“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 noontide prick. And let thy misty vapours march so thick, That in their smoky ranks his smothered 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 must sit and pine, Seasoning the earth with showers 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 Immodesty 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 impious breach of holy wedlock vow. Yea, the illiterate, that know not how To cipher what is writ in learned books, Will quote my loathsome trespass 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 

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