This said, he shakes aloft his Roman blade, Which, like a falcon tow’ring in the skies, Coucheth the fowl below with his wings’ shade, Whose crooked beak threats, if he mount he dies. So under his insulting falchion lies Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcon’s bells. “Lucrece,” quoth he, “this night I must enjoy thee. If thou deny, then force must work my way, For in thy bed I purpose to destroy thee; That done, some worthless slave of thine I’ll slay. To kill thine honour with thy life’s decay; And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him, Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him. “So thy surviving husband shall remain The scornful mark of every open eye; Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain, Thy issue blurred with nameless bastardy. And thou, the author of their obloquy, Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes And sung by children in succeeding times. “But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend. The fault unknown is as a thought unacted; A little harm done to a great good end For lawful policy remains enacted. The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted In a pure compound; being so applied, His venom in effect is purified. “Then, for thy husband and thy children’s sake, Tender my suit. Bequeath not to their lot The shame that from them no device can take, The blemish that will never be forgot, Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth-hour’s blot: For marks descried in men’s nativity Are nature’s faults, not their own infamy.” Here with a cockatrice’ dead-killing eye He rouseth up himself and makes a pause; While she, the picture of pure piety, Like a white hind under the gripe’s sharp claws, Pleads in a wilderness where are no laws, To the rough beast that knows no gentle right, Nor aught obeys but his foul appetite. But when a black-faced cloud the world doth threat, In his dim mist th’ aspiring mountains hiding, From earth’s dark womb some gentle gust doth get, Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding, Hind’ring their present fall by this dividing; So his unhallowed haste her words delays, And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays. Yet, foul night-waking cat, he doth but dally, While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth. Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly, A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth. His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth No penetrable entrance to her plaining; Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining. Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fixed In the remorseless wrinkles of his face. Her modest eloquence with sighs is mixed, Which to her oratory adds more grace. She puts the period often from his place, And midst the sentence so her accent breaks That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.