in beams before her breath
Serves now to stuff the gaping ribs of death.
Her eyes, the curious fabric of her world,
Apollo’s touchstones where he tried his beams,
And when her eyes outmatched his fires he hurled
His crown of splendour into quenching streams,
Raging to see beauty’s enrolled themes
Writ in her eye-rolls; but alas, those eyes
Which lived in beauty, now in beauty dies.
Her tongue, which Orpheus tuned before he died,
And strung before he journeyed unto hell,
That new Parnassus by a river’s side,
Where music sojourns and the muses dwell,
O tongue of hers, Diana’s silver bell,
That rung chaste prayers to the church of heaven,
Now she of it, and it of her bereaven.
Her breath, which had a violet perfume
Tempered with rose all verdure, O her breath
Through discord of her tongue did all consume.
Unto the air of earth she did bequeath
That pension of her life, from life to death.
How ill was this bestowed on death, that elf
Which robs all others, yet still poor itself.
Her teats, twixt whom an alabaster bridge
Parts each from other, like two crystal bowls
Standing aloof upon the body’s ridge,
Bears chastity’s white nectar-flowing souls.
O valley decked with Flora’s silver rolls,
Why giv’st thou suck to death? It will be fed,
For know, death must not die till all be dead.
And to conclude, her all in every sphere,
That like the sun on crystal elements
Did shine in clearness bright, in brightness clear,
Her head her skies, her soul her firmaments,
Now stained by death, before by ravishments:
First Tarquin-life clad her in death’s array.
Now Tarquin-death hath stol’n her life away.
FINIS