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 blond,
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 speed 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.
The Moore I caus'd to strike it off with speede,
Whereat I grieved not to see it bleed,
But for my sonnes would willingly impart,
And for their ransome send my bleeding heart.
But as my life did linger thus in Paine,
They sent to me my bootlesse hand againe,
And therewithal the heades of my three sonnes,
Which filld my dying heart with fresher moanes.
Then past reliefe I upp and downe did goe,
And with my tears writ in the dust my woe:
I shot my arrows[3] towards heaven hie,
And for revenge to hell did often crye.
The empresse then, thinking that I was mad,
Like Furies she and both her sonnes were clad,
(She nam'd Revenge, and Rape and Murder they)
To undermine and heare what I would say.