To cloak offences with a cunning brow.

'They think not but that every eye can see
The same disgrace which they themselves behold;

And therefore would they still in darkness be,
To have their unseen sin remain untold;

For they their guilt with weeping will unfold,
And grave, like water that doth eat in steel,

Upon my cheeks what helpless shame I feel.'
Here she exclaims against repose and rest,

And bids her eyes hereafter still be blind.
She wakes her heart by beating on her breast,

And bids it leap from thence, where it may find
Some purer chest to close so pure a mind.

Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite
Against the unseensecrecy of night:

'O comfort-killing Night, image of hell!
Dim register and notary of shame!

Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!
Vast sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame!

Blind muffled bawd! dark harbour for defame!
Grim cave of death! whisp'ring conspirator

With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!
'O hateful, vaporous and foggy Night!

Since thou art guilty of my cureless crime,
Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light,

Make war against proportioned course of time;
Or if thou wilt permit the sun to climb

His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed,
Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head.

'With rotten damps ravish the morning air;
Let their exhaled unwholesome breaths make sick

The life of purity, the supreme fair,
Ere he arrive his weary noon-tide prick;

And let thy musty vapours march so thick
That in their smoky ranks his smoth'red light

May set at noon and make perpetual night.
'Were Tarquin Night, as he is but Night's child,

The silver-shining queen he would distain;
Her twinkling handmaids too, by him defiled,

Through Night's black bosom should not peep again;
So should I have co-partners in my pain;

And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
As palmers' chat makes short their pilgrimage.

'Where now I have no one to blush with me,
To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,

To mask their brows and hide their infamy;
But I alone alone sit and pine,

Seasoning the earth with show'rs of silver brine,
Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,

Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
'O Night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke,

Let not the jealous Day behold that face
Which underneath thy black all-hiding cloak

Immodestly lies martyred with disgrace!
Keep still possession of thy gloomy place,

That all the faults which in thy reign are made
May likewise be sepulchred in thy shade!

'Make me not object to the tell-tale Day.
The light will show, charactered in my brow,

The story of sweet chastity's decay,
The impiousbreach of holy wedlock vow;

Yea, the illiterate, that know not how
To cipher what is writ in learned books,

Will quote my loathsometrespass in my looks.
'The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story,

And fright her crying babe with Tarquin's name;
The orator, to deck his oratory,

Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame;
Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame,

Will tie the hearers to attend each line,
How Tarquin wronged me, I Collatine

'Let my good name, that senseless reputation,
For Collatine's dear love be kept unspotted;

If that be made a theme for disputation,
The branches of another root are rotted,

And undeserved reproach to him allotted
That is as clear from this attaint of mine

As I ere this was pure to Collatine.
'O unseen shame! invisibledisgrace!

O unfelt sore! crest-wounding, private scar!
Reproach is stamped in Collatinus' face,

And Tarquin's eye may read the mot afar,
"How he in peace is wounded, not in war.

"Alas, how many bear such shameful blows,
Which not themselves, but he that gives them knows!

'If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me,
From me by strong assault it is bereft.

My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee,
Have no perfection of my summer left,

But robbed and ransacked by injurious theft.
In thy weak hive a wand'ring wasp hath crept,

And sucked the honey which thy chaste bee kept.
'Yet am I guilty of thy honour's wrack;

Yet for thy honour did I entertain him;
Coming from thee, I could not put him back,

For it had been dishonour to disdain him;
Besides, of weariness he did complain him,

And talked of virtue: O unlooked-for evil,
When virtue is profaned in such a devil!

'Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests?

Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?
Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?

Or kings be breakers of their own behests?
"But no perfection is so absolute

That some impurity doth not pollute.
'The aged man that coffers up his gold

Is plagued with cramps and gouts and painful fits,
And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold,

But like still-pining Tantalus he sits,
And useless barns the harvest of his wits,

Having no other pleasure of his gain
But torment that it cannot cure his pain.

'So then he hath it when he cannot use it,
And leaves it to be mast'red by his young;

Who in their pride do presently abuse it.
Their father was too weak, and they strong,

To hold their cursed-blessed fortune long.
"The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours

"Even in the moment that we call them ours.
'Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring;

Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers:
The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing;

What virtue breeds iniquity devours.
We have no good that we can say is ours

But ill-annexed Opportunity
Or kills his life or else his quality.

'O Opportunity, thy guilt is great!
'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason;

Thou sets the wolf where he the lamb may get;