[Footnote 1:  Titus Andronicus, Act iv., Scene 2.]

IV.

Shame, such as never yet dealt heavier stroke
  On heads more shameful, fall on theirs through whom
  Dead men may keep inviolate not their tomb,
But all its depths these ravenous grave-worms choke
And yet what waste of wrath were this, to invoke
  Shame on the shameless?  Even their twin-born doom,
  Their native air of life, a carrion fume,
Their natural breath of love, a noisome smoke,
The bread they break, the cup whereof they drink,
  The record whose remembrance damns their name,
  Smells, tastes, and sounds of nothing but of shame. 
If thankfulness nor pity bids them think
  What work is this of theirs, and pause betimes,
  Not Shakespeare’s grave would scare them off with rhymes.

LOVE AND SCORN.

I.

Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things,
  Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end,
  In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend,
Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings? 
Not grief’s nor time’s:  though these be lords and kings
  Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend,
  They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend
Quick poison with the soul’s live watersprings. 
The true clear heart whose core is manful trust
Fears not that very death may turn to dust
  Love lit therein as toward a brother born,
If one touch make not all its fine gold rust,
  If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn,
  And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn.

II.

Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof
  By keen experience of a trustless heart,
  Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart
Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof
Falls of his palace, and the storied woof
  Long woven of many a year with life’s whole art
  Is rent like any rotten weed apart,
And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof
Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt
Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt,
  And hardly saved by pity.  Woe are we
That once we loved, and love not; but we know
The ghost of love, surviving yet in show,
  Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be.

III.

O sacred, just, inevitable scorn,
  Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief
  The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief,
Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born,
Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn,
  One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf,
  Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf
Of all that fell and left behind a thorn? 
Is man so strong that one should scorn another?