Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief, Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy smoothing1 titles to a ragged2 name; How comes it then, vile Opportunity, 3 "When wilt thou be the humble suppliant's friend, And bring him where his suit may be obtained? When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end? Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chained? Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained? The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee, But they ne'er meet with Opportunity. "The patient dies while the physician sleeps; 1 Smoothing, flattering. 4 2 Ragged is here used in the sense of contemptible. It means something broken, torn, and therefore worthless. See Note on Henry IV. Part II. Act 1. Sc. I. 3 Sort, assign, appropriate. So in Richard III. : — "But I will sort a pitchy day for thee." 4 The constant allusions of the Elizabethan poets to that familiar terror, the plague, show how completely the evil, whether present or absent, was associated with the habitual thoughts of the people. Advice is here used in the sense of government, municipal or civil; and the line too correctly describes the carelessness of those in high places, who abated not their feasting and their revelry while pestilence was doing its terrible work arc.ind them. Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages, When truth and virtue have to do with thee, A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid; They buy thy help but Sin ne'er gives a fee, He gratis comes; and thou art well appayed As well to hear as grant what he hath said. 68 1 My Collatine would else have come to me Guilty thou art of murder and of theft; Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift; To all sins past, and all that are to come, "Misshapen Time, copesmate of ugly night, Eater of youth, false slave to false delight, "Why hath thy servant, Opportunity, ? 1 Appayed, satisfied, pleased. Well appayed, ill appayed, aro constantly used by Chaucer and other ancient writers. 2 To fine, to bring to an end. To eat up errors by opinion bred, "Time's glory is to calm contending kings, ers; "To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, To blot old books, and alter their contents, And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel; "To show the beldame daughters of her daughter. 66 To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops, Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, Unless thou couldst return to make amends? One poor retiring2 minute in an age 1 Springs, shoots, saplings. Time, which dries up the old oak's sap, cherishes the young plants. 2 Retiring is here used in the sense of coming back again. THE RAPE OF LUCRECE. Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends, 101 O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back, I could prevent this storm, and shun thy wrack! "Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity, With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight: To make him curse this curséd crimeful night : "Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances, "Let him have time to tear his curléd hair,1 And time to see one that by alms doth live 1 Curled hair is the characteristic of Tarquin, as it was of all men of high rank in Shakspeare's time. Perhaps it implied a notion of luxuriousness. In this way we have "the curled Anthony;" and in Othello, The wealthy curled darlings of our nation." "Let him have time to see his friends his foes, Let him have time to mark how slow time goes Have time to wail the abusing of his time. "O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad, Himself himself seek every hour to kill! Such wretched hands such wretched blood should 66 spill; For who so base would such an office have As slanderous death's-man to so base a slave? The baser is he, coming from a king, To shame his hope with deeds degenerate. The moon being clouded presently is missed, "The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, But eagles gazed upon with every eye. 1 Unrecalling, not to be recalled. The elder writers use the participle with much more license than we do. |