Titus Andronicus: Act 3

Hear me, grave fathers; noble tribunes, stay.

For these, tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart’s deep languor and my soul’s sad tears.

O reverend tribunes, O gentle agèd men,
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death,
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators.

O reverend tribunes, O gentle agèd men,
Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death,
And let me say, that never wept before,
My tears are now prevailing orators.

O noble father, you lament in vain.

O noble father, you lament in vain.

Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you—

Faint-hearted boy, arise and look upon her.

Who hath martyred thee?

O, that delightful engine of her thoughts,
That blabbed them with such pleasing eloquence,
Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage
Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it sung
Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear.

Had I but seen thy picture in this plight
It would have madded me.

Shall thy good uncle and thy brother Lucius
And thou and I sit round about some fountain,
Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks,
How they are stained like meadows yet not dry
With miry slime left on them by a flood?

And in the fountain shall we gaze so long
Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness
And made a brine pit with our bitter tears?

O, what a sympathy of woe is this,
As far from help as limbo is from bliss.

Did ever raven sing so like a lark,
That gives sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise?

What shall be is dispatched.

Tell him it was a hand that warded him
From thousand dangers.

Hark how her sighs doth flow!

Then must my sea be movèd with her sighs;
Then must my Earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflowed and drowned,
Forwhy my bowels cannot hide her woes
But like a drunkard must I vomit them.

To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,
But sorrow flouted at is double death.

Besides, this sorrow is an enemy
And would usurp upon my wat’ry eyes
And make them blind with tributary tears.

Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth.

Farewell, Andronicus, my noble father,
The woefull’st man that ever lived in Rome.

But now nor Lucius nor Lavinia lives
But in oblivion and hateful griefs.

If Lucius live he will requite your wrongs
And make proud Saturnine and his empress
Beg at the gates like Tarquin and his queen.

This poor right hand of mine
Is left to tyrannize upon my breast,
Who, when my heart, all mad with misery,
Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,
Then thus I thump it down.

Has sorrow made thee dote already?

In thy dumb action will I be as perfect
As begging hermits in their holy prayers.

Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,
Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,
But I of these will wrest an alphabet
And by still practice learn to know thy meaning.

How would he hang his slender gilded wings
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!