The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia.

Quotes

• What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have devoted yours.
  • Dedication, to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton

• Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
  The eyes of men without an orator.
  • Lines 29–30

• The aim of all is but to nurse the life
  With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age;
  And in this aim there is such thwarting strife,
  That one for all, or all for one we gage;
  As life for honour in fell battles’ rage;
    Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost
    The death of all, and all together lost.
  • Lines 141–7

• Let fair humanity abhor the deed
  That spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed.
  • Lines 195–6

• What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
  A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
  Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?
  Or sells eternity to get a toy?
  • Lines 211–14

• Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth.
  • Line 270

• Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
  Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;
  Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,
  Swelling on either side to want his bliss;
  Between whose hills her head entombed is;
    Where like a virtuous monument she lies,
    To be admired of lewd unhallowed eyes.
  • Lines 386–92

• Pure Chastity is rifled of her store,
  And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before.
  • Lines 692–3

• And my true eyes have never practis’d how
  To cloak offences with a cunning brow.
  • Lines 748–9

• Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
  Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?
  Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?
  Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts?
  Or kings be breakers of their own behests?
    But no perfection is so absolute,
    That some impurity doth not pollute.
  • Lines 848–54

• O Opportunity! thy guilt is great,
  ’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason;
  Thou sett’st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
  Whoever plots the sin, thou point’st the season;
  ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason;
    And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
    Sits Sin to seize the souls that wander by him.
  Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath;
  Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thaw’d;
  Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth;
  Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd!
  Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud:
    Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief,
    Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief!
  Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,
  Thy private feasting to a public fast,
  Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,
  Thy sugar’d tongue to bitter wormwood taste:
  Thy violent vanities can never last.
    How comes it, then, vile Opportunity,
    Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?
  When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend,
  And bring him where his suit may be obtain’d?
  When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end?
  Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain’d?
  Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain’d?
    The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;
    But they ne’er meet with Opportunity.
  The patient dies while the physician sleeps;
  The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
  Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;
  Advice is sporting while infection breeds:
  Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds:
    Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages,
    Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.
  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 appaid
  As well to hear as grant what he hath said.
  • Lines 876–913

• Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,
  To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
  To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
  To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
  To wrong the wronger till he render right,
    To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
    And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;
  To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
  To feed oblivion with decay of things,
  To blot old books and alter their contents,
  To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,
  To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs,
    To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel,
    And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;
  To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,
  To make the child a man, the man a child,
  To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
  To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
  To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil’d,
    To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
    And waste huge stones with little water-drops.
  • Lines 939–59

• Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words;
  Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords.
  • Lines 1105–6

• No man inveigh against the wither’d flower,
  But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill’d.
  • Lines 1254–5

• And that deep torture may be called a hell,
  When more is felt than one hath power to tell.
  • Lines 1287–8

• Cloud-kissing Ilion.
  • Line 1370

• Why should the private pleasure of some one
  Become the public plague of many moe?
  Let sin, alone committed, 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?
  • Lines 1478–84