460 THE POEMS OF SHAKSTEARK. 



Oh, speak ! quoth she, 



How may this forced stain be wiped from me ? 



With this they all at once began to say, 



Her body's stain the mind untainted clears ; 



While with a joyless smile she turns away 



The face, that map, which deep impression bears 



Of hard misfortune carved in with tears ; 



No, no, quoth she, no dame hereafter living 



By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving. 



"Then with a sigh, as if her heart would break, 

 She throws forth Tarquin's name ; ' He, he,' she says, 

 But more than he, her poor tongue could not speak, 

 Till after many accents and delays, 

 Untimely breathings, sick and short essays, 



She utters this ' He he fair lords, 'tis he 



That guides this hand to give this wound to me.' 



" Even here, she sheathed in her harmless breast 

 A harmful knife, that hence her soul unsheath'd." 



In the turn of Lucrece's last sentiment we have the anticipation of 

 Othello's noble stratagem, " and smote him thus ." Lucrece is, in 

 fact, a poem of the heart, and comes home to the feelings more than her 

 sister, because we can sympathise so entirely with the heroine. Venus' 

 case is, to be sure, a sad one ; but she is too exclusively an animal to 

 engage any profound interest. Yet we doubt whether Col. Martin him- 

 self could reflect more true pathos on the cause of a quadruped, than she 

 in her description of the poor hunted hare : 



" By this poor Wat, far off upon a hill, 

 Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear, 

 To harken if his foes pursue him still ; 

 Anon their loud alarums he cloth hear, 

 And now his grief may be compared well 

 To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell. 

 Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch 

 Turn and return, indenting with the way : 

 Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, 

 Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay. 

 For misery is trodden on by many, 

 And, being low,' never relieved by any." 



A simile is perhaps the surest test of the poet. Though the power of 

 enunciating ludicrous comparisons be the lowest department of the wit, 

 and, as in Congreve's Brisk, may often he found a solitary forte, yet a 

 simile is that treasure-house, to which the genuine poet entrusts the 

 first-fruits of his heart. Shakspeare's similes, as we might expect, are 

 imbued with the quintessence of his spirit. He compares Adonis sus- 

 piciously peeping at Venus to 



" a dive-dapper peering through a wave, 



Who, being looked at, ducks as quickly in." 



Lucrece's hand on the coverlet, 



' whose perfect white 



Showed like an April daisy on the grass, 

 With pearly sweat, resembling dews of ight." 



