Page:Shakespeare Collection of Poems.djvu/109

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The Rape of Lucrece.
97
Let there bechance him pitiful mischances;
To make him mone, but pity not his mones:
Stone him with hardened hearts harder than stones,
And let mild women to him loose their mildness,
Wilder to him than Tigers in their wildness.

Let him have time to tear his curled hair,
Let him have time against himself to rave,
Let him have time of times help to despair,
Let him have time to live a loathed slave,
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave;
And time to see one that by alms doth live,
Disdain to him disdained scraps to give.

Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
And merry fools to mock at him resort:
Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
His time of folly, and his time of sport:
And ever let his unrecalling time
Have time to waile th' abusing of his time.

O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,
Teach me to curse him that thou taughts this ill,
At his own shadow let the theef run mad,
Himself, himself seek every hour to kill,
Such wretched hands such wretched bloud should spill.
For who so base would such an Office have,
As slanderous deaths-man to so base a Slave?

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