light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe. For one’s offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general? 

 “Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies, Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds; Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies, And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds, And one man’s lust these many lives confounds. Had doting Priam checked his son’s desire, Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.” 

 Here feelingly she weeps Troy’s painted woes, For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell. So Lucrece set a-work, sad tales doth tell To pencilled pensiveness and coloured sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow. 

 She throws her eyes about the painting round, And who she finds forlorn she doth lament. At last she sees a wretched image bound, That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent. His face, though full of cares, yet showed content; Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes, So mild, that patience seemed to scorn his woes. 

 In him the painter laboured with his skill To hide deceit and give the harmless show An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still, A brow unbent that seemed to welcome woe, Cheeks neither red nor pale, but mingled so That blushing red no guilty instance gave, Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have. 

 But, like a constant and confirmed devil, He entertained a show so seeming just, And therein so ensconced his secret evil, That jealousy itself could not mistrust False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust Into so bright a day such black-faced storms, Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms. 

 The well-skilled workman this mild image drew For perjured Sinon, whose enchanting story The credulous Old Priam after slew; Whose words like wildfire burnt the shining glory Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry, And little stars shot from their fixed places, When their glass fell wherein they viewed their faces. 

 This picture she advisedly perused, And chid the painter for his wondrous skill, Saying some shape in Sinon’s was abused; So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill. And still on him she gazed, and gazing still, Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied, That she concludes the picture was belied. 

 “It 

 Prev. P 29/35 next