and lean discoloured cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, Feeble desire, all recreant, poor, and meek, Like to a bankrout beggar wails his case. The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with Grace, For there it revels; and when that decays, The guilty rebel for remission prays. 

 So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, Who this accomplishment so hotly chased; For now against himself he sounds this doom, That through the length of times he stands disgraced. Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced, To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, To ask the spotted princess how she fares. 

 She says her subjects with foul insurrection Have battered down her consecrated wall, And by their mortal fault brought in subjection Her immortality, and made her thrall To living death and pain perpetual, Which in her prescience she controlled still, But her foresight could not forestall their will. 

 E’en in this thought through the dark night he stealeth, A captive victor that hath lost in gain, Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth, The scar that will, despite of cure, remain; Leaving his spoil perplexed in greater pain. She bears the load of lust he left behind, And he the burden of a guilty mind. 

 He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence; She like a wearied lamb lies panting there; He scowls, and hates himself for his offence; She, desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear. He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear; She stays, exclaiming on the direful night; He runs, and chides his vanished, loathed delight. 

 He thence departs a heavy convertite; She there remains a hopeless castaway. He in his speed looks for the morning light; She prays she never may behold the day. “For day,” quoth she, “night’s scapes doth open lay, And my true eyes have never practised how 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 unseen secrecy of night. 

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