Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/159

Titus Andronicus

When they had tasted of soe sweete a flowre,

Fearing this sweete should shortly turn to sowre,

They cutt her tongue, whereby she could not tell

How that dishonoure unto her befell.

Then both her hands they basely cutt off quite,

Whereby their wickednesse she could not write;

Nor with her needle on her sampler sowe

The bloudye workers of her direfull woe.

My brother Marcus found her in the wood,

Staining the grassie ground with purple bloud,

That trickled from her stumpes, and bloudlesse armes:

Noe tongue at all she had to tell her harmes.

But when I sawe her in that woefull case,

With teares of bloud I wet mine aged face:

For my Lavinia I lamented more

Then for my two and twenty sonnes before.

When as I sawe she could not write nor speake,

With grief mine aged heart began to breake;

We spred an heape of sand upon the ground,

Whereby those bloudy tyrants out we found.

For with a staffe, without the helpe of hand,

She writt these wordes upon the plat of sand:

"The lustfull sonnes of the proud emperesse

Are doers of this hateful wickednesse."

I tore the milk-white hairs from off mine head,

I curst the houre wherein I first was bred,

I wisht this hand, that fought for countrie's fame,

In cradle rockt, had first been stroken lame.

The moore delighting still in villainy

Did say, to sett my sonnes from prison free

I should unto the king my right hand give,

And then my three imprisoned sonnes should live.