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1
+ THE SONNETS
2
+
3
+ by William Shakespeare
4
+
5
+ From fairest creatures we desire increase,
6
+ That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
7
+ But as the riper should by time decease,
8
+ His tender heir might bear his memory:
9
+ But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
10
+ Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
11
+ Making a famine where abundance lies,
12
+ Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
13
+ Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
14
+ And only herald to the gaudy spring,
15
+ Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
16
+ And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:
17
+ Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
18
+ To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
19
+
20
+ When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
21
+ And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
22
+ Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
23
+ Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
24
+ Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
25
+ Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
26
+ To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,
27
+ Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
28
+ How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
29
+ If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
30
+ Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse'
31
+ Proving his beauty by succession thine.
32
+ This were to be new made when thou art old,
33
+ And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
34
+
35
+ Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
36
+ Now is the time that face should form another,
37
+ Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
38
+ Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
39
+ For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
40
+ Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
41
+ Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
42
+ Of his self-love to stop posterity?
43
+ Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
44
+ Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
45
+ So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
46
+ Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
47
+ But if thou live remembered not to be,
48
+ Die single and thine image dies with thee.
49
+
50
+ Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,
51
+ Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
52
+ Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
53
+ And being frank she lends to those are free:
54
+ Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,
55
+ The bounteous largess given thee to give?
56
+ Profitless usurer why dost thou use
57
+ So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
58
+ For having traffic with thy self alone,
59
+ Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive,
60
+ Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
61
+ What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
62
+ Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
63
+ Which used lives th' executor to be.
64
+
65
+ Those hours that with gentle work did frame
66
+ The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
67
+ Will play the tyrants to the very same,
68
+ And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
69
+ For never-resting time leads summer on
70
+ To hideous winter and confounds him there,
71
+ Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
72
+ Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
73
+ Then were not summer's distillation left
74
+ A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
75
+ Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
76
+ Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
77
+ But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
78
+ Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.
79
+
80
+ Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
81
+ In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
82
+ Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,
83
+ With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed:
84
+ That use is not forbidden usury,
85
+ Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
86
+ That's for thy self to breed another thee,
87
+ Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
88
+ Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
89
+ If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
90
+ Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
91
+ Leaving thee living in posterity?
92
+ Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair,
93
+ To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
94
+
95
+ Lo in the orient when the gracious light
96
+ Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
97
+ Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
98
+ Serving with looks his sacred majesty,
99
+ And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
100
+ Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
101
+ Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
102
+ Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
103
+ But when from highmost pitch with weary car,
104
+ Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
105
+ The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are
106
+ From his low tract and look another way:
107
+ So thou, thy self out-going in thy noon:
108
+ Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
109
+
110
+ Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
111
+ Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
112
+ Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
113
+ Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
114
+ If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
115
+ By unions married do offend thine ear,
116
+ They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
117
+ In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:
118
+ Mark how one string sweet husband to another,
119
+ Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
120
+ Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
121
+ Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
122
+ Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
123
+ Sings this to thee, 'Thou single wilt prove none'.
124
+
125
+ Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
126
+ That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
127
+ Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
128
+ The world will wail thee like a makeless wife,
129
+ The world will be thy widow and still weep,
130
+ That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
131
+ When every private widow well may keep,
132
+ By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
133
+ Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
134
+ Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
135
+ But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
136
+ And kept unused the user so destroys it:
137
+ No love toward others in that bosom sits
138
+ That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.
139
+
140
+ For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any
141
+ Who for thy self art so unprovident.
142
+ Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
143
+ But that thou none lov'st is most evident:
144
+ For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate,
145
+ That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire,
146
+ Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
147
+ Which to repair should be thy chief desire:
148
+ O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,
149
+ Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
150
+ Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,
151
+ Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,
152
+ Make thee another self for love of me,
153
+ That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
154
+
155
+ As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st,
156
+ In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
157
+ And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
158
+ Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,
159
+ Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,
160
+ Without this folly, age, and cold decay,
161
+ If all were minded so, the times should cease,
162
+ And threescore year would make the world away:
163
+ Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
164
+ Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
165
+ Look whom she best endowed, she gave thee more;
166
+ Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
167
+ She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
168
+ Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
169
+
170
+ When I do count the clock that tells the time,
171
+ And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,
172
+ When I behold the violet past prime,
173
+ And sable curls all silvered o'er with white:
174
+ When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
175
+ Which erst from heat did canopy the herd
176
+ And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
177
+ Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:
178
+ Then of thy beauty do I question make
179
+ That thou among the wastes of time must go,
180
+ Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
181
+ And die as fast as they see others grow,
182
+ And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
183
+ Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.
184
+
185
+ O that you were your self, but love you are
186
+ No longer yours, than you your self here live,
187
+ Against this coming end you should prepare,
188
+ And your sweet semblance to some other give.
189
+ So should that beauty which you hold in lease
190
+ Find no determination, then you were
191
+ Your self again after your self's decease,
192
+ When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
193
+ Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
194
+ Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
195
+ Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
196
+ And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
197
+ O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,
198
+ You had a father, let your son say so.
199
+
200
+ Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
201
+ And yet methinks I have astronomy,
202
+ But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
203
+ Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality,
204
+ Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;
205
+ Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
206
+ Or say with princes if it shall go well
207
+ By oft predict that I in heaven find.
208
+ But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
209
+ And constant stars in them I read such art
210
+ As truth and beauty shall together thrive
211
+ If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:
212
+ Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
213
+ Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
214
+
215
+ When I consider every thing that grows
216
+ Holds in perfection but a little moment.
217
+ That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
218
+ Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
219
+ When I perceive that men as plants increase,
220
+ Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:
221
+ Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
222
+ And wear their brave state out of memory.
223
+ Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
224
+ Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
225
+ Where wasteful time debateth with decay
226
+ To change your day of youth to sullied night,
227
+ And all in war with Time for love of you,
228
+ As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
229
+
230
+ But wherefore do not you a mightier way
231
+ Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time?
232
+ And fortify your self in your decay
233
+ With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
234
+ Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
235
+ And many maiden gardens yet unset,
236
+ With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,
237
+ Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
238
+ So should the lines of life that life repair
239
+ Which this (Time's pencil) or my pupil pen
240
+ Neither in inward worth nor outward fair
241
+ Can make you live your self in eyes of men.
242
+ To give away your self, keeps your self still,
243
+ And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.
244
+
245
+ Who will believe my verse in time to come
246
+ If it were filled with your most high deserts?
247
+ Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
248
+ Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
249
+ If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
250
+ And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
251
+ The age to come would say this poet lies,
252
+ Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.
253
+ So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
254
+ Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
255
+ And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
256
+ And stretched metre of an antique song.
257
+ But were some child of yours alive that time,
258
+ You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.
259
+
260
+ Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
261
+ Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
262
+ Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
263
+ And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
264
+ Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
265
+ And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
266
+ And every fair from fair sometime declines,
267
+ By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
268
+ But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
269
+ Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
270
+ Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
271
+ When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
272
+ So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
273
+ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
274
+
275
+ Devouring Time blunt thou the lion's paws,
276
+ And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
277
+ Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
278
+ And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
279
+ Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
280
+ And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time
281
+ To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
282
+ But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
283
+ O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
284
+ Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
285
+ Him in thy course untainted do allow,
286
+ For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
287
+ Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
288
+ My love shall in my verse ever live young.
289
+
290
+ A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
291
+ Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
292
+ A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted
293
+ With shifting change as is false women's fashion,
294
+ An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
295
+ Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
296
+ A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
297
+ Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
298
+ And for a woman wert thou first created,
299
+ Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
300
+ And by addition me of thee defeated,
301
+ By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
302
+ But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
303
+ Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
304
+
305
+ So is it not with me as with that muse,
306
+ Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
307
+ Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,
308
+ And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
309
+ Making a couplement of proud compare
310
+ With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems:
311
+ With April's first-born flowers and all things rare,
312
+ That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
313
+ O let me true in love but truly write,
314
+ And then believe me, my love is as fair,
315
+ As any mother's child, though not so bright
316
+ As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
317
+ Let them say more that like of hearsay well,
318
+ I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
319
+
320
+ My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
321
+ So long as youth and thou are of one date,
322
+ But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
323
+ Then look I death my days should expiate.
324
+ For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
325
+ Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
326
+ Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,
327
+ How can I then be elder than thou art?
328
+ O therefore love be of thyself so wary,
329
+ As I not for my self, but for thee will,
330
+ Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary
331
+ As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
332
+ Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
333
+ Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
334
+
335
+ As an unperfect actor on the stage,
336
+ Who with his fear is put beside his part,
337
+ Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
338
+ Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
339
+ So I for fear of trust, forget to say,
340
+ The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
341
+ And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
342
+ O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might:
343
+ O let my looks be then the eloquence,
344
+ And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
345
+ Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
346
+ More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
347
+ O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
348
+ To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
349
+
350
+ Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,
351
+ Thy beauty's form in table of my heart,
352
+ My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
353
+ And perspective it is best painter's art.
354
+ For through the painter must you see his skill,
355
+ To find where your true image pictured lies,
356
+ Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
357
+ That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:
358
+ Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,
359
+ Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
360
+ Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
361
+ Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
362
+ Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
363
+ They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
364
+
365
+ Let those who are in favour with their stars,
366
+ Of public honour and proud titles boast,
367
+ Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars
368
+ Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;
369
+ Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,
370
+ But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
371
+ And in themselves their pride lies buried,
372
+ For at a frown they in their glory die.
373
+ The painful warrior famoused for fight,
374
+ After a thousand victories once foiled,
375
+ Is from the book of honour razed quite,
376
+ And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
377
+ Then happy I that love and am beloved
378
+ Where I may not remove nor be removed.
379
+
380
+ Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
381
+ Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;
382
+ To thee I send this written embassage
383
+ To witness duty, not to show my wit.
384
+ Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
385
+ May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;
386
+ But that I hope some good conceit of thine
387
+ In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it:
388
+ Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
389
+ Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
390
+ And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
391
+ To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,
392
+ Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
393
+ Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
394
+
395
+ Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
396
+ The dear respose for limbs with travel tired,
397
+ But then begins a journey in my head
398
+ To work my mind, when body's work's expired.
399
+ For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
400
+ Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
401
+ And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
402
+ Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
403
+ Save that my soul's imaginary sight
404
+ Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
405
+ Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)
406
+ Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
407
+ Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
408
+ For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.
409
+
410
+ How can I then return in happy plight
411
+ That am debarred the benefit of rest?
412
+ When day's oppression is not eased by night,
413
+ But day by night and night by day oppressed.
414
+ And each (though enemies to either's reign)
415
+ Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
416
+ The one by toil, the other to complain
417
+ How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
418
+ I tell the day to please him thou art bright,
419
+ And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
420
+ So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,
421
+ When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.
422
+ But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
423
+ And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger
424
+
425
+ When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
426
+ I all alone beweep my outcast state,
427
+ And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
428
+ And look upon my self and curse my fate,
429
+ Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
430
+ Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
431
+ Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
432
+ With what I most enjoy contented least,
433
+ Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
434
+ Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
435
+ (Like to the lark at break of day arising
436
+ From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
437
+ For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
438
+ That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
439
+
440
+ When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
441
+ I summon up remembrance of things past,
442
+ I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
443
+ And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
444
+ Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)
445
+ For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
446
+ And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
447
+ And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight.
448
+ Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
449
+ And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
450
+ The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
451
+ Which I new pay as if not paid before.
452
+ But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)
453
+ All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
454
+
455
+ Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
456
+ Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
457
+ And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
458
+ And all those friends which I thought buried.
459
+ How many a holy and obsequious tear
460
+ Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
461
+ As interest of the dead, which now appear,
462
+ But things removed that hidden in thee lie.
463
+ Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
464
+ Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
465
+ Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
466
+ That due of many, now is thine alone.
467
+ Their images I loved, I view in thee,
468
+ And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.
469
+
470
+ If thou survive my well-contented day,
471
+ When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover
472
+ And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
473
+ These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:
474
+ Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
475
+ And though they be outstripped by every pen,
476
+ Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
477
+ Exceeded by the height of happier men.
478
+ O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
479
+ 'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
480
+ A dearer birth than this his love had brought
481
+ To march in ranks of better equipage:
482
+ But since he died and poets better prove,
483
+ Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love'.
484
+
485
+ Full many a glorious morning have I seen,
486
+ Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
487
+ Kissing with golden face the meadows green;
488
+ Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:
489
+ Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,
490
+ With ugly rack on his celestial face,
491
+ And from the forlorn world his visage hide
492
+ Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
493
+ Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
494
+ With all triumphant splendour on my brow,
495
+ But out alack, he was but one hour mine,
496
+ The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
497
+ Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,
498
+ Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.
499
+
500
+ Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
501
+ And make me travel forth without my cloak,
502
+ To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
503
+ Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?
504
+ 'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
505
+ To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
506
+ For no man well of such a salve can speak,
507
+ That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
508
+ Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,
509
+ Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,
510
+ Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
511
+ To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
512
+ Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
513
+ And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.
514
+
515
+
516
+
517
+ No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
518
+ Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
519
+ Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
520
+ And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
521
+ All men make faults, and even I in this,
522
+ Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
523
+ My self corrupting salving thy amiss,
524
+ Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:
525
+ For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
526
+ Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
527
+ And 'gainst my self a lawful plea commence:
528
+ Such civil war is in my love and hate,
529
+ That I an accessary needs must be,
530
+ To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
531
+
532
+ Let me confess that we two must be twain,
533
+ Although our undivided loves are one:
534
+ So shall those blots that do with me remain,
535
+ Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
536
+ In our two loves there is but one respect,
537
+ Though in our lives a separable spite,
538
+ Which though it alter not love's sole effect,
539
+ Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
540
+ I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
541
+ Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
542
+ Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
543
+ Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
544
+ But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
545
+ As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
546
+
547
+ As a decrepit father takes delight,
548
+ To see his active child do deeds of youth,
549
+ So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite
550
+ Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
551
+ For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
552
+ Or any of these all, or all, or more
553
+ Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
554
+ I make my love engrafted to this store:
555
+ So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
556
+ Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,
557
+ That I in thy abundance am sufficed,
558
+ And by a part of all thy glory live:
559
+ Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,
560
+ This wish I have, then ten times happy me.
561
+
562
+ How can my muse want subject to invent
563
+ While thou dost breathe that pour'st into my verse,
564
+ Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,
565
+ For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
566
+ O give thy self the thanks if aught in me,
567
+ Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,
568
+ For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
569
+ When thou thy self dost give invention light?
570
+ Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
571
+ Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,
572
+ And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
573
+ Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
574
+ If my slight muse do please these curious days,
575
+ The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
576
+
577
+ O how thy worth with manners may I sing,
578
+ When thou art all the better part of me?
579
+ What can mine own praise to mine own self bring:
580
+ And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
581
+ Even for this, let us divided live,
582
+ And our dear love lose name of single one,
583
+ That by this separation I may give:
584
+ That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone:
585
+ O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,
586
+ Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,
587
+ To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
588
+ Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.
589
+ And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
590
+ By praising him here who doth hence remain.
591
+
592
+ Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,
593
+ What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
594
+ No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,
595
+ All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:
596
+ Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,
597
+ I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,
598
+ But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest
599
+ By wilful taste of what thy self refusest.
600
+ I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief
601
+ Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
602
+ And yet love knows it is a greater grief
603
+ To bear greater wrong, than hate's known injury.
604
+ Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
605
+ Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.
606
+
607
+ Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
608
+ When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
609
+ Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,
610
+ For still temptation follows where thou art.
611
+ Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
612
+ Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.
613
+ And when a woman woos, what woman's son,
614
+ Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
615
+ Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
616
+ And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
617
+ Who lead thee in their riot even there
618
+ Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
619
+ Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
620
+ Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
621
+
622
+ That thou hast her it is not all my grief,
623
+ And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,
624
+ That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
625
+ A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
626
+ Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,
627
+ Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,
628
+ And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
629
+ Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.
630
+ If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
631
+ And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,
632
+ Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
633
+ And both for my sake lay on me this cross,
634
+ But here's the joy, my friend and I are one,
635
+ Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.
636
+
637
+ When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,
638
+ For all the day they view things unrespected,
639
+ But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
640
+ And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
641
+ Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright
642
+ How would thy shadow's form, form happy show,
643
+ To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
644
+ When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
645
+ How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,
646
+ By looking on thee in the living day,
647
+ When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade,
648
+ Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
649
+ All days are nights to see till I see thee,
650
+ And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
651
+
652
+ If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
653
+ Injurious distance should not stop my way,
654
+ For then despite of space I would be brought,
655
+ From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,
656
+ No matter then although my foot did stand
657
+ Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
658
+ For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
659
+ As soon as think the place where he would be.
660
+ But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought
661
+ To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
662
+ But that so much of earth and water wrought,
663
+ I must attend, time's leisure with my moan.
664
+ Receiving nought by elements so slow,
665
+ But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
666
+
667
+ The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
668
+ Are both with thee, wherever I abide,
669
+ The first my thought, the other my desire,
670
+ These present-absent with swift motion slide.
671
+ For when these quicker elements are gone
672
+ In tender embassy of love to thee,
673
+ My life being made of four, with two alone,
674
+ Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.
675
+ Until life's composition be recured,
676
+ By those swift messengers returned from thee,
677
+ Who even but now come back again assured,
678
+ Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.
679
+ This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,
680
+ I send them back again and straight grow sad.
681
+
682
+ Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
683
+ How to divide the conquest of thy sight,
684
+ Mine eye, my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
685
+ My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,
686
+ My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
687
+ (A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)
688
+ But the defendant doth that plea deny,
689
+ And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
690
+ To side this title is impanelled
691
+ A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
692
+ And by their verdict is determined
693
+ The clear eye's moiety, and the dear heart's part.
694
+ As thus, mine eye's due is thy outward part,
695
+ And my heart's right, thy inward love of heart.
696
+
697
+ Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
698
+ And each doth good turns now unto the other,
699
+ When that mine eye is famished for a look,
700
+ Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;
701
+ With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,
702
+ And to the painted banquet bids my heart:
703
+ Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,
704
+ And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.
705
+ So either by thy picture or my love,
706
+ Thy self away, art present still with me,
707
+ For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
708
+ And I am still with them, and they with thee.
709
+ Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
710
+ Awakes my heart, to heart's and eye's delight.
711
+
712
+ How careful was I when I took my way,
713
+ Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
714
+ That to my use it might unused stay
715
+ From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
716
+ But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
717
+ Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
718
+ Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
719
+ Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
720
+ Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
721
+ Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
722
+ Within the gentle closure of my breast,
723
+ From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,
724
+ And even thence thou wilt be stol'n I fear,
725
+ For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
726
+
727
+ Against that time (if ever that time come)
728
+ When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
729
+ When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
730
+ Called to that audit by advised respects,
731
+ Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
732
+ And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,
733
+ When love converted from the thing it was
734
+ Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
735
+ Against that time do I ensconce me here
736
+ Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
737
+ And this my hand, against my self uprear,
738
+ To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,
739
+ To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,
740
+ Since why to love, I can allege no cause.
741
+
742
+ How heavy do I journey on the way,
743
+ When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
744
+ Doth teach that case and that repose to say
745
+ 'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.'
746
+ The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
747
+ Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
748
+ As if by some instinct the wretch did know
749
+ His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
750
+ The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
751
+ That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
752
+ Which heavily he answers with a groan,
753
+ More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
754
+ For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
755
+ My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
756
+
757
+ Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,
758
+ Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,
759
+ From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?
760
+ Till I return of posting is no need.
761
+ O what excuse will my poor beast then find,
762
+ When swift extremity can seem but slow?
763
+ Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,
764
+ In winged speed no motion shall I know,
765
+ Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,
766
+ Therefore desire (of perfect'st love being made)
767
+ Shall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race,
768
+ But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,
769
+ Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,
770
+ Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.
771
+
772
+ So am I as the rich whose blessed key,
773
+ Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
774
+ The which he will not every hour survey,
775
+ For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
776
+ Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
777
+ Since seldom coming in that long year set,
778
+ Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
779
+ Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
780
+ So is the time that keeps you as my chest
781
+ Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
782
+ To make some special instant special-blest,
783
+ By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.
784
+ Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
785
+ Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.
786
+
787
+ What is your substance, whereof are you made,
788
+ That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
789
+ Since every one, hath every one, one shade,
790
+ And you but one, can every shadow lend:
791
+ Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,
792
+ Is poorly imitated after you,
793
+ On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
794
+ And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
795
+ Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
796
+ The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
797
+ The other as your bounty doth appear,
798
+ And you in every blessed shape we know.
799
+ In all external grace you have some part,
800
+ But you like none, none you for constant heart.
801
+
802
+ O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
803
+ By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
804
+ The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
805
+ For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:
806
+ The canker blooms have full as deep a dye,
807
+ As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
808
+ Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
809
+ When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
810
+ But for their virtue only is their show,
811
+ They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,
812
+ Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,
813
+ Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
814
+ And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
815
+ When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
816
+
817
+ Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
818
+ Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
819
+ But you shall shine more bright in these contents
820
+ Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
821
+ When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
822
+ And broils root out the work of masonry,
823
+ Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn:
824
+ The living record of your memory.
825
+ 'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity
826
+ Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,
827
+ Even in the eyes of all posterity
828
+ That wear this world out to the ending doom.
829
+ So till the judgment that your self arise,
830
+ You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
831
+
832
+ Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said
833
+ Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
834
+ Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,
835
+ To-morrow sharpened in his former might.
836
+ So love be thou, although to-day thou fill
837
+ Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
838
+ To-morrow see again, and do not kill
839
+ The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:
840
+ Let this sad interim like the ocean be
841
+ Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,
842
+ Come daily to the banks, that when they see:
843
+ Return of love, more blest may be the view.
844
+ Or call it winter, which being full of care,
845
+ Makes summer's welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.
846
+
847
+ Being your slave what should I do but tend,
848
+ Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
849
+ I have no precious time at all to spend;
850
+ Nor services to do till you require.
851
+ Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
852
+ Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
853
+ Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
854
+ When you have bid your servant once adieu.
855
+ Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,
856
+ Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
857
+ But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
858
+ Save where you are, how happy you make those.
859
+ So true a fool is love, that in your will,
860
+ (Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
861
+
862
+ That god forbid, that made me first your slave,
863
+ I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
864
+ Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave,
865
+ Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
866
+ O let me suffer (being at your beck)
867
+ Th' imprisoned absence of your liberty,
868
+ And patience tame to sufferance bide each check,
869
+ Without accusing you of injury.
870
+ Be where you list, your charter is so strong,
871
+ That you your self may privilage your time
872
+ To what you will, to you it doth belong,
873
+ Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.
874
+ I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
875
+ Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
876
+
877
+ If there be nothing new, but that which is,
878
+ Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
879
+ Which labouring for invention bear amis
880
+ The second burthen of a former child!
881
+ O that record could with a backward look,
882
+ Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
883
+ Show me your image in some antique book,
884
+ Since mind at first in character was done.
885
+ That I might see what the old world could say,
886
+ To this composed wonder of your frame,
887
+ Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
888
+ Or whether revolution be the same.
889
+ O sure I am the wits of former days,
890
+ To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
891
+
892
+ Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
893
+ So do our minutes hasten to their end,
894
+ Each changing place with that which goes before,
895
+ In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
896
+ Nativity once in the main of light,
897
+ Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
898
+ Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
899
+ And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
900
+ Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
901
+ And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
902
+ Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
903
+ And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
904
+ And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
905
+ Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
906
+
907
+ Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
908
+ My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
909
+ Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
910
+ While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
911
+ Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
912
+ So far from home into my deeds to pry,
913
+ To find out shames and idle hours in me,
914
+ The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?
915
+ O no, thy love though much, is not so great,
916
+ It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
917
+ Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
918
+ To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
919
+ For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
920
+ From me far off, with others all too near.
921
+
922
+ Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
923
+ And all my soul, and all my every part;
924
+ And for this sin there is no remedy,
925
+ It is so grounded inward in my heart.
926
+ Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
927
+ No shape so true, no truth of such account,
928
+ And for my self mine own worth do define,
929
+ As I all other in all worths surmount.
930
+ But when my glass shows me my self indeed
931
+ beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,
932
+ Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:
933
+ Self, so self-loving were iniquity.
934
+ 'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,
935
+ Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
936
+
937
+ Against my love shall be as I am now
938
+ With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,
939
+ When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
940
+ With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn
941
+ Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,
942
+ And all those beauties whereof now he's king
943
+ Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
944
+ Stealing away the treasure of his spring:
945
+ For such a time do I now fortify
946
+ Against confounding age's cruel knife,
947
+ That he shall never cut from memory
948
+ My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
949
+ His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
950
+ And they shall live, and he in them still green.
951
+
952
+ When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
953
+ The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,
954
+ When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,
955
+ And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.
956
+ When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
957
+ Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
958
+ And the firm soil win of the watery main,
959
+ Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.
960
+ When I have seen such interchange of State,
961
+ Or state it self confounded, to decay,
962
+ Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
963
+ That Time will come and take my love away.
964
+ This thought is as a death which cannot choose
965
+ But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.
966
+
967
+ Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
968
+ But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
969
+ How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
970
+ Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
971
+ O how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
972
+ Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,
973
+ When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
974
+ Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
975
+ O fearful meditation, where alack,
976
+ Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
977
+ Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
978
+ Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
979
+ O none, unless this miracle have might,
980
+ That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
981
+
982
+ Tired with all these for restful death I cry,
983
+ As to behold desert a beggar born,
984
+ And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
985
+ And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
986
+ And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
987
+ And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
988
+ And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
989
+ And strength by limping sway disabled
990
+ And art made tongue-tied by authority,
991
+ And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
992
+ And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
993
+ And captive good attending captain ill.
994
+ Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
995
+ Save that to die, I leave my love alone.
996
+
997
+ Ah wherefore with infection should he live,
998
+ And with his presence grace impiety,
999
+ That sin by him advantage should achieve,
1000
+ And lace it self with his society?
1001
+ Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
1002
+ And steal dead seeming of his living hue?
1003
+ Why should poor beauty indirectly seek,
1004
+ Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
1005
+ Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,
1006
+ Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,
1007
+ For she hath no exchequer now but his,
1008
+ And proud of many, lives upon his gains?
1009
+ O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,
1010
+ In days long since, before these last so bad.
1011
+
1012
+ Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
1013
+ When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
1014
+ Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
1015
+ Or durst inhabit on a living brow:
1016
+ Before the golden tresses of the dead,
1017
+ The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
1018
+ To live a second life on second head,
1019
+ Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
1020
+ In him those holy antique hours are seen,
1021
+ Without all ornament, it self and true,
1022
+ Making no summer of another's green,
1023
+ Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
1024
+ And him as for a map doth Nature store,
1025
+ To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
1026
+
1027
+ Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view,
1028
+ Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:
1029
+ All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that due,
1030
+ Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
1031
+ Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,
1032
+ But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,
1033
+ In other accents do this praise confound
1034
+ By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
1035
+ They look into the beauty of thy mind,
1036
+ And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,
1037
+ Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)
1038
+ To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
1039
+ But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
1040
+ The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
1041
+
1042
+
1043
+
1044
+ That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
1045
+ For slander's mark was ever yet the fair,
1046
+ The ornament of beauty is suspect,
1047
+ A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
1048
+ So thou be good, slander doth but approve,
1049
+ Thy worth the greater being wooed of time,
1050
+ For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
1051
+ And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
1052
+ Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,
1053
+ Either not assailed, or victor being charged,
1054
+ Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
1055
+ To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
1056
+ If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
1057
+ Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
1058
+
1059
+
1060
+
1061
+ No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
1062
+ Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
1063
+ Give warning to the world that I am fled
1064
+ From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
1065
+ Nay if you read this line, remember not,
1066
+ The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
1067
+ That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
1068
+ If thinking on me then should make you woe.
1069
+ O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
1070
+ When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
1071
+ Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
1072
+ But let your love even with my life decay.
1073
+ Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
1074
+ And mock you with me after I am gone.
1075
+
1076
+
1077
+
1078
+ O lest the world should task you to recite,
1079
+ What merit lived in me that you should love
1080
+ After my death (dear love) forget me quite,
1081
+ For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
1082
+ Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
1083
+ To do more for me than mine own desert,
1084
+ And hang more praise upon deceased I,
1085
+ Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
1086
+ O lest your true love may seem false in this,
1087
+ That you for love speak well of me untrue,
1088
+ My name be buried where my body is,
1089
+ And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.
1090
+ For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
1091
+ And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
1092
+
1093
+
1094
+
1095
+ That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
1096
+ When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
1097
+ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
1098
+ Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
1099
+ In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
1100
+ As after sunset fadeth in the west,
1101
+ Which by and by black night doth take away,
1102
+ Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
1103
+ In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
1104
+ That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
1105
+ As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
1106
+ Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
1107
+ This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
1108
+ To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
1109
+
1110
+
1111
+
1112
+ But be contented when that fell arrest,
1113
+ Without all bail shall carry me away,
1114
+ My life hath in this line some interest,
1115
+ Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
1116
+ When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,
1117
+ The very part was consecrate to thee,
1118
+ The earth can have but earth, which is his due,
1119
+ My spirit is thine the better part of me,
1120
+ So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
1121
+ The prey of worms, my body being dead,
1122
+ The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
1123
+ Too base of thee to be remembered,
1124
+ The worth of that, is that which it contains,
1125
+ And that is this, and this with thee remains.
1126
+
1127
+
1128
+
1129
+ So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
1130
+ Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
1131
+ And for the peace of you I hold such strife
1132
+ As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
1133
+ Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
1134
+ Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
1135
+ Now counting best to be with you alone,
1136
+ Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,
1137
+ Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
1138
+ And by and by clean starved for a look,
1139
+ Possessing or pursuing no delight
1140
+ Save what is had, or must from you be took.
1141
+ Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
1142
+ Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
1143
+
1144
+
1145
+
1146
+ Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
1147
+ So far from variation or quick change?
1148
+ Why with the time do I not glance aside
1149
+ To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
1150
+ Why write I still all one, ever the same,
1151
+ And keep invention in a noted weed,
1152
+ That every word doth almost tell my name,
1153
+ Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
1154
+ O know sweet love I always write of you,
1155
+ And you and love are still my argument:
1156
+ So all my best is dressing old words new,
1157
+ Spending again what is already spent:
1158
+ For as the sun is daily new and old,
1159
+ So is my love still telling what is told.
1160
+
1161
+
1162
+
1163
+ Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
1164
+ Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,
1165
+ These vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
1166
+ And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
1167
+ The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
1168
+ Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
1169
+ Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know,
1170
+ Time's thievish progress to eternity.
1171
+ Look what thy memory cannot contain,
1172
+ Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
1173
+ Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
1174
+ To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
1175
+ These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
1176
+ Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.
1177
+
1178
+
1179
+
1180
+ So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,
1181
+ And found such fair assistance in my verse,
1182
+ As every alien pen hath got my use,
1183
+ And under thee their poesy disperse.
1184
+ Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,
1185
+ And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
1186
+ Have added feathers to the learned's wing,
1187
+ And given grace a double majesty.
1188
+ Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
1189
+ Whose influence is thine, and born of thee,
1190
+ In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
1191
+ And arts with thy sweet graces graced be.
1192
+ But thou art all my art, and dost advance
1193
+ As high as learning, my rude ignorance.
1194
+
1195
+
1196
+
1197
+ Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
1198
+ My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
1199
+ But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
1200
+ And my sick muse doth give an other place.
1201
+ I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument
1202
+ Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
1203
+ Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,
1204
+ He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,
1205
+ He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,
1206
+ From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give
1207
+ And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
1208
+ No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.
1209
+ Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
1210
+ Since what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.
1211
+
1212
+
1213
+
1214
+ O how I faint when I of you do write,
1215
+ Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
1216
+ And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
1217
+ To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
1218
+ But since your worth (wide as the ocean is)
1219
+ The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
1220
+ My saucy bark (inferior far to his)
1221
+ On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
1222
+ Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
1223
+ Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,
1224
+ Or (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat,
1225
+ He of tall building, and of goodly pride.
1226
+ Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
1227
+ The worst was this, my love was my decay.
1228
+
1229
+
1230
+
1231
+ Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
1232
+ Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
1233
+ From hence your memory death cannot take,
1234
+ Although in me each part will be forgotten.
1235
+ Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
1236
+ Though I (once gone) to all the world must die,
1237
+ The earth can yield me but a common grave,
1238
+ When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie,
1239
+ Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
1240
+ Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
1241
+ And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
1242
+ When all the breathers of this world are dead,
1243
+ You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
1244
+ Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
1245
+
1246
+
1247
+
1248
+ I grant thou wert not married to my muse,
1249
+ And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
1250
+ The dedicated words which writers use
1251
+ Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
1252
+ Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
1253
+ Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
1254
+ And therefore art enforced to seek anew,
1255
+ Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
1256
+ And do so love, yet when they have devised,
1257
+ What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
1258
+ Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathized,
1259
+ In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.
1260
+ And their gross painting might be better used,
1261
+ Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.
1262
+
1263
+
1264
+
1265
+ I never saw that you did painting need,
1266
+ And therefore to your fair no painting set,
1267
+ I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,
1268
+ That barren tender of a poet's debt:
1269
+ And therefore have I slept in your report,
1270
+ That you your self being extant well might show,
1271
+ How far a modern quill doth come too short,
1272
+ Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
1273
+ This silence for my sin you did impute,
1274
+ Which shall be most my glory being dumb,
1275
+ For I impair not beauty being mute,
1276
+ When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
1277
+ There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,
1278
+ Than both your poets can in praise devise.
1279
+
1280
+
1281
+
1282
+ Who is it that says most, which can say more,
1283
+ Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you?
1284
+ In whose confine immured is the store,
1285
+ Which should example where your equal grew.
1286
+ Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,
1287
+ That to his subject lends not some small glory,
1288
+ But he that writes of you, if he can tell,
1289
+ That you are you, so dignifies his story.
1290
+ Let him but copy what in you is writ,
1291
+ Not making worse what nature made so clear,
1292
+ And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
1293
+ Making his style admired every where.
1294
+ You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
1295
+ Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.
1296
+
1297
+
1298
+
1299
+ My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still,
1300
+ While comments of your praise richly compiled,
1301
+ Reserve their character with golden quill,
1302
+ And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.
1303
+ I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,
1304
+ And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,
1305
+ To every hymn that able spirit affords,
1306
+ In polished form of well refined pen.
1307
+ Hearing you praised, I say 'tis so, 'tis true,
1308
+ And to the most of praise add something more,
1309
+ But that is in my thought, whose love to you
1310
+ (Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,
1311
+ Then others, for the breath of words respect,
1312
+ Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
1313
+
1314
+
1315
+
1316
+ Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
1317
+ Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you,
1318
+ That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
1319
+ Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
1320
+ Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,
1321
+ Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
1322
+ No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
1323
+ Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
1324
+ He nor that affable familiar ghost
1325
+ Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
1326
+ As victors of my silence cannot boast,
1327
+ I was not sick of any fear from thence.
1328
+ But when your countenance filled up his line,
1329
+ Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.
1330
+
1331
+
1332
+
1333
+ Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
1334
+ And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
1335
+ The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:
1336
+ My bonds in thee are all determinate.
1337
+ For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
1338
+ And for that riches where is my deserving?
1339
+ The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
1340
+ And so my patent back again is swerving.
1341
+ Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
1342
+ Or me to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking,
1343
+ So thy great gift upon misprision growing,
1344
+ Comes home again, on better judgement making.
1345
+ Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
1346
+ In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
1347
+
1348
+
1349
+
1350
+ When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
1351
+ And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
1352
+ Upon thy side, against my self I'll fight,
1353
+ And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:
1354
+ With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
1355
+ Upon thy part I can set down a story
1356
+ Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:
1357
+ That thou in losing me, shalt win much glory:
1358
+ And I by this will be a gainer too,
1359
+ For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
1360
+ The injuries that to my self I do,
1361
+ Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
1362
+ Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
1363
+ That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.
1364
+
1365
+
1366
+
1367
+ Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
1368
+ And I will comment upon that offence,
1369
+ Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:
1370
+ Against thy reasons making no defence.
1371
+ Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,
1372
+ To set a form upon desired change,
1373
+ As I'll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,
1374
+ I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:
1375
+ Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,
1376
+ Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
1377
+ Lest I (too much profane) should do it wronk:
1378
+ And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
1379
+ For thee, against my self I'll vow debate,
1380
+ For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.
1381
+
1382
+
1383
+
1384
+ Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,
1385
+ Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
1386
+ join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
1387
+ And do not drop in for an after-loss:
1388
+ Ah do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
1389
+ Come in the rearward of a conquered woe,
1390
+ Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
1391
+ To linger out a purposed overthrow.
1392
+ If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
1393
+ When other petty griefs have done their spite,
1394
+ But in the onset come, so shall I taste
1395
+ At first the very worst of fortune's might.
1396
+ And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
1397
+ Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.
1398
+
1399
+
1400
+
1401
+ Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
1402
+ Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
1403
+ Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:
1404
+ Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.
1405
+ And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
1406
+ Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
1407
+ But these particulars are not my measure,
1408
+ All these I better in one general best.
1409
+ Thy love is better than high birth to me,
1410
+ Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' costs,
1411
+ Of more delight than hawks and horses be:
1412
+ And having thee, of all men's pride I boast.
1413
+ Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,
1414
+ All this away, and me most wretchcd make.
1415
+
1416
+
1417
+
1418
+ But do thy worst to steal thy self away,
1419
+ For term of life thou art assured mine,
1420
+ And life no longer than thy love will stay,
1421
+ For it depends upon that love of thine.
1422
+ Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
1423
+ When in the least of them my life hath end,
1424
+ I see, a better state to me belongs
1425
+ Than that, which on thy humour doth depend.
1426
+ Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,
1427
+ Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,
1428
+ O what a happy title do I find,
1429
+ Happy to have thy love, happy to die!
1430
+ But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot?
1431
+ Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.
1432
+
1433
+
1434
+
1435
+ So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
1436
+ Like a deceived husband, so love's face,
1437
+ May still seem love to me, though altered new:
1438
+ Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.
1439
+ For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
1440
+ Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,
1441
+ In many's looks, the false heart's history
1442
+ Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.
1443
+ But heaven in thy creation did decree,
1444
+ That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,
1445
+ Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
1446
+ Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
1447
+ How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
1448
+ If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.
1449
+
1450
+
1451
+
1452
+ They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
1453
+ That do not do the thing, they most do show,
1454
+ Who moving others, are themselves as stone,
1455
+ Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
1456
+ They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
1457
+ And husband nature's riches from expense,
1458
+ Tibey are the lords and owners of their faces,
1459
+ Others, but stewards of their excellence:
1460
+ The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
1461
+ Though to it self, it only live and die,
1462
+ But if that flower with base infection meet,
1463
+ The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
1464
+ For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,
1465
+ Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.
1466
+
1467
+
1468
+
1469
+ How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
1470
+ Which like a canker in the fragrant rose,
1471
+ Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
1472
+ O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
1473
+ That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
1474
+ (Making lascivious comments on thy sport)
1475
+ Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,
1476
+ Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
1477
+ O what a mansion have those vices got,
1478
+ Which for their habitation chose out thee,
1479
+ Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
1480
+ And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!
1481
+ Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,
1482
+ The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
1483
+
1484
+
1485
+
1486
+ Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
1487
+ Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,
1488
+ Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:
1489
+ Thou mak'st faults graces, that to thee resort:
1490
+ As on the finger of a throned queen,
1491
+ The basest jewel will be well esteemed:
1492
+ So are those errors that in thee are seen,
1493
+ To truths translated, and for true things deemed.
1494
+ How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
1495
+ If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
1496
+ How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
1497
+ if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
1498
+ But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
1499
+ As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
1500
+
1501
+
1502
+
1503
+ How like a winter hath my absence been
1504
+ From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
1505
+ What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
1506
+ What old December's bareness everywhere!
1507
+ And yet this time removed was summer's time,
1508
+ The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
1509
+ Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
1510
+ Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease:
1511
+ Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
1512
+ But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,
1513
+ For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
1514
+ And thou away, the very birds are mute.
1515
+ Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
1516
+ That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
1517
+
1518
+
1519
+
1520
+ From you have I been absent in the spring,
1521
+ When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)
1522
+ Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:
1523
+ That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
1524
+ Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
1525
+ Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
1526
+ Could make me any summer's story tell:
1527
+ Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
1528
+ Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
1529
+ Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,
1530
+ They were but sweet, but figures of delight:
1531
+ Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
1532
+ Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
1533
+ As with your shadow I with these did play.
1534
+
1535
+
1536
+
1537
+ The forward violet thus did I chide,
1538
+ Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
1539
+ If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
1540
+ Which on thy soft check for complexion dwells,
1541
+ In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
1542
+ The lily I condemned for thy hand,
1543
+ And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair,
1544
+ The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
1545
+ One blushing shame, another white despair:
1546
+ A third nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
1547
+ And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,
1548
+ But for his theft in pride of all his growth
1549
+ A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
1550
+ More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
1551
+ But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.
1552
+
1553
+
1554
+
1555
+ Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long,
1556
+ To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
1557
+ Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
1558
+ Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
1559
+ Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
1560
+ In gentle numbers time so idly spent,
1561
+ Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
1562
+ And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
1563
+ Rise resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
1564
+ If time have any wrinkle graven there,
1565
+ If any, be a satire to decay,
1566
+ And make time's spoils despised everywhere.
1567
+ Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
1568
+ So thou prevent'st his scythe, and crooked knife.
1569
+
1570
+
1571
+
1572
+ O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,
1573
+ For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
1574
+ Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
1575
+ So dost thou too, and therein dignified:
1576
+ Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
1577
+ 'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
1578
+ Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:
1579
+ But best is best, if never intermixed'?
1580
+ Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
1581
+ Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,
1582
+ To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:
1583
+ And to be praised of ages yet to be.
1584
+ Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,
1585
+ To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.
1586
+
1587
+
1588
+
1589
+ My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,
1590
+ I love not less, though less the show appear,
1591
+ That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,
1592
+ The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
1593
+ Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
1594
+ When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
1595
+ As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
1596
+ And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
1597
+ Not that the summer is less pleasant now
1598
+ Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
1599
+ But that wild music burthens every bough,
1600
+ And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
1601
+ Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:
1602
+ Because I would not dull you with my song.
1603
+
1604
+
1605
+
1606
+ Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,
1607
+ That having such a scope to show her pride,
1608
+ The argument all bare is of more worth
1609
+ Than when it hath my added praise beside.
1610
+ O blame me not if I no more can write!
1611
+ Look in your glass and there appears a face,
1612
+ That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
1613
+ Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
1614
+ Were it not sinful then striving to mend,
1615
+ To mar the subject that before was well?
1616
+ For to no other pass my verses tend,
1617
+ Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.
1618
+ And more, much more than in my verse can sit,
1619
+ Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.
1620
+
1621
+
1622
+
1623
+ To me fair friend you never can be old,
1624
+ For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
1625
+ Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,
1626
+ Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
1627
+ Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,
1628
+ In process of the seasons have I seen,
1629
+ Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
1630
+ Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
1631
+ Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,
1632
+ Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived,
1633
+ So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand
1634
+ Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
1635
+ For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,
1636
+ Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
1637
+
1638
+
1639
+
1640
+ Let not my love be called idolatry,
1641
+ Nor my beloved as an idol show,
1642
+ Since all alike my songs and praises be
1643
+ To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
1644
+ Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
1645
+ Still constant in a wondrous excellence,
1646
+ Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
1647
+ One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
1648
+ Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
1649
+ Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words,
1650
+ And in this change is my invention spent,
1651
+ Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
1652
+ Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
1653
+ Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
1654
+
1655
+
1656
+
1657
+ When in the chronicle of wasted time,
1658
+ I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
1659
+ And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
1660
+ In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,
1661
+ Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
1662
+ Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
1663
+ I see their antique pen would have expressed,
1664
+ Even such a beauty as you master now.
1665
+ So all their praises are but prophecies
1666
+ Of this our time, all you prefiguring,
1667
+ And for they looked but with divining eyes,
1668
+ They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
1669
+ For we which now behold these present days,
1670
+ Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
1671
+
1672
+
1673
+
1674
+ Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,
1675
+ Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
1676
+ Can yet the lease of my true love control,
1677
+ Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
1678
+ The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
1679
+ And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
1680
+ Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
1681
+ And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
1682
+ Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
1683
+ My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
1684
+ Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,
1685
+ While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
1686
+ And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
1687
+ When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
1688
+
1689
+
1690
+
1691
+ What's in the brain that ink may character,
1692
+ Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit,
1693
+ What's new to speak, what now to register,
1694
+ That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
1695
+ Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine,
1696
+ I must each day say o'er the very same,
1697
+ Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
1698
+ Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
1699
+ So that eternal love in love's fresh case,
1700
+ Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
1701
+ Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
1702
+ But makes antiquity for aye his page,
1703
+ Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
1704
+ Where time and outward form would show it dead.
1705
+
1706
+
1707
+
1708
+ O never say that I was false of heart,
1709
+ Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
1710
+ As easy might I from my self depart,
1711
+ As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
1712
+ That is my home of love, if I have ranged,
1713
+ Like him that travels I return again,
1714
+ Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
1715
+ So that my self bring water for my stain,
1716
+ Never believe though in my nature reigned,
1717
+ All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
1718
+ That it could so preposterously be stained,
1719
+ To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
1720
+ For nothing this wide universe I call,
1721
+ Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.
1722
+
1723
+
1724
+
1725
+ Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
1726
+ And made my self a motley to the view,
1727
+ Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
1728
+ Made old offences of affections new.
1729
+ Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
1730
+ Askance and strangely: but by all above,
1731
+ These blenches gave my heart another youth,
1732
+ And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
1733
+ Now all is done, have what shall have no end,
1734
+ Mine appetite I never more will grind
1735
+ On newer proof, to try an older friend,
1736
+ A god in love, to whom I am confined.
1737
+ Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
1738
+ Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
1739
+
1740
+
1741
+
1742
+ O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
1743
+ The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
1744
+ That did not better for my life provide,
1745
+ Than public means which public manners breeds.
1746
+ Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
1747
+ And almost thence my nature is subdued
1748
+ To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
1749
+ Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
1750
+ Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,
1751
+ Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection,
1752
+ No bitterness that I will bitter think,
1753
+ Nor double penance to correct correction.
1754
+ Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,
1755
+ Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
1756
+
1757
+
1758
+
1759
+ Your love and pity doth th' impression fill,
1760
+ Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,
1761
+ For what care I who calls me well or ill,
1762
+ So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
1763
+ You are my all the world, and I must strive,
1764
+ To know my shames and praises from your tongue,
1765
+ None else to me, nor I to none alive,
1766
+ That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
1767
+ In so profound abysm I throw all care
1768
+ Of others' voices, that my adder's sense,
1769
+ To critic and to flatterer stopped are:
1770
+ Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.
1771
+ You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
1772
+ That all the world besides methinks are dead.
1773
+
1774
+
1775
+
1776
+ Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
1777
+ And that which governs me to go about,
1778
+ Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
1779
+ Seems seeing, but effectually is out:
1780
+ For it no form delivers to the heart
1781
+ Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch,
1782
+ Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
1783
+ Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
1784
+ For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
1785
+ The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
1786
+ The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:
1787
+ The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
1788
+ Incapable of more, replete with you,
1789
+ My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.
1790
+
1791
+
1792
+
1793
+ Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you
1794
+ Drink up the monarch's plague this flattery?
1795
+ Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,
1796
+ And that your love taught it this alchemy?
1797
+ To make of monsters, and things indigest,
1798
+ Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
1799
+ Creating every bad a perfect best
1800
+ As fast as objects to his beams assemble:
1801
+ O 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing,
1802
+ And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,
1803
+ Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
1804
+ And to his palate doth prepare the cup.
1805
+ If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin,
1806
+ That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
1807
+
1808
+
1809
+
1810
+ Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
1811
+ Even those that said I could not love you dearer,
1812
+ Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,
1813
+ My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,
1814
+ But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents
1815
+ Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
1816
+ Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
1817
+ Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things:
1818
+ Alas why fearing of time's tyranny,
1819
+ Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'
1820
+ When I was certain o'er incertainty,
1821
+ Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
1822
+ Love is a babe, then might I not say so
1823
+ To give full growth to that which still doth grow.
1824
+
1825
+
1826
+
1827
+ Let me not to the marriage of true minds
1828
+ Admit impediments, love is not love
1829
+ Which alters when it alteration finds,
1830
+ Or bends with the remover to remove.
1831
+ O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
1832
+ That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
1833
+ It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
1834
+ Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
1835
+ Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
1836
+ Within his bending sickle's compass come,
1837
+ Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
1838
+ But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
1839
+ If this be error and upon me proved,
1840
+ I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
1841
+
1842
+
1843
+
1844
+ Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,
1845
+ Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
1846
+ Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
1847
+ Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,
1848
+ That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
1849
+ And given to time your own dear-purchased right,
1850
+ That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
1851
+ Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
1852
+ Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
1853
+ And on just proof surmise, accumulate,
1854
+ Bring me within the level of your frown,
1855
+ But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:
1856
+ Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
1857
+ The constancy and virtue of your love.
1858
+
1859
+
1860
+
1861
+ Like as to make our appetite more keen
1862
+ With eager compounds we our palate urge,
1863
+ As to prevent our maladies unseen,
1864
+ We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.
1865
+ Even so being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
1866
+ To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
1867
+ And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,
1868
+ To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
1869
+ Thus policy in love t' anticipate
1870
+ The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,
1871
+ And brought to medicine a healthful state
1872
+ Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.
1873
+ But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
1874
+ Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you.
1875
+
1876
+
1877
+
1878
+ What potions have I drunk of Siren tears
1879
+ Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
1880
+ Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
1881
+ Still losing when I saw my self to win!
1882
+ What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
1883
+ Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!
1884
+ How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
1885
+ In the distraction of this madding fever!
1886
+ O benefit of ill, now I find true
1887
+ That better is, by evil still made better.
1888
+ And ruined love when it is built anew
1889
+ Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
1890
+ So I return rebuked to my content,
1891
+ And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.
1892
+
1893
+
1894
+
1895
+ That you were once unkind befriends me now,
1896
+ And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
1897
+ Needs must I under my transgression bow,
1898
+ Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
1899
+ For if you were by my unkindness shaken
1900
+ As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time,
1901
+ And I a tyrant have no leisure taken
1902
+ To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
1903
+ O that our night of woe might have remembered
1904
+ My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
1905
+ And soon to you, as you to me then tendered
1906
+ The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
1907
+ But that your trespass now becomes a fee,
1908
+ Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
1909
+
1910
+
1911
+
1912
+ 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
1913
+ When not to be, receives reproach of being,
1914
+ And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
1915
+ Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
1916
+ For why should others' false adulterate eyes
1917
+ Give salutation to my sportive blood?
1918
+ Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
1919
+ Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
1920
+ No, I am that I am, and they that level
1921
+ At my abuses, reckon up their own,
1922
+ I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
1923
+ By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown
1924
+ Unless this general evil they maintain,
1925
+ All men are bad and in their badness reign.
1926
+
1927
+
1928
+
1929
+ Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
1930
+ Full charactered with lasting memory,
1931
+ Which shall above that idle rank remain
1932
+ Beyond all date even to eternity.
1933
+ Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
1934
+ Have faculty by nature to subsist,
1935
+ Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
1936
+ Of thee, thy record never can be missed:
1937
+ That poor retention could not so much hold,
1938
+ Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,
1939
+ Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
1940
+ To trust those tables that receive thee more:
1941
+ To keep an adjunct to remember thee
1942
+ Were to import forgetfulness in me.
1943
+
1944
+
1945
+
1946
+ No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,
1947
+ Thy pyramids built up with newer might
1948
+ To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
1949
+ They are but dressings Of a former sight:
1950
+ Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,
1951
+ What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
1952
+ And rather make them born to our desire,
1953
+ Than think that we before have heard them told:
1954
+ Thy registers and thee I both defy,
1955
+ Not wond'ring at the present, nor the past,
1956
+ For thy records, and what we see doth lie,
1957
+ Made more or less by thy continual haste:
1958
+ This I do vow and this shall ever be,
1959
+ I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.
1960
+
1961
+
1962
+
1963
+ If my dear love were but the child of state,
1964
+ It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
1965
+ As subject to time's love or to time's hate,
1966
+ Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
1967
+ No it was builded far from accident,
1968
+ It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
1969
+ Under the blow of thralled discontent,
1970
+ Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
1971
+ It fears not policy that heretic,
1972
+ Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
1973
+ But all alone stands hugely politic,
1974
+ That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
1975
+ To this I witness call the fools of time,
1976
+ Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
1977
+
1978
+
1979
+
1980
+ Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
1981
+ With my extern the outward honouring,
1982
+ Or laid great bases for eternity,
1983
+ Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
1984
+ Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
1985
+ Lose all, and more by paying too much rent
1986
+ For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,
1987
+ Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?
1988
+ No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
1989
+ And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
1990
+ Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
1991
+ But mutual render, only me for thee.
1992
+ Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul
1993
+ When most impeached, stands least in thy control.
1994
+
1995
+
1996
+
1997
+ O thou my lovely boy who in thy power,
1998
+ Dost hold Time's fickle glass his fickle hour:
1999
+ Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st,
2000
+ Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
2001
+ If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)
2002
+ As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
2003
+ She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
2004
+ May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
2005
+ Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,
2006
+ She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!
2007
+ Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
2008
+ And her quietus is to render thee.
2009
+
2010
+
2011
+
2012
+ In the old age black was not counted fair,
2013
+ Or if it were it bore not beauty's name:
2014
+ But now is black beauty's successive heir,
2015
+ And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,
2016
+ For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
2017
+ Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
2018
+ Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
2019
+ But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
2020
+ Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
2021
+ Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
2022
+ At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
2023
+ Slandering creation with a false esteem,
2024
+ Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
2025
+ That every tongue says beauty should look so.
2026
+
2027
+
2028
+
2029
+ How oft when thou, my music, music play'st,
2030
+ Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
2031
+ With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st
2032
+ The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
2033
+ Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
2034
+ To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
2035
+ Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
2036
+ At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand.
2037
+ To be so tickled they would change their state
2038
+ And situation with those dancing chips,
2039
+ O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
2040
+ Making dead wood more blest than living lips,
2041
+ Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
2042
+ Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
2043
+
2044
+
2045
+
2046
+ Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
2047
+ Is lust in action, and till action, lust
2048
+ Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame,
2049
+ Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
2050
+ Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
2051
+ Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
2052
+ Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
2053
+ On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
2054
+ Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
2055
+ Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
2056
+ A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
2057
+ Before a joy proposed behind a dream.
2058
+ All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
2059
+ To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
2060
+
2061
+
2062
+
2063
+ My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,
2064
+ Coral is far more red, than her lips red,
2065
+ If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
2066
+ If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:
2067
+ I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
2068
+ But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
2069
+ And in some perfumes is there more delight,
2070
+ Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
2071
+ I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
2072
+ That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
2073
+ I grant I never saw a goddess go,
2074
+ My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
2075
+ And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,
2076
+ As any she belied with false compare.
2077
+
2078
+
2079
+
2080
+ Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
2081
+ As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
2082
+ For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
2083
+ Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
2084
+ Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,
2085
+ Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;
2086
+ To say they err, I dare not be so bold,
2087
+ Although I swear it to my self alone.
2088
+ And to be sure that is not false I swear,
2089
+ A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,
2090
+ One on another's neck do witness bear
2091
+ Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place.
2092
+ In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
2093
+ And thence this slander as I think proceeds.
2094
+
2095
+
2096
+
2097
+ Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,
2098
+ Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
2099
+ Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
2100
+ Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
2101
+ And truly not the morning sun of heaven
2102
+ Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
2103
+ Nor that full star that ushers in the even
2104
+ Doth half that glory to the sober west
2105
+ As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
2106
+ O let it then as well beseem thy heart
2107
+ To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
2108
+ And suit thy pity like in every part.
2109
+ Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
2110
+ And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
2111
+
2112
+
2113
+
2114
+ Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
2115
+ For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;
2116
+ Is't not enough to torture me alone,
2117
+ But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
2118
+ Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,
2119
+ And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,
2120
+ Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,
2121
+ A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:
2122
+ Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
2123
+ But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail,
2124
+ Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,
2125
+ Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.
2126
+ And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,
2127
+ Perforce am thine and all that is in me.
2128
+
2129
+
2130
+
2131
+ So now I have confessed that he is thine,
2132
+ And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,
2133
+ My self I'll forfeit, so that other mine,
2134
+ Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:
2135
+ But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
2136
+ For thou art covetous, and he is kind,
2137
+ He learned but surety-like to write for me,
2138
+ Under that bond that him as fist doth bind.
2139
+ The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
2140
+ Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,
2141
+ And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,
2142
+ So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
2143
+ Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,
2144
+ He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
2145
+
2146
+
2147
+
2148
+ Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
2149
+ And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in over-plus,
2150
+ More than enough am I that vex thee still,
2151
+ To thy sweet will making addition thus.
2152
+ Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
2153
+ Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
2154
+ Shall will in others seem right gracious,
2155
+ And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
2156
+ The sea all water, yet receives rain still,
2157
+ And in abundance addeth to his store,
2158
+ So thou being rich in will add to thy will
2159
+ One will of mine to make thy large will more.
2160
+ Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,
2161
+ Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'
2162
+
2163
+
2164
+
2165
+ If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
2166
+ Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy 'Will',
2167
+ And will thy soul knows is admitted there,
2168
+ Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.
2169
+ 'Will', will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
2170
+ Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one,
2171
+ In things of great receipt with case we prove,
2172
+ Among a number one is reckoned none.
2173
+ Then in the number let me pass untold,
2174
+ Though in thy store's account I one must be,
2175
+ For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,
2176
+ That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.
2177
+ Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
2178
+ And then thou lov'st me for my name is Will.
2179
+
2180
+
2181
+
2182
+ Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
2183
+ That they behold and see not what they see?
2184
+ They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
2185
+ Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.
2186
+ If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,
2187
+ Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
2188
+ Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
2189
+ Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
2190
+ Why should my heart think that a several plot,
2191
+ Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?
2192
+ Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not
2193
+ To put fair truth upon so foul a face?
2194
+ In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,
2195
+ And to this false plague are they now transferred.
2196
+
2197
+
2198
+
2199
+ When my love swears that she is made of truth,
2200
+ I do believe her though I know she lies,
2201
+ That she might think me some untutored youth,
2202
+ Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
2203
+ Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
2204
+ Although she knows my days are past the best,
2205
+ Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue,
2206
+ On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
2207
+ But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
2208
+ And wherefore say not I that I am old?
2209
+ O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
2210
+ And age in love, loves not to have years told.
2211
+ Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
2212
+ And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
2213
+
2214
+
2215
+
2216
+ O call not me to justify the wrong,
2217
+ That thy unkindness lays upon my heart,
2218
+ Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,
2219
+ Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
2220
+ Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,
2221
+ Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,
2222
+ What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
2223
+ Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
2224
+ Let me excuse thee, ah my love well knows,
2225
+ Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
2226
+ And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
2227
+ That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
2228
+ Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,
2229
+ Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.
2230
+
2231
+
2232
+
2233
+ Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press
2234
+ My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:
2235
+ Lest sorrow lend me words and words express,
2236
+ The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
2237
+ If I might teach thee wit better it were,
2238
+ Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,
2239
+ As testy sick men when their deaths be near,
2240
+ No news but health from their physicians know.
2241
+ For if I should despair I should grow mad,
2242
+ And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
2243
+ Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
2244
+ Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
2245
+ That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
2246
+ Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
2247
+
2248
+
2249
+
2250
+ In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
2251
+ For they in thee a thousand errors note,
2252
+ But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
2253
+ Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.
2254
+ Nor are mine cars with thy tongue's tune delighted,
2255
+ Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
2256
+ Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
2257
+ To any sensual feast with thee alone:
2258
+ But my five wits, nor my five senses can
2259
+ Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
2260
+ Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
2261
+ Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:
2262
+ Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
2263
+ That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.
2264
+
2265
+
2266
+
2267
+ Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
2268
+ Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,
2269
+ O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,
2270
+ And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,
2271
+ Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,
2272
+ That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,
2273
+ And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
2274
+ Robbed others' beds' revenues of their rents.
2275
+ Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov'st those,
2276
+ Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,
2277
+ Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,
2278
+ Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
2279
+ If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
2280
+ By self-example mayst thou be denied.
2281
+
2282
+
2283
+
2284
+ Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,
2285
+ One of her feathered creatures broke away,
2286
+ Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch
2287
+ In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:
2288
+ Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
2289
+ Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,
2290
+ To follow that which flies before her face:
2291
+ Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
2292
+ So run'st thou after that which flies from thee,
2293
+ Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind,
2294
+ But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:
2295
+ And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind.
2296
+ So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
2297
+ If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
2298
+
2299
+
2300
+
2301
+ Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
2302
+ Which like two spirits do suggest me still,
2303
+ The better angel is a man right fair:
2304
+ The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
2305
+ To win me soon to hell my female evil,
2306
+ Tempteth my better angel from my side,
2307
+ And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:
2308
+ Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
2309
+ And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
2310
+ Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,
2311
+ But being both from me both to each friend,
2312
+ I guess one angel in another's hell.
2313
+ Yet this shall I ne'er know but live in doubt,
2314
+ Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
2315
+
2316
+
2317
+
2318
+ Those lips that Love's own hand did make,
2319
+ Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate',
2320
+ To me that languished for her sake:
2321
+ But when she saw my woeful state,
2322
+ Straight in her heart did mercy come,
2323
+ Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,
2324
+ Was used in giving gentle doom:
2325
+ And taught it thus anew to greet:
2326
+ 'I hate' she altered with an end,
2327
+ That followed it as gentle day,
2328
+ Doth follow night who like a fiend
2329
+ From heaven to hell is flown away.
2330
+ 'I hate', from hate away she threw,
2331
+ And saved my life saying 'not you'.
2332
+
2333
+ Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,
2334
+ My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
2335
+ Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
2336
+ Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
2337
+ Why so large cost having so short a lease,
2338
+ Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
2339
+ Shall worms inheritors of this excess
2340
+ Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
2341
+ Then soul live thou upon thy servant's loss,
2342
+ And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
2343
+ Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
2344
+ Within be fed, without be rich no more,
2345
+ So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
2346
+ And death once dead, there's no more dying then.
2347
+
2348
+ My love is as a fever longing still,
2349
+ For that which longer nurseth the disease,
2350
+ Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
2351
+ Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please:
2352
+ My reason the physician to my love,
2353
+ Angry that his prescriptions are not kept
2354
+ Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
2355
+ Desire is death, which physic did except.
2356
+ Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
2357
+ And frantic-mad with evermore unrest,
2358
+ My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
2359
+ At random from the truth vainly expressed.
2360
+ For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
2361
+ Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
2362
+
2363
+ O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,
2364
+ Which have no correspondence with true sight,
2365
+ Or if they have, where is my judgment fled,
2366
+ That censures falsely what they see aright?
2367
+ If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
2368
+ What means the world to say it is not so?
2369
+ If it be not, then love doth well denote,
2370
+ Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,
2371
+ How can it? O how can love's eye be true,
2372
+ That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
2373
+ No marvel then though I mistake my view,
2374
+ The sun it self sees not, till heaven clears.
2375
+ O cunning love, with tears thou keep'st me blind,
2376
+ Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
2377
+
2378
+ Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,
2379
+ When I against my self with thee partake?
2380
+ Do I not think on thee when I forgot
2381
+ Am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?
2382
+ Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,
2383
+ On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon,
2384
+ Nay if thou lour'st on me do I not spend
2385
+ Revenge upon my self with present moan?
2386
+ What merit do I in my self respect,
2387
+ That is so proud thy service to despise,
2388
+ When all my best doth worship thy defect,
2389
+ Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
2390
+ But love hate on for now I know thy mind,
2391
+ Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind.
2392
+
2393
+ O from what power hast thou this powerful might,
2394
+ With insufficiency my heart to sway,
2395
+ To make me give the lie to my true sight,
2396
+ And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
2397
+ Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
2398
+ That in the very refuse of thy deeds,
2399
+ There is such strength and warrantise of skill,
2400
+ That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?
2401
+ Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,
2402
+ The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
2403
+ O though I love what others do abhor,
2404
+ With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.
2405
+ If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
2406
+ More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
2407
+
2408
+ Love is too young to know what conscience is,
2409
+ Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
2410
+ Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss,
2411
+ Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.
2412
+ For thou betraying me, I do betray
2413
+ My nobler part to my gross body's treason,
2414
+ My soul doth tell my body that he may,
2415
+ Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason,
2416
+ But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
2417
+ As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,
2418
+ He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
2419
+ To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
2420
+ No want of conscience hold it that I call,
2421
+ Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.
2422
+
2423
+ In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
2424
+ But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,
2425
+ In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
2426
+ In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
2427
+ But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
2428
+ When I break twenty? I am perjured most,
2429
+ For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:
2430
+ And all my honest faith in thee is lost.
2431
+ For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:
2432
+ Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
2433
+ And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,
2434
+ Or made them swear against the thing they see.
2435
+ For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured I,
2436
+ To swear against the truth so foul a be.
2437
+
2438
+ Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,
2439
+ A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
2440
+ And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
2441
+ In a cold valley-fountain of that ground:
2442
+ Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love,
2443
+ A dateless lively heat still to endure,
2444
+ And grew a seeting bath which yet men prove,
2445
+ Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:
2446
+ But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
2447
+ The boy for trial needs would touch my breast,
2448
+ I sick withal the help of bath desired,
2449
+ And thither hied a sad distempered guest.
2450
+ But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,
2451
+ Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress' eyes.
2452
+
2453
+ The little Love-god lying once asleep,
2454
+ Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
2455
+ Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,
2456
+ Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,
2457
+ The fairest votary took up that fire,
2458
+ Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,
2459
+ And so the general of hot desire,
2460
+ Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.
2461
+ This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
2462
+ Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
2463
+ Growing a bath and healthful remedy,
2464
+ For men discased, but I my mistress' thrall,
2465
+ Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
2466
+ Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
2467
+
2468
+
2469
+ THE END