Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Tarpeia
By Louise Imogen Guiney (18611920)W
Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!
It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent.
She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.
All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.
The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:
Frost’s fixèd mimicry; orbic imaginings fine
The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.
“I had never such trinkets!” she sighed,—like a lute was her sigh.
Now the citadel sleeps, now my father the keeper is old,
If yet at the touch of Tarpeia the gates be unbarred?”
“Of all this arm beareth I swear I will cede thee the whole.”
The bearded Sabini glanced hotly, and vowed as they knelt,
“Yea! surely as over us shineth the lurid low moon,
Too poor is the guerdon, if thou wilt but show us the path.”
She sped; in a serpentine gleam to the precipice stair,
She bent to the latches, and swung the huge portal ajar.
“The bracelets!” she pleaded. Then faced her the leonine chief,
Down from his dark shoulder the baubles he sullenly drew.
Give, too, O my brothers!” The jewels he flung at her feet,
But the shield he flung after: it clanged on her beautiful head.
Athwart the first lull broke the ominous din upon din;
Death: agate and iron; death: chrysoprase, beryl and steel.
The moaning died slowly, and still they massed over the girl
A torrent-like gush, pouring out on the grass from the chinks,
By the deed they had loved her for, doing, and loathed her for, done.
All Rome was aroused with the thunder that buried her shame.
Tarpeia the traitor had fill of her woman’s desire.
Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!