Lucrece (Quarto, 1594)
Author: William ShakespeareEditor: Hardy M. CookNot Peer Reviewed


¶O hatefull, vaporous, and foggy night,
¶Since thou art guilty of my curele
sse crime:
¶Mu
ster thy mi
sts to meete the Ea
sterne light,
¶Make war again
st proportion'd cour
se of time.
775Or if thou wilt permit the Sunne to clime
¶_His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,
¶_Knit poy
sonous clouds about his golden head.
¶VVith rotten damps raui
sh the morning aire,
¶Let their exhald vnhold
some breaths make
sicke
780The life of puritie, the
supreme faire,
¶Ere he arriue his wearie noone-tide pricke,
¶And let thy mu
stie vapours march
so thicke,
¶_That in their
smoakie rankes, his
smothred light
¶_May
set at noone, and make perpetuall night.
785VVere
TARQVIN night, as he is but nights child,
¶The
siluer
shining Queene he would di
staine;
¶Her twinckling handmaids to (by him defil'd)
¶Through nights black bo
som
shuld not peep again.
¶So
should I haue copartners in my paine,
790_And fellow
ship in woe doth woe a
sswage,
¶_As Palmers chat makes
short their pilgrimage.
¶VVhere now I haue no one to blu
sh with me,
¶To cro
sse their armes & hang their heads with mine,
¶To maske their browes and hide their infamie,
795But I alone, alone mu
st
sit and pine,
¶Sea
soning the earth with
showres of
siluer brine;
¶_Mingling my talk with tears, my greef with grones,
¶_Poore wa
sting monuments of la
sting mones.
¶O night thou furnace of fowle reeking
smoke!
800Let not the iealous daie behold that face,
¶VVhich vnderneath thy blacke all-hiding cloke
¶Immode
stly lies martird with di
sgrace.
¶Keepe
still po
sse
ssion of thy gloomy place,
¶_That all the faults which in thy raigne are made,
805_May likewi
se be
sepulcherd in thy
shade.

