Classic Poem

Thus came she to the place (where aged men,
Maidens and wives, and youth and children
That had but newly learnt their mother's name,
Had almost spent their tears before she came,)
And those her earnest and related words
Threw from her breast; and unto them affords
These as the means to further her pretence:
Receive not on your souls, by innocence
Wrong'd, lasting stains which from a sluice the sea
May still wash o'er, but never wash away.
Turn all your wraths on me: for here behold
The hand that tore your sacred tree of gold;
These are the feet that led to that intent;
Mine was th' offence, be mine the punishment.
Long hath he liv'd among you, and he knew
The danger imminent that would ensue;
His virtuous life speaks for him, hear it then!
And cast not hence the miracle of men!
What now he doth is through some discontent:
Mine was the fact, be mine the punishment!
What certain death could never make him do
(With Cælia's loss), her presence forc'd him to.
She that could clear his greatest clouds of woes,
Some part of woman made him now disclose,
And show'd him all in tears: and for a while
Out of his heart unable to exile
His troubling thoughts in words to be conceiv'd;
But weighing what the world should be bereav'd,
He of his sighs and throbs some license wan,
And to the sad spectators thus began:
Hasten! O haste! the hour's already gone,
Do not defer the execution!
Nor make my patience suffer ought of wrong!
'Tis nought to die, but to be dying long!
Some fit of frenzy hath possess'd the maid:
She could not do it, though she had assay'd;
No bough grows in her reach; nor hath the tree
A spray so weak to yield to such as she.
To win her love I broke it, but unknown
And undesir'd of her; then let her own
No touch of prejudice without consent.
Mine was the fact, be mine the punishment!
O! who did ever such contention see
Where death stood for the prize of victory?
Where love and strife were firm and truly known,
And where the victor must be overthrown?
Where both pursu'd, and both held equal strife
That life should further death, death further life.
Amazement struck the multitude; and now
They knew not which way to perform their vow.
If only one should be depriv'd of breath,
They were not certain of th' offender's death;
If both of them should die for that offence,
They certainly should murder innocence;
If none did suffer for it, then there ran
Upon their heads the wrath and curse of Pan.
This much perplex'd and made them to defer
The deadly hand of th' executioner,
Till they had sent an officer to know
The judges' wills (and those with Fate's do go):
Who back return'd, and thus with tears began:
The substitutes on earth of mighty Pan
Have thus decreed (although the one be free)
To clear themselves from all impunity,
If, who the offender is, no means procure,
Th' offence is certain, be their death as sure.
This is their doom (which may all plagues prevent)
To have the guilty kill the innocent.
Look as two little lads, their parents' treasure,
Under a tutor strictly kept from pleasure,
While they their new-given lesson closely scan,
Hear of a message by their father's man,
That one of them, but which he hath forgot,
Must come along and walk to some fair plot;
Both have a hope: their careful tutor loath
To hinder either, or to license both,
Sends back the messenger that he may know
His master's pleasure which of them must go:
While both his scholars stand alike in fear
Both of their freedom and abiding there,
The servant comes and says that for that day
Their father wills to have them both away.
Such was the fear these loving souls were in
That time the messenger had absent been.
But far more was their joy 'twixt one another,
In hearing neither should outlive the other.
Now both entwin'd, because no conquest won
Yet either ruined, Philocel begun
To arm his love for death: a robe unfit
Till Hymen's saffron'd weed had usher'd it.
My fairest Cælia! come; let thou and I,
That long have learn'd to love, now learn to die;
It is a lesson hard if we discern it,
Yet none is born so soon as bound to learn it.
Unpartial fate lays ope the book to us,
And let[s] us con it still embracing thus;
We may it perfect have, and go before
Those that have longer time to read it o'er;
And we had need begin and not delay,
For 'tis our turn to read it first to-day.
Help when I miss, and when thou art in doubt
I'll be thy prompter, and will help thee out.
But see how much I err: vain metaphor
And elocution destinies abhor.
Could death be stay'd with words, or won with tears,
Or mov'd with beauty, or with unripe years,
Sure thou couldst do't; this rose, this sun-like eye.
Should not so soon be quell'd, so quickly die.
But we must die, my love; not thou alone,
Nor only I, but both; and yet but one.
Nor let us grieve; for we are married thus,
And have by death what life denied us.
It is a comfort from him more than due;
“Death severs many, but he couples few.”
Life is a flood that keeps us from our bliss,
The ferryman to wast us thither is
Death, and none else; the sooner we get o'er
Should we not thank the ferryman the more?
Others entreat him for a passage hence,
And groan beneath their griefs and impotence,
Yet (merciless) he lets those longer stay,
And sooner takes the happy man away.
Some little happiness have thou and I,
Since we shall die before we wish to die.
Should we here longer live, and have our days
As full in number as the most of these,
And in them meet all pleasures may betide,
We gladly might have liv'd and patient died.
When now our fewer years, made long by cares,
That without age can snow down silver hairs,
Make all affirm which do our griefs descry
We patiently did live, and gladly die.
The difference, my love, that doth appear
Betwixt our fates and theirs that see us here,
Is only this: the high all-knowing Pow'r
Conceals from them, but tells us our last hour.
For which to Heaven we far-far more are bound
Since in the hour of death we may be found,
By its prescience, ready for the hand
That shall conduct us to the holy land.
When those, from whom that hour conceal'd is, may
Even in their height of sin be ta'en away.
Besides, to us Justice a friend is known,
Which neither lets us die nor live alone.
That we are forc'd to it cannot be held;
“Who fears not death, denies to be compell'd.”