When Marcus discovers his niece Lavinia, who has been raped and mutilated, her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, but still alive:

Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands

Hath lopped and hewed and made thy body bare

Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments

Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in

And might not gain so great a happiness

As half thy love. Why dost not speak to me?

Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,

Like to a bubbling fountain stirred with wind,

Doth rise, and fall between thy rosed lips.

Coming and going with thy honey breath.

But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee

And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.

Ah, now thou turn’st away thy face for shame,

And notwithstanding all this loss of blood,

As from a conduit with three issuing spouts,

Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan’s face,

Blushing to be encountered with a cloud…

A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,

And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,

That could have better sewed than Philomel

O, had the monster seen those lily hands

Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute

And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,