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  • Title: Lucrece (Quarto, 1594)
  • Editor: Hardy M. Cook

    • ISBN: 978-1-55058-411-0

    Copyright Hardy M. Cook. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Hardy M. Cook
    Not Peer Reviewed

    Lucrece (Quarto, 1594)

    THE RAPE OF LVCRECE.

    Where now I haue no one to blush with me,
    To crosse their armes & hang their heads with mine,
    To maske their browes and hide their infamie,
    795But I alone, alone must sit and pine,
    Seasoning the earth with showres of siluer brine;
    Mingling my talk with tears, my greef with grones,
    Poore wasting monuments of lasting mones.

    O night thou furnace of fowle reeking smoke!
    800Let not the iealous daie behold that face,
    Which vnderneath thy blacke all-hiding cloke
    Immodestly lies martird with disgrace.
    Keepe still possession of thy gloomy place,
    That all the faults which in thy raigne are made,
    805 May likewise be sepulcherd in thy shade.

    Make me not obiect to the tell-tale day,
    The light will shew characterd in my brow,
    The storie of sweete chastities decay,
    The impious breach of holy wedlocke vowe.
    810Yea the illiterate that know not how
    To cipher what is writ in learned bookes,
    Will cote my lothsome trespasse in my lookes.
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