My Colatine would else have come to me,
When Tarquin did, but he was staid by thee.
Guilty thou art of murder and of theft ;
Guilty of perjury and subornation;
Guilty of treason, forgery and shift;
Guilty of incest, that abomination :
As an accessary by thine inclination
To all sins past, and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.
Mishapen time, copesmate of ugly night ;'
Swift, subtle post, carrier of grisly care;
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare ;
Thou nursest all, and murder'st all that are.
O hear me then, injurious shifting time!
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.
Why hath thy servant opportunity
Betrayed the hours thou gav'st me to repose?
Cancell'd my fortunes, and inchained me
To endless date of never-ending woes?
Time's office is to find the hate of foes,
To eat up error by opinion bred,
Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed?
Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time on aged things,
To wake the morn, and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger, till he render right,
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers. To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books, and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings;
To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs, 3
[1] Copesmate, i. e. companion.
To punish by the compunctious visiting of conscience, the person who has done an injury to another, till he has made compensation. Dr. Farmer would elegantly read :
To wring the wronger, &c.
[3] If these words have any sense, it is directly contrary to the sentiment here advanced, which is concerning the decays and not the repairs of Time. WARBURTON.
Dr. Johnson thinks Shakspeare wrote-and perish springs. By springs, however may be understood (as has been observed by Mr. Tollet) the shoots of
To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,4
And turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel :
To show the beldame daughters of her daughter;
To make a child a man, the man a child;
To slay the tiger, that doth live by slaughter;
To tame the unicorn and lion wild;
To mock the subtle in themselves beguil'd;
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water-drops.
Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
Unless thou could'st return to make amends?
One poor retiring minute in an age,
Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,
Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends.
O,this dread night! would'st thou one hour come back,
I could prevent this storm, and shun this wrack.
'Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,
With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight;
Devise extremes beyond extremity,
To make him curse this cursed crimeful night;
Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright,
And the dire thought of his committed evil
Shape every bush a hideous, shapeless devil.
Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances ;
Afflict him in his bed with bed-rid groans;
Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
To make him moan, but pity not his moans;
Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones,
And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.
Let him have time to tear his curled hair;
Let him have time against himself to rave;
Let him have time of time's help to despair;
Let him have time to live a loathed slave ;
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave,
And time to see one, that by alms does live,
Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.
young trees; and then the meaning will be, "It is the office of Time, on the one hand, to destroy the ancient oak; on the other to cherish young plants, and to bring them to maturity." Springs have this meaning in many ancient books. MALONE.
[4] The poet alludes to those vast port-cullises of iron, from which many of the strongest castles derived their strength, and which had probably, even in his time begun to decay. HENLEY.
Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
And merry fools to mock at him resort;
Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
His time of folly, and his time of sport;
And ever let his unrecalling crime5
Have time to wail th' abusing of his time.
O time! thou tutor both to good and bad!
Teach me to curse him, that thou taught'st this ill;
At his own shadow let the thief run mad,
Himself, himself seek every hour to kill ;
Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill! For who so base would such an office have,
As slanderous death's-man6 to so base a slave ?
The baser is he, coming from a king,
To shame his hope with deeds degenerate;
The mightier man, the mightier is the thing,
That makes him honoured, or begets him hate :
For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
The moon being clouded presently is mist,
But little stars may hide them when they list.
The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceiv'd fly with the filth away;
But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day.
Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
But eagles gaz'd upon with every eye.
O idle words! servants to shallow fools;
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators;
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate where leisure serves, with dull debators :
To trembling clients be their mediators.
For me I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past all help of law.
In vain I rail at opportunity,
At time, at Tarquin, and unsearchful night!
In vain I cavil with mine infamy,
[5] This crime which cannot be unacted.
i.e. executioner. So in one of our author's plays:
"He had no other death's-man."
In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despight;
This helpless smoke of words doth me no right,
The remedy indeed to do me good,
Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.
Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree ?
Honour thyself, to rid me of this shame ;
For if I die, my honour lives in thee;
But if I live, thou liv'st in my defame ;
Since thou could'st not defend thy loyal dame,
And wast afraid to scratch her wicked foe,
Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.
This said, from her betumbled couch she starts,
To find some desperate instrument of death,
But this no slaughter-house, no tool imparts,
To make more vent for passing of her breath,
Which thronging thro' her lips so vanisheth,
As smoke from Etna, that in air consumes,
Or that which from discharged cannon fumes.
In vain (quoth she) I live, and seek in vain
Some happy mean to end a hapless life;
I fear'd by Tarquin's falchion to be slain,
Yet for the self-same purpose seek a knife!
But when I fear'd, I was a loyal wife;
So am I now; O no! that cannot be,
Of that true type hath Tarquin rifled me.
O that is gone for which I sought to live,
And therefore now I need not fear to die ;
To clear this spot by death, at least, I give
A badge of fame to slander's livery,
A dying life to living infamy!
Poor helpless help, the treasure stol'n away,
To burn the guilty casket where it lay.
Well, well, dear Colatine, thou shalt not know
The stained taste of violated troth,
I will not wrong thy true affection so,
To flatter thee with an infringed oath ;
This bastard grass shall never come to growth;
He shall not boast, who did thy stock pollute,
That thou art doating father of his fruit.
[7] Graff in the earliest edition. MALONE. This sentiment is adop ted from the Wisdom of Solomon, Chap. iv. 3. "But the multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take a deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation." STEEVENS.
Nor shall he smile at thee in secret thought,
Nor laugh with his companions at thy state;
But thou shalt know thy interest was not bought
Basely with gold, but stol'n from forth thy gate.
For me, I am the mistress of my fate,
And with my trespass never will dispense,
Till life to death acquit my first offence.
I will not poison thee with my attaint,
Nor fold my fault in cleanly coin'd excuses;
My sable ground of sin I will not paint,
To hide the truth of this false night's abuses;
My tongue shall utter all, mine eyes like sluices,
As from a mountain spring, that feeds a dale,
Shall gush pure streams to purge my impure tale.
By this, lamenting Philomel had ended
The well-tun'd warble of her nightly sorrow,
And solemn night with slow, sad gait descended
To ugly hell; when lo! the blushing morrow
Lends light to all fair eyes that light would borrow.
But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see,
And therefore still in night would cloister'd be.
Revealing day thro' every cranny spies,
And seems to point her out where she sits weeping,
To whom she sobbing speaks! O, eye of eyes!
Why pry'st thou thro' my window ? leave thy peeping,
Mock with thy tickling beams, eyes that are sleeping:
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
For day has nought to do what's done by night.
Thus cavils she with every thing she sees ;
True grief is fond, and testy as a child,
Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees;
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild;
Continuance tames the one, the other wild,
Like an unpractis'd swimmer, plunging still,
With too much labour, drowns for want of skill.
So she, deep drenched in a sea of care,
Holds disputation with each thing she views;
And to herself all sorrow doth compare ;
No object but her passion's strength renews,
And as one shifts, another strait ensues:
[8] Fond, in old language, is foolish. MALONE.
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