The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher seemed to mock the mind. Here one man's hand leaned on another's head, red; Another smothered seems to pelt 2 and swear; For much imaginary work was there; And from the walls of strong besiegéd Troy Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield; And to their hope they such odd action yield, That through their light joy seemed to appear And, from the strond of Dardan where they fought, 1 Boll'n, swollen. 2 Pelt, to be clamorous, to discharge hasty words as pellets. 3 Kind natural. With swelling ridges; and their ranks began They join, and shoot their foam at Simois' banks To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes, In her the painter had anatomized Time's ruin, beauty's wrack, and grim care's reign, Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguised; 1 Than, used for then. This is another example (we had onc before in hild) of changing a termination for the sake of rhyme. In Fairfax's" Tasso " there is a parallel instance: "Time was, (for each one hath his doting time, And from the forest's sweet contentment ran.' 2 Stel'd. A passage in the twenty-fourth Sonnet may explain the lines in the text: -- "Mine The word stel'd, in both instances, has a distinct association with something painted but to stell is interpreted as to fix, from stell, a fixed place of abode. It appears to us that the word is connected in Shakspeare's mind with the word stile, the pencil by which forms are traced and copied. The application does not appear forced when we subsequently find the poet using the expression of "pencilled pensiveness.' We constantly use the term stile as applied to painting; but we all know that stile, as describing the manner of delineating forms, is derived from the instrument by which characters were anciently written. Stel'd is probably then stil'd, the word being slightly changed to suit the rhyme. Of what she was no semblance did remain : Her blue blood, changed to black in every vein, Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed, Showed life imprisoned in a body dead. On this sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes, "Poor instrument," quoth she, "without a sound, "Show me the strumpet that began this stir, And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye, "Why should the private pleasure of some one 1 Mo, more. Upon his head that hath transgresséd so. 66 Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies, Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds:1 Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies, And friend to friend gives unadvised 2 wounds, And one man's lust these many lives confounds: 3 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: Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; To pencilled pensiveness and colored sorrow; She throws her eyes about the painting, round, Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes, 1 Swounds, swoons. It is probable that the word was so usually pronounced. In Drayton swound rhymes to wound. 2 Unadvised, unknowing. Confounds is here used in the sense of destroys In him the painter labored with his skill 9 But, like a constant and confirméd devil, The well-skilled workman this mild image drew Whose words, like wildfire, burnt the shining glory This picture she advisedly 2 perused, And chid the painter for his wondrous skill, 1 Malone objects to this image of Priam's palace being the mir ror in which the fixed stars beheld themselves. Boswell has answered Malone by quoting Lydgate's description of the same wonderful edifice: "That verely when so the sonne shone Upon the golde meynt amonge the stone, 2 Advisedly, attentively. |