Page:Shakespeare Collection of Poems.djvu/130

The well-skill'd workman this mild Image drew
For perjur'd Sinon, whose inchanting story
The credulous Old Priam after slew;
Whose words like wild-fire burnt the shining glory
Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,
And little stars shot from their fixed places,
When their glasse fell wherein they view'd their faces.

This picture she advisedly perus'd,
And chid the Painter for his wondrous skill;
Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abus'd;
So fair a forme lodg'd not a mind so ill;
And still she on him she gaz'd, and gazing still,
Such signs of truth in his plaine face she spied,
That she concludes the picture was belied.

It cannot be (quoth she) that so much guile
(She would have said) can lurke in such a look;
But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,
And from her tongue can lurke, from cannot, took
It cannot be, she in that sense forsook,
And turn'd it thus, it cannot be I find,
But such a face should bear a wicked mind.

For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,
So sober sad, so weary, and so mild,
(As if with grief or travail he had fainted)
To me came Tarquin armed to beguild

With