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data/examples/dgrep/data/shakespeare/poetry/sonnets

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-	SONNETS
-
-
-
-TO THE ONLY BEGETTER OF
-THESE INSUING SONNETS
-MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESS
-AND THAT ETERNITY
-PROMISED BY
-OUR EVER-LIVING POET WISHETH
-THE WELL-WISHING
-ADVENTURER IN
-SETTING FORTH
-T. T.
-
-
-I.
-
-FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
-That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
-But as the riper should by time decease,
-His tender heir might bear his memory:
-But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
-Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
-Making a famine where abundance lies,
-Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
-Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
-And only herald to the gaudy spring,
-Within thine own bud buriest thy content
-And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
-  Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
-  To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
-
-II.
-
-When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
-And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
-Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
-Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
-Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
-Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
-To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
-Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
-How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
-If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
-Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
-Proving his beauty by succession thine!
-  This were to be new made when thou art old,
-  And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
-
-III.
-
-Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
-Now is the time that face should form another;
-Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
-Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
-For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
-Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
-Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
-Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
-Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
-Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
-So thou through windows of thine age shall see
-Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
-  But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
-  Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
-
-IV.
-
-Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
-Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
-Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
-And being frank she lends to those are free.
-Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
-The bounteous largess given thee to give?
-Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
-So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
-For having traffic with thyself alone,
-Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
-Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
-What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
-  Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,
-  Which, used, lives th' executor to be.
-
-V.
-
-Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
-The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
-Will play the tyrants to the very same
-And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
-For never-resting time leads summer on
-To hideous winter and confounds him there;
-Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
-Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
-Then, were not summer's distillation left,
-A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
-Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
-Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
-  But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,
-  Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
-
-VI.
-
-Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
-In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:
-Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
-With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.
-That use is not forbidden usury,
-Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
-That's for thyself to breed another thee,
-Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
-Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
-If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
-Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,
-Leaving thee living in posterity?
-  Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair
-  To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
-
-VII.
-
-Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
-Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
-Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
-Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
-And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
-Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
-yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
-Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
-But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
-Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
-The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
-From his low tract and look another way:
-  So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
-  Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.
-
-VIII.
-
-Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
-Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
-Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,
-Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?
-If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
-By unions married, do offend thine ear,
-They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
-In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
-Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
-Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
-Resembling sire and child and happy mother
-Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
-  Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
-  Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.'
-
-IX.
-
-Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
-That thou consumest thyself in single life?
-Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die.
-The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;
-The world will be thy widow and still weep
-That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
-When every private widow well may keep
-By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.
-Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend
-Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
-But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
-And kept unused, the user so destroys it.
-  No love toward others in that bosom sits
-  That on himself such murderous shame commits.
-
-X.
-
-For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any,
-Who for thyself art so unprovident.
-Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
-But that thou none lovest is most evident;
-For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate
-That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire.
-Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
-Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
-O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
-Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
-Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
-Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:
-  Make thee another self, for love of me,
-  That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
-
-XI.
-
-As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest
-In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
-And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest
-Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
-Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase:
-Without this, folly, age and cold decay:
-If all were minded so, the times should cease
-And threescore year would make the world away.
-Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
-Harsh featureless and rude, barrenly perish:
-Look, whom she best endow'd she gave the more;
-Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
-  She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
-  Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
-
-XII.
-
-When I do count the clock that tells the time,
-And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
-When I behold the violet past prime,
-And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
-When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
-Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
-And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
-Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
-Then of thy beauty do I question make,
-That thou among the wastes of time must go,
-Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
-And die as fast as they see others grow;
-  And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
-  Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
-
-XIII.
-
-O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
-No longer yours than you yourself here live:
-Against this coming end you should prepare,
-And your sweet semblance to some other give.
-So should that beauty which you hold in lease
-Find no determination: then you were
-Yourself again after yourself's decease,
-When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
-Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
-Which husbandry in honour might uphold
-Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
-And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
-  O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know
-  You had a father: let your son say so.
-
-XIV.
-
-Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
-And yet methinks I have astronomy,
-But not to tell of good or evil luck,
-Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
-Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
-Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
-Or say with princes if it shall go well,
-By oft predict that I in heaven find:
-But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
-And, constant stars, in them I read such art
-As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
-If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
-  Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
-  Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
-
-XV.
-
-When I consider every thing that grows
-Holds in perfection but a little moment,
-That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
-Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
-When I perceive that men as plants increase,
-Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,
-Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
-And wear their brave state out of memory;
-Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
-Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
-Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
-To change your day of youth to sullied night;
-  And all in war with Time for love of you,
-  As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
-
-XVI.
-
-But wherefore do not you a mightier way
-Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
-And fortify yourself in your decay
-With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
-Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
-And many maiden gardens yet unset
-With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
-Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
-So should the lines of life that life repair,
-Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,
-Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
-Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
-  To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
-  And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
-
-XVII.
-
-Who will believe my verse in time to come,
-If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
-Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
-Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
-If I could write the beauty of your eyes
-And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
-The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
-Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
-So should my papers yellow'd with their age
-Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
-And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
-And stretched metre of an antique song:
-  But were some child of yours alive that time,
-  You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.
-
-XVIII.
-
-Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
-Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
-Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
-And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
-Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
-And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
-And every fair from fair sometime declines,
-By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
-But thy eternal summer shall not fade
-Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
-Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
-When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
-  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
-  So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
-
-XIX.
-
-Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
-And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
-Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
-And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
-Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
-And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
-To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
-But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
-O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
-Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
-Him in thy course untainted do allow
-For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
-  Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
-  My love shall in my verse ever live young.
-
-XX.
-
-A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
-Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
-A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
-With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
-An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
-Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
-A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
-Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
-And for a woman wert thou first created;
-Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
-And by addition me of thee defeated,
-By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
-  But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
-  Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
-
-XXI.
-
-So is it not with me as with that Muse
-Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse,
-Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
-And every fair with his fair doth rehearse
-Making a couplement of proud compare,
-With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
-With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
-That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
-O' let me, true in love, but truly write,
-And then believe me, my love is as fair
-As any mother's child, though not so bright
-As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:
-  Let them say more than like of hearsay well;
-  I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
-
-XXII.
-
-My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
-So long as youth and thou are of one date;
-But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
-Then look I death my days should expiate.
-For all that beauty that doth cover thee
-Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
-Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
-How can I then be elder than thou art?
-O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
-As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
-Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
-As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
-  Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
-  Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.
-
-XXIII.
-
-As an unperfect actor on the stage
-Who with his fear is put besides his part,
-Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
-Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart.
-So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
-The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
-And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
-O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.
-O, let my books be then the eloquence
-And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
-Who plead for love and look for recompense
-More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
-  O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
-  To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
-
-XXIV.
-
-Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd
-Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
-My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
-And perspective it is the painter's art.
-For through the painter must you see his skill,
-To find where your true image pictured lies;
-Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
-That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
-Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
-Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
-Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
-Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
-  Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;
-  They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
-
-XXV.
-
-Let those who are in favour with their stars
-Of public honour and proud titles boast,
-Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
-Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
-Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread
-But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
-And in themselves their pride lies buried,
-For at a frown they in their glory die.
-The painful warrior famoused for fight,
-After a thousand victories once foil'd,
-Is from the book of honour razed quite,
-And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
-  Then happy I, that love and am beloved
-  Where I may not remove nor be removed.
-
-XXVI.
-
-Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
-Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
-To thee I send this written embassage,
-To witness duty, not to show my wit:
-Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
-May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
-But that I hope some good conceit of thine
-In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it;
-Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
-Points on me graciously with fair aspect
-And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving,
-To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
-  Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
-  Till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
-
-XXVII.
-
-Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
-The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
-But then begins a journey in my head,
-To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
-For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
-Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
-And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
-Looking on darkness which the blind do see
-Save that my soul's imaginary sight
-Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
-Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
-Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
-  Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
-  For thee and for myself no quiet find.
-
-XXVIII.
-
-How can I then return in happy plight,
-That am debarr'd the benefit of rest?
-When day's oppression is not eased by night,
-But day by night, and night by day, oppress'd?
-And each, though enemies to either's reign,
-Do in consent shake hands to torture me;
-The one by toil, the other to complain
-How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
-I tell the day, to please them thou art bright
-And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
-So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night,
-When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.
-But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer
-  And night doth nightly make grief's strength
-  	seem stronger.
-
-XXIX.
-
-When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
-I all alone beweep my outcast state
-And trouble deal heaven with my bootless cries
-And look upon myself and curse my fate,
-Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
-Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
-Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
-With what I most enjoy contented least;
-Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
-Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
-Like to the lark at break of day arising
-From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
-  For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
-  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
-
-XXX.
-
-When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
-I summon up remembrance of things past,
-I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
-And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
-Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
-For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
-And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
-And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
-Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
-And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
-The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
-Which I new pay as if not paid before.
-  But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
-  All losses are restored and sorrows end.
-
-XXXI.
-
-Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
-Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
-And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
-And all those friends which I thought buried.
-How many a holy and obsequious tear
-Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye
-As interest of the dead, which now appear
-But things removed that hidden in thee lie!
-Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
-Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
-Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
-That due of many now is thine alone:
-  Their images I loved I view in thee,
-  And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.
-
-XXXII.
-
-If thou survive my well-contented day,
-When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
-And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
-These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
-Compare them with the bettering of the time,
-And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
-Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
-Exceeded by the height of happier men.
-O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
-'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
-A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
-To march in ranks of better equipage:
-  But since he died and poets better prove,
-  Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'
-
-XXXIII.
-
-Full many a glorious morning have I seen
-Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
-Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
-Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
-Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
-With ugly rack on his celestial face,
-And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
-Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
-Even so my sun one early morn did shine
-With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
-But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
-The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
-  Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
-  Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
-
-XXXIV.
-
-Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
-And make me travel forth without my cloak,
-To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
-Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
-'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
-To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
-For no man well of such a salve can speak
-That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
-Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
-Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
-The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
-To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
-  Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
-  And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.
-
-XXXV.
-
-No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
-Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
-Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
-And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
-All men make faults, and even I in this,
-Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
-Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
-Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
-For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense--
-Thy adverse party is thy advocate--
-And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
-Such civil war is in my love and hate
-  That I an accessary needs must be
-  To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
-
-XXXVI.
-
-Let me confess that we two must be twain,
-Although our undivided loves are one:
-So shall those blots that do with me remain
-Without thy help by me be borne alone.
-In our two loves there is but one respect,
-Though in our lives a separable spite,
-Which though it alter not love's sole effect,
-Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
-I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
-Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
-Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
-Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
-  But do not so; I love thee in such sort
-  As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
-
-XXXVII.
-
-As a decrepit father takes delight
-To see his active child do deeds of youth,
-So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite,
-Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
-For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
-Or any of these all, or all, or more,
-Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,
-I make my love engrafted to this store:
-So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
-Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
-That I in thy abundance am sufficed
-And by a part of all thy glory live.
-  Look, what is best, that best I wish in thee:
-  This wish I have; then ten times happy me!
-
-XXXVIII.
-
-How can my Muse want subject to invent,
-While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
-Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
-For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
-O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me
-Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;
-For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
-When thou thyself dost give invention light?
-Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
-Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
-And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
-Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
-  If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
-  The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
-
-XXXIX.
-
-O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
-When thou art all the better part of me?
-What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
-And what is 't but mine own when I praise thee?
-Even for this let us divided live,
-And our dear love lose name of single one,
-That by this separation I may give
-That due to thee which thou deservest alone.
-O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove,
-Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave
-To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
-Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive,
-  And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
-  By praising him here who doth hence remain!
-
-XL.
-
-Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
-What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
-No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
-All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
-Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
-I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
-But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
-By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
-I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
-Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
-And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
-To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
-  Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
-  Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
-
-XLI.
-
-Those petty wrongs that liberty commits,
-When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
-Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
-For still temptation follows where thou art.
-Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,
-Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
-And when a woman woos, what woman's son
-Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
-Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,
-And chide try beauty and thy straying youth,
-Who lead thee in their riot even there
-Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,
-  Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
-  Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.
-
-XLII.
-
-That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
-And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
-That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,
-A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
-Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
-Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her;
-And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
-Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
-If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
-And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
-Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
-And both for my sake lay on me this cross:
-  But here's the joy; my friend and I are one;
-  Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.
-
-XLIII.
-
-When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
-For all the day they view things unrespected;
-But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
-And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
-Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
-How would thy shadow's form form happy show
-To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
-When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
-How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
-By looking on thee in the living day,
-When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
-Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
-  All days are nights to see till I see thee,
-  And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
-
-XLIV.
-
-If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
-Injurious distance should not stop my way;
-For then despite of space I would be brought,
-From limits far remote where thou dost stay.
-No matter then although my foot did stand
-Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
-For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
-As soon as think the place where he would be.
-But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
-To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
-But that so much of earth and water wrought
-I must attend time's leisure with my moan,
-  Receiving nought by elements so slow
-  But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
-
-XLV.
-
-The other two, slight air and purging fire,
-Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
-The first my thought, the other my desire,
-These present-absent with swift motion slide.
-For when these quicker elements are gone
-In tender embassy of love to thee,
-My life, being made of four, with two alone
-Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy;
-Until life's composition be recured
-By those swift messengers return'd from thee,
-Who even but now come back again, assured
-Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:
-  This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,
-  I send them back again and straight grow sad.
-
-XLVI.
-
-Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
-How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
-Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
-My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
-My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie--
-A closet never pierced with crystal eyes--
-But the defendant doth that plea deny
-And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
-To 'cide this title is impanneled
-A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
-And by their verdict is determined
-The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part:
-  As thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part,
-  And my heart's right thy inward love of heart.
-
-XLVII.
-
-Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
-And each doth good turns now unto the other:
-When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
-Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
-With my love's picture then my eye doth feast
-And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
-Another time mine eye is my heart's guest
-And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
-So, either by thy picture or my love,
-Thyself away art resent still with me;
-For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
-And I am still with them and they with thee;
-  Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
-  Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.
-
-XLVIII.
-
-How careful was I, when I took my way,
-Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
-That to my use it might unused stay
-From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
-But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
-Most worthy of comfort, now my greatest grief,
-Thou, best of dearest and mine only care,
-Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
-Thee have I not lock'd up in any chest,
-Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
-Within the gentle closure of my breast,
-From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;
-  And even thence thou wilt be stol'n, I fear,
-  For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
-
-XLIX.
-
-Against that time, if ever that time come,
-When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
-When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
-Call'd to that audit by advised respects;
-Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass
-And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,
-When love, converted from the thing it was,
-Shall reasons find of settled gravity,--
-Against that time do I ensconce me here
-Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
-And this my hand against myself uprear,
-To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
-  To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
-  Since why to love I can allege no cause.
-
-L.
-
-How heavy do I journey on the way,
-When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
-Doth teach that ease and that repose to say
-'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
-The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
-Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
-As if by some instinct the wretch did know
-His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
-The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
-That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide;
-Which heavily he answers with a groan,
-More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
-  For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
-  My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
-
-LI.
-
-Thus can my love excuse the slow offence
-Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:
-From where thou art why should I haste me thence?
-Till I return, of posting is no need.
-O, what excuse will my poor beast then find,
-When swift extremity can seem but slow?
-Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;
-In winged speed no motion shall I know:
-Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;
-Therefore desire of perfect'st love being made,
-Shall neigh--no dull flesh--in his fiery race;
-But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade;
-  Since from thee going he went wilful-slow,
-  Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.
-
-LII.
-
-So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
-Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
-The which he will not every hour survey,
-For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
-Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
-Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
-Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
-Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
-So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
-Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
-To make some special instant special blest,
-By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.
-  Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
-  Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope.
-
-LIII.
-
-What is your substance, whereof are you made,
-That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
-Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
-And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
-Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
-Is poorly imitated after you;
-On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
-And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
-Speak of the spring and foison of the year;
-The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
-The other as your bounty doth appear;
-And you in every blessed shape we know.
-  In all external grace you have some part,
-  But you like none, none you, for constant heart.
-
-LIV.
-
-O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
-By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
-The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
-For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
-The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
-As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
-Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
-When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
-But, for their virtue only is their show,
-They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
-Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
-Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
-  And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
-  When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.
-
-LV.
-
-Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
-Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
-But you shall shine more bright in these contents
-Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
-When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
-And broils root out the work of masonry,
-Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
-The living record of your memory.
-'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
-Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
-Even in the eyes of all posterity
-That wear this world out to the ending doom.
-  So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
-  You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.
-
-LVI.
-
-Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
-Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
-Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd,
-To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might:
-So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill
-Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,
-To-morrow see again, and do not kill
-The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.
-Let this sad interim like the ocean be
-Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
-Come daily to the banks, that, when they see
-Return of love, more blest may be the view;
-  Else call it winter, which being full of care
-  Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.
-
-LVII.
-
-Being your slave, what should I do but tend
-Upon the hours and times of your desire?
-I have no precious time at all to spend,
-Nor services to do, till you require.
-Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
-Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
-Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
-When you have bid your servant once adieu;
-Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
-Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
-But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
-Save, where you are how happy you make those.
-  So true a fool is love that in your will,
-  Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
-
-LVIII.
-
-That god forbid that made me first your slave,
-I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
-Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
-Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
-O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
-The imprison'd absence of your liberty;
-And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheque,
-Without accusing you of injury.
-Be where you list, your charter is so strong
-That you yourself may privilege your time
-To what you will; to you it doth belong
-Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
-  I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;
-  Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.
-
-LIX.
-
-If there be nothing new, but that which is
-Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
-Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
-The second burden of a former child!
-O, that record could with a backward look,
-Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
-Show me your image in some antique book,
-Since mind at first in character was done!
-That I might see what the old world could say
-To this composed wonder of your frame;
-Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
-Or whether revolution be the same.
-  O, sure I am, the wits of former days
-  To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
-
-LX.
-
-Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
-So do our minutes hasten to their end;
-Each changing place with that which goes before,
-In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
-Nativity, once in the main of light,
-Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
-Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,
-And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
-Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
-And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
-Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
-And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
-  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
-  Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
-
-LXI.
-
-Is it thy will thy image should keep open
-My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
-Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
-While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
-Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
-So far from home into my deeds to pry,
-To find out shames and idle hours in me,
-The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
-O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
-It is my love that keeps mine eye awake;
-Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
-To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
-  For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
-  From me far off, with others all too near.
-
-LXII.
-
-Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
-And all my soul and all my every part;
-And for this sin there is no remedy,
-It is so grounded inward in my heart.
-Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
-No shape so true, no truth of such account;
-And for myself mine own worth do define,
-As I all other in all worths surmount.
-But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
-Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
-Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
-Self so self-loving were iniquity.
-  'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
-  Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
-
-LXIII.
-
-Against my love shall be, as I am now,
-With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'er-worn;
-When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
-With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
-Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night,
-And all those beauties whereof now he's king
-Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,
-Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
-For such a time do I now fortify
-Against confounding age's cruel knife,
-That he shall never cut from memory
-My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
-  His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
-  And they shall live, and he in them still green.
-
-LXIV.
-
-When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
-The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
-When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
-And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
-When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
-Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
-And the firm soil win of the watery main,
-Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
-When I have seen such interchange of state,
-Or state itself confounded to decay;
-Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
-That Time will come and take my love away.
-  This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
-  But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
-
-LXV.
-
-Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
-But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
-How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
-Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
-O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
-Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
-When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
-Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
-O fearful meditation! where, alack,
-Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
-Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
-Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
-  O, none, unless this miracle have might,
-  That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
-
-LXVI.
-
-Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
-As, to behold desert a beggar born,
-And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
-And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
-And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
-And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
-And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
-And strength by limping sway disabled,
-And art made tongue-tied by authority,
-And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
-And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
-And captive good attending captain ill:
-  Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
-  Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
-
-LXVII.
-
-Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,
-And with his presence grace impiety,
-That sin by him advantage should achieve
-And lace itself with his society?
-Why should false painting imitate his cheek
-And steal dead seeing of his living hue?
-Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
-Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
-Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,
-Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins?
-For she hath no exchequer now but his,
-And, proud of many, lives upon his gains.
-  O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had
-  In days long since, before these last so bad.
-
-LXVIII.
-
-Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
-When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
-Before the bastard signs of fair were born,
-Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
-Before the golden tresses of the dead,
-The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
-To live a second life on second head;
-Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
-In him those holy antique hours are seen,
-Without all ornament, itself and true,
-Making no summer of another's green,
-Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
-  And him as for a map doth Nature store,
-  To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
-
-LXIX.
-
-Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
-Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
-All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
-Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
-Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;
-But those same tongues that give thee so thine own
-In other accents do this praise confound
-By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
-They look into the beauty of thy mind,
-And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds;
-Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,
-To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
-  But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
-  The solve is this, that thou dost common grow.
-
-LXX.
-
-That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
-For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
-The ornament of beauty is suspect,
-A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
-So thou be good, slander doth but approve
-Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time;
-For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
-And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
-Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days,
-Either not assail'd or victor being charged;
-Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
-To tie up envy evermore enlarged:
-  If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show,
-  Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
-
-LXXI.
-
-No longer mourn for me when I am dead
-Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
-Give warning to the world that I am fled
-From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
-Nay, if you read this line, remember not
-The hand that writ it; for I love you so
-That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
-If thinking on me then should make you woe.
-O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
-When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
-Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
-But let your love even with my life decay,
-  Lest the wise world should look into your moan
-  And mock you with me after I am gone.
-
-LXXII.
-
-O, lest the world should task you to recite
-What merit lived in me, that you should love
-After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
-For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
-Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
-To do more for me than mine own desert,
-And hang more praise upon deceased I
-Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
-O, lest your true love may seem false in this,
-That you for love speak well of me untrue,
-My name be buried where my body is,
-And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
-  For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
-  And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
-
-LXXIII.
-
-That time of year thou mayst in me behold
-When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
-Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
-Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
-In me thou seest the twilight of such day
-As after sunset fadeth in the west,
-Which by and by black night doth take away,
-Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
-In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
-That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
-As the death-bed whereon it must expire
-Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
-  This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
-  To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
-
-LXXIV.
-
-But be contented: when that fell arrest
-Without all bail shall carry me away,
-My life hath in this line some interest,
-Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
-When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
-The very part was consecrate to thee:
-The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
-My spirit is thine, the better part of me:
-So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
-The prey of worms, my body being dead,
-The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
-Too base of thee to be remembered.
-  The worth of that is that which it contains,
-  And that is this, and this with thee remains.
-
-LXXV.
-
-So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
-Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
-And for the peace of you I hold such strife
-As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
-Now proud as an enjoyer and anon
-Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
-Now counting best to be with you alone,
-Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure;
-Sometime all full with feasting on your sight
-And by and by clean starved for a look;
-Possessing or pursuing no delight,
-Save what is had or must from you be took.
-  Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
-  Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
-
-LXXVI.
-
-Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
-So far from variation or quick change?
-Why with the time do I not glance aside
-To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
-Why write I still all one, ever the same,
-And keep invention in a noted weed,
-That every word doth almost tell my name,
-Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
-O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
-And you and love are still my argument;
-So all my best is dressing old words new,
-Spending again what is already spent:
-  For as the sun is daily new and old,
-  So is my love still telling what is told.
-
-LXXVII.
-
-Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
-Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
-The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
-And of this book this learning mayst thou taste.
-The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
-Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
-Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
-Time's thievish progress to eternity.
-Look, what thy memory can not contain
-Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
-Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain,
-To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
-  These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
-  Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.
-
-LXXVIII.
-
-So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
-And found such fair assistance in my verse
-As every alien pen hath got my use
-And under thee their poesy disperse.
-Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing
-And heavy ignorance aloft to fly
-Have added feathers to the learned's wing
-And given grace a double majesty.
-Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
-Whose influence is thine and born of thee:
-In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
-And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
-  But thou art all my art and dost advance
-  As high as learning my rude ignorance.
-
-LXXIX.
-
-Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
-My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
-But now my gracious numbers are decay'd
-And my sick Muse doth give another place.
-I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
-Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
-Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
-He robs thee of and pays it thee again.
-He lends thee virtue and he stole that word
-From thy behavior; beauty doth he give
-And found it in thy cheek; he can afford
-No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.
-  Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
-  Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.
-
-LXXX.
-
-O, how I faint when I of you do write,
-Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
-And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
-To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!
-But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
-The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
-My saucy bark inferior far to his
-On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
-Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
-Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
-Or being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat,
-He of tall building and of goodly pride:
-  Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
-  The worst was this; my love was my decay.
-
-LXXXI.
-
-Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
-Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
-From hence your memory death cannot take,
-Although in me each part will be forgotten.
-Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
-Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
-The earth can yield me but a common grave,
-When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
-Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
-Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
-And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
-When all the breathers of this world are dead;
-  You still shall live--such virtue hath my pen--
-  Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
-
-LXXXII.
-
-I grant thou wert not married to my Muse
-And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
-The dedicated words which writers use
-Of their fair subject, blessing every book
-Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
-Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
-And therefore art enforced to seek anew
-Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days
-And do so, love; yet when they have devised
-What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
-Thou truly fair wert truly sympathized
-In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
-  And their gross painting might be better used
-  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.
-
-LXXXIII.
-
-I never saw that you did painting need
-And therefore to your fair no painting set;
-I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
-The barren tender of a poet's debt;
-And therefore have I slept in your report,
-That you yourself being extant well might show
-How far a modern quill doth come too short,
-Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
-This silence for my sin you did impute,
-Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
-For I impair not beauty being mute,
-When others would give life and bring a tomb.
-  There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
-  Than both your poets can in praise devise.
-
-LXXXIV.
-
-Who is it that says most? which can say more
-Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?
-In whose confine immured is the store
-Which should example where your equal grew.
-Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
-That to his subject lends not some small glory;
-But he that writes of you, if he can tell
-That you are you, so dignifies his story,
-Let him but copy what in you is writ,
-Not making worse what nature made so clear,
-And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
-Making his style admired every where.
-  You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
-  Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.
-
-LXXXV.
-
-My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,
-While comments of your praise, richly compiled,
-Reserve their character with golden quill
-And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.
-I think good thoughts whilst other write good words,
-And like unletter'd clerk still cry 'Amen'
-To every hymn that able spirit affords
-In polish'd form of well-refined pen.
-Hearing you praised, I say ''Tis so, 'tis true,'
-And to the most of praise add something more;
-But that is in my thought, whose love to you,
-Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.
-  Then others for the breath of words respect,
-  Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
-
-LXXXVI.
-
-Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
-Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
-That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
-Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
-Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
-Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
-No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
-Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
-He, nor that affable familiar ghost
-Which nightly gulls him with intelligence
-As victors of my silence cannot boast;
-I was not sick of any fear from thence:
-  But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
-  Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.
-
-LXXXVII.
-
-Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
-And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
-The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
-My bonds in thee are all determinate.
-For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
-And for that riches where is my deserving?
-The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
-And so my patent back again is swerving.
-Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
-Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;
-So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
-Comes home again, on better judgment making.
-  Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
-  In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
-
-LXXXVIII.
-
-When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
-And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
-Upon thy side against myself I'll fight,
-And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.
-With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
-Upon thy part I can set down a story
-Of faults conceal'd, wherein I am attainted,
-That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:
-And I by this will be a gainer too;
-For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
-The injuries that to myself I do,
-Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
-  Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
-  That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
-
-LXXXIX.
-
-Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
-And I will comment upon that offence;
-Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,
-Against thy reasons making no defence.
-Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,
-To set a form upon desired change,
-As I'll myself disgrace: knowing thy will,
-I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,
-Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue
-Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
-Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong
-And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
-  For thee against myself I'll vow debate,
-  For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.
-
-XC.
-
-Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
-Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
-Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
-And do not drop in for an after-loss:
-Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scoped this sorrow,
-Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;
-Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
-To linger out a purposed overthrow.
-If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
-When other petty griefs have done their spite
-But in the onset come; so shall I taste
-At first the very worst of fortune's might,
-  And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
-  Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.
-
-XCI.
-
-Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
-Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force,
-Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
-Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
-And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
-Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
-But these particulars are not my measure;
-All these I better in one general best.
-Thy love is better than high birth to me,
-Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
-Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
-And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
-  Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
-  All this away and me most wretched make.
-
-XCII.
-
-But do thy worst to steal thyself away,
-For term of life thou art assured mine,
-And life no longer than thy love will stay,
-For it depends upon that love of thine.
-Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
-When in the least of them my life hath end.
-I see a better state to me belongs
-Than that which on thy humour doth depend;
-Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,
-Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie.
-O, what a happy title do I find,
-Happy to have thy love, happy to die!
-  But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot?
-  Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.
-
-XCIII.
-
-So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
-Like a deceived husband; so love's face
-May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;
-Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
-For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
-Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
-In many's looks the false heart's history
-Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,
-But heaven in thy creation did decree
-That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
-Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,
-Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.
-  How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
-  if thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!
-
-XCIV.
-
-They that have power to hurt and will do none,
-That do not do the thing they most do show,
-Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
-Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
-They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
-And husband nature's riches from expense;
-They are the lords and owners of their faces,
-Others but stewards of their excellence.
-The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
-Though to itself it only live and die,
-But if that flower with base infection meet,
-The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
-  For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
-  Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
-
-XCV.
-
-How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
-Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
-Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
-O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
-That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
-Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
-Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
-Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
-O, what a mansion have those vices got
-Which for their habitation chose out thee,
-Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
-And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
-  Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
-  The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
-
-XCVI.
-
-Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
-Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
-Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;
-Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort.
-As on the finger of a throned queen
-The basest jewel will be well esteem'd,
-So are those errors that in thee are seen
-To truths translated and for true things deem'd.
-How many lambs might the stem wolf betray,
-If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
-How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
-If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
-  But do not so; I love thee in such sort
-  As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
-
-XCVII.
-
-How like a winter hath my absence been
-From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
-What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
-What old December's bareness every where!
-And yet this time removed was summer's time,
-The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
-Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
-Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
-Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
-But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;
-For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
-And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
-  Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
-  That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
-
-XCVIII.
-
-From you have I been absent in the spring,
-When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
-Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
-That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
-Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
-Of different flowers in odour and in hue
-Could make me any summer's story tell,
-Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
-Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
-Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
-They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
-Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
-  Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
-  As with your shadow I with these did play:
-
-XCIX.
-
-The forward violet thus did I chide:
-Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
-If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
-Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
-In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
-The lily I condemned for thy hand,
-And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair:
-The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
-One blushing shame, another white despair;
-A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
-And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
-But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
-A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
-  More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
-  But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.
-
-C.
-
-Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
-To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
-Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
-Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
-Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
-In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
-Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
-And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
-Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
-If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
-If any, be a satire to decay,
-And make Time's spoils despised every where.
-  Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;
-  So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.
-
-CI.
-
-O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
-For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
-Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
-So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
-Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say
-'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
-Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
-But best is best, if never intermix'd?'
-Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
-Excuse not silence so; for't lies in thee
-To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
-And to be praised of ages yet to be.
-  Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
-  To make him seem long hence as he shows now.
-
-CII.
-
-My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
-I love not less, though less the show appear:
-That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
-The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
-Our love was new and then but in the spring
-When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
-As Philomel in summer's front doth sing
-And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
-Not that the summer is less pleasant now
-Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
-But that wild music burthens every bough
-And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
-  Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,
-  Because I would not dull you with my song.
-
-CIII.
-
-Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,
-That having such a scope to show her pride,
-The argument all bare is of more worth
-Than when it hath my added praise beside!
-O, blame me not, if I no more can write!
-Look in your glass, and there appears a face
-That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
-Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
-Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
-To mar the subject that before was well?
-For to no other pass my verses tend
-Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
-  And more, much more, than in my verse can sit
-  Your own glass shows you when you look in it.
-
-CIV.
-
-To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
-For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
-Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
-Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
-Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd
-In process of the seasons have I seen,
-Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
-Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
-Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
-Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;
-So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
-Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
-  For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
-  Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
-
-CV.
-
-Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
-Nor my beloved as an idol show,
-Since all alike my songs and praises be
-To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
-Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
-Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
-Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
-One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
-'Fair, kind and true' is all my argument,
-'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words;
-And in this change is my invention spent,
-Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
-  'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone,
-  Which three till now never kept seat in one.
-
-CVI.
-
-When in the chronicle of wasted time
-I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
-And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
-In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
-Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
-Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
-I see their antique pen would have express'd
-Even such a beauty as you master now.
-So all their praises are but prophecies
-Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
-And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
-They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
-  For we, which now behold these present days,
-  Had eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
-
-CVII.
-
-Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
-Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
-Can yet the lease of my true love control,
-Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
-The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
-And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
-Incertainties now crown themselves assured
-And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
-Now with the drops of this most balmy time
-My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
-Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
-While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
-  And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
-  When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
-
-CVIII.
-
-What's in the brain that ink may character
-Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
-What's new to speak, what new to register,
-That may express my love or thy dear merit?
-Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
-I must, each day say o'er the very same,
-Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
-Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
-So that eternal love in love's fresh case
-Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
-Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
-But makes antiquity for aye his page,
-  Finding the first conceit of love there bred
-  Where time and outward form would show it dead.
-
-CIX.
-
-O, never say that I was false of heart,
-Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
-As easy might I from myself depart
-As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
-That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
-Like him that travels I return again,
-Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
-So that myself bring water for my stain.
-Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
-All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
-That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
-To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
-  For nothing this wide universe I call,
-  Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
-
-CX.
-
-Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
-And made myself a motley to the view,
-Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
-Made old offences of affections new;
-Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
-Askance and strangely: but, by all above,
-These blenches gave my heart another youth,
-And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
-Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
-Mine appetite I never more will grind
-On newer proof, to try an older friend,
-A god in love, to whom I am confined.
-  Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
-  Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
-
-CXI.
-
-O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
-The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
-That did not better for my life provide
-Than public means which public manners breeds.
-Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
-And almost thence my nature is subdued
-To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
-Pity me then and wish I were renew'd;
-Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
-Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection
-No bitterness that I will bitter think,
-Nor double penance, to correct correction.
-  Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
-  Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
-
-CXII.
-
-Your love and pity doth the impression fill
-Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
-For what care I who calls me well or ill,
-So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
-You are my all the world, and I must strive
-To know my shames and praises from your tongue:
-None else to me, nor I to none alive,
-That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
-In so profound abysm I throw all care
-Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
-To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
-Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
-  You are so strongly in my purpose bred
-  That all the world besides methinks are dead.
-
-CXIII.
-
-Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
-And that which governs me to go about
-Doth part his function and is partly blind,
-Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
-For it no form delivers to the heart
-Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch:
-Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
-Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
-For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
-The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
-The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
-The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature:
-  Incapable of more, replete with you,
-  My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.
-
-CXIV.
-
-Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you,
-Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?
-Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,
-And that your love taught it this alchemy,
-To make of monsters and things indigest
-Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
-Creating every bad a perfect best,
-As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
-O,'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing,
-And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:
-Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
-And to his palate doth prepare the cup:
-  If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin
-  That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
-
-CXV.
-
-Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
-Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
-Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
-My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
-But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents
-Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
-Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
-Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
-Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,
-Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'
-When I was certain o'er incertainty,
-Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
-  Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
-  To give full growth to that which still doth grow?
-
-CXVI.
-
-Let me not to the marriage of true minds
-Admit impediments. Love is not love
-Which alters when it alteration finds,
-Or bends with the remover to remove:
-O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
-That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
-It is the star to every wandering bark,
-Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
-Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
-Within his bending sickle's compass come:
-Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
-But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
-  If this be error and upon me proved,
-  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-
-CXVII.
-
-Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
-Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
-Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
-Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
-That I have frequent been with unknown minds
-And given to time your own dear-purchased right
-That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
-Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
-Book both my wilfulness and errors down
-And on just proof surmise accumulate;
-Bring me within the level of your frown,
-But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate;
-  Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
-  The constancy and virtue of your love.
-
-CXVIII.
-
-Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
-With eager compounds we our palate urge,
-As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
-We sicken to shun sickness when we purge,
-Even so, being tuff of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
-To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding
-And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
-To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
-Thus policy in love, to anticipate
-The ills that were not, grew to faults assured
-And brought to medicine a healthful state
-Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured:
-  But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
-  Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
-
-CXIX.
-
-What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
-Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
-Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
-Still losing when I saw myself to win!
-What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
-Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!
-How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
-In the distraction of this madding fever!
-O benefit of ill! now I find true
-That better is by evil still made better;
-And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,
-Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
-  So I return rebuked to my content
-  And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.
-
-CXX.
-
-That you were once unkind befriends me now,
-And for that sorrow which I then did feel
-Needs must I under my transgression bow,
-Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
-For if you were by my unkindness shaken
-As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time,
-And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
-To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
-O, that our night of woe might have remember'd
-My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
-And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
-The humble slave which wounded bosoms fits!
-  But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
-  Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
-
-CXXI.
-
-'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
-When not to be receives reproach of being,
-And the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd
-Not by our feeling but by others' seeing:
-For why should others false adulterate eyes
-Give salutation to my sportive blood?
-Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
-Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
-No, I am that I am, and they that level
-At my abuses reckon up their own:
-I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
-By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
-  Unless this general evil they maintain,
-  All men are bad, and in their badness reign.
-
-CXXII.
-
-Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
-Full character'd with lasting memory,
-Which shall above that idle rank remain
-Beyond all date, even to eternity;
-Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
-Have faculty by nature to subsist;
-Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
-Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
-That poor retention could not so much hold,
-Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
-Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
-To trust those tables that receive thee more:
-  To keep an adjunct to remember thee
-  Were to import forgetfulness in me.
-
-CXXIII.
-
-No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
-Thy pyramids built up with newer might
-To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
-They are but dressings of a former sight.
-Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
-What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
-And rather make them born to our desire
-Than think that we before have heard them told.
-Thy registers and thee I both defy,
-Not wondering at the present nor the past,
-For thy records and what we see doth lie,
-Made more or less by thy continual haste.
-  This I do vow and this shall ever be;
-  I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.
-
-CXXIV.
-
-If my dear love were but the child of state,
-It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd'
-As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
-Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.
-No, it was builded far from accident;
-It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
-Under the blow of thralled discontent,
-Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
-It fears not policy, that heretic,
-Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,
-But all alone stands hugely politic,
-That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.
-  To this I witness call the fools of time,
-  Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
-
-CXXV.
-
-Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy,
-With my extern the outward honouring,
-Or laid great bases for eternity,
-Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
-Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
-Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,
-For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,
-Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
-No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
-And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
-Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art,
-But mutual render, only me for thee.
-  Hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soul
-  When most impeach'd stands least in thy control.
-
-CXXVI.
-
-O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
-Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
-Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
-Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;
-If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
-As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
-She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
-May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
-Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
-She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
-  Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be,
-  And her quietus is to render thee.
-
-CXXVII.
-
-In the old age black was not counted fair,
-Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
-But now is black beauty's successive heir,
-And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:
-For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
-Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face,
-Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
-But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
-Therefore my mistress' brows are raven black,
-Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
-At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
-Slandering creation with a false esteem:
-  Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
-  That every tongue says beauty should look so.
-
-CXXVIII.
-
-How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
-Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
-With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
-The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
-Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
-To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
-Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
-At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
-To be so tickled, they would change their state
-And situation with those dancing chips,
-O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
-Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
-  Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
-  Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
-
-CXXIX.
-
-The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
-Is lust in action; and till action, lust
-Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
-Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
-Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
-Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
-Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
-On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
-Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
-Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
-A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
-Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
-  All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
-  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
-
-CXXX.
-
-My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
-Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
-If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
-If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
-I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
-But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
-And in some perfumes is there more delight
-Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
-I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
-That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
-I grant I never saw a goddess go;
-My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
-  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
-  As any she belied with false compare.
-
-CXXXI.
-
-Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
-As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
-For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
-Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
-Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold
-Thy face hath not the power to make love groan:
-To say they err I dare not be so bold,
-Although I swear it to myself alone.
-And, to be sure that is not false I swear,
-A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,
-One on another's neck, do witness bear
-Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place.
-  In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
-  And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.
-
-CXXXII.
-
-Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
-Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,
-Have put on black and loving mourners be,
-Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
-And truly not the morning sun of heaven
-Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
-Nor that full star that ushers in the even
-Doth half that glory to the sober west,
-As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
-O, let it then as well beseem thy heart
-To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace,
-And suit thy pity like in every part.
-  Then will I swear beauty herself is black
-  And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
-
-CXXXIII.
-
-Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
-For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
-Is't not enough to torture me alone,
-But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
-Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
-And my next self thou harder hast engross'd:
-Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;
-A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd.
-Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
-But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail;
-Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
-Thou canst not then use rigor in my gaol:
-  And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
-  Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.
-
-CXXXIV.
-
-So, now I have confess'd that he is thine,
-And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,
-Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine
-Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still:
-But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
-For thou art covetous and he is kind;
-He learn'd but surety-like to write for me
-Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.
-The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
-Thou usurer, that put'st forth all to use,
-And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;
-So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
-  Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:
-  He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
-
-CXXXV.
-
-Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'
-And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;
-More than enough am I that vex thee still,
-To thy sweet will making addition thus.
-Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
-Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
-Shall will in others seem right gracious,
-And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
-The sea all water, yet receives rain still
-And in abundance addeth to his store;
-So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'
-One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.
-  Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
-  Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'
-
-CXXXVI.
-
-If thy soul cheque thee that I come so near,
-Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy 'Will,'
-And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;
-Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.
-'Will' will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
-Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
-In things of great receipt with ease we prove
-Among a number one is reckon'd none:
-Then in the number let me pass untold,
-Though in thy stores' account I one must be;
-For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
-That nothing me, a something sweet to thee:
-  Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
-  And then thou lovest me, for my name is 'Will.'
-
-CXXXVII.
-
-Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
-That they behold, and see not what they see?
-They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
-Yet what the best is take the worst to be.
-If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks
-Be anchor'd in the bay where all men ride,
-Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
-Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
-Why should my heart think that a several plot
-Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?
-Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not,
-To put fair truth upon so foul a face?
-  In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,
-  And to this false plague are they now transferr'd.
-
-CXXXVIII.
-
-When my love swears that she is made of truth
-I do believe her, though I know she lies,
-That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
-Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
-Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
-Although she knows my days are past the best,
-Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
-On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
-But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
-And wherefore say not I that I am old?
-O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
-And age in love loves not to have years told:
-  Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
-  And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
-
-CXXXIX.
-
-O, call not me to justify the wrong
-That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
-Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
-Use power with power and slay me not by art.
-Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight,
-Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
-What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
-Is more than my o'er-press'd defense can bide?
-Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
-Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
-And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
-That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
-  Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
-  Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.
-
-CXL.
-
-Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
-My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
-Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
-The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
-If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
-Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;
-As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
-No news but health from their physicians know;
-For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
-And in my madness might speak ill of thee:
-Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
-Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be,
-  That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
-  Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
-
-CXLI.
-
-In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
-For they in thee a thousand errors note;
-But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
-Who in despite of view is pleased to dote;
-Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,
-Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
-Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
-To any sensual feast with thee alone:
-But my five wits nor my five senses can
-Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
-Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man,
-Thy proud hearts slave and vassal wretch to be:
-  Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
-  That she that makes me sin awards me pain.
-
-CXLII.
-
-Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate,
-Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:
-O, but with mine compare thou thine own state,
-And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;
-Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,
-That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
-And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
-Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.
-Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lovest those
-Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:
-Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows
-Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
-  If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
-  By self-example mayst thou be denied!
-
-CXLIII.
-
-Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch
-One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
-Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch
-In pursuit of the thing she would have stay,
-Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
-Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
-To follow that which flies before her face,
-Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
-So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
-Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
-But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
-And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind:
-  So will I pray that thou mayst have thy 'Will,'
-  If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.
-
-CXLIV.
-
-Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
-Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
-The better angel is a man right fair,
-The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
-To win me soon to hell, my female evil
-Tempteth my better angel from my side,
-And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
-Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
-And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
-Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
-But being both from me, both to each friend,
-I guess one angel in another's hell:
-  Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
-  Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
-
-CXLV.
-
-Those lips that Love's own hand did make
-Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'
-To me that languish'd for her sake;
-But when she saw my woeful state,
-Straight in her heart did mercy come,
-Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
-Was used in giving gentle doom,
-And taught it thus anew to greet:
-'I hate' she alter'd with an end,
-That follow'd it as gentle day
-Doth follow night, who like a fiend
-From heaven to hell is flown away;
-  'I hate' from hate away she threw,
-  And saved my life, saying 'not you.'
-
-CXLVI.
-
-Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
-[         ] these rebel powers that thee array;
-Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
-Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
-Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
-Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
-Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
-Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
-Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
-And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
-Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
-Within be fed, without be rich no more:
-  So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
-  And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
-
-CXLVII.
-
-My love is as a fever, longing still
-For that which longer nurseth the disease,
-Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
-The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
-My reason, the physician to my love,
-Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
-Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
-Desire is death, which physic did except.
-Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
-And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
-My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
-At random from the truth vainly express'd;
-  For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
-  Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
-
-CXLVIII.
-
-O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
-Which have no correspondence with true sight!
-Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
-That censures falsely what they see aright?
-If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
-What means the world to say it is not so?
-If it be not, then love doth well denote
-Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'
-How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,
-That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
-No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
-The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
-  O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
-  Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
-
-CXLIX.
-
-Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,
-When I against myself with thee partake?
-Do I not think on thee, when I forgot
-Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake?
-Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?
-On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon?
-Nay, if thou lour'st on me, do I not spend
-Revenge upon myself with present moan?
-What merit do I in myself respect,
-That is so proud thy service to despise,
-When all my best doth worship thy defect,
-Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
-  But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;
-  Those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.
-
-CL.
-
-O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
-With insufficiency my heart to sway?
-To make me give the lie to my true sight,
-And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
-Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
-That in the very refuse of thy deeds
-There is such strength and warrantize of skill
-That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
-Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
-The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
-O, though I love what others do abhor,
-With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
-  If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
-  More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
-
-CLI.
-
-Love is too young to know what conscience is;
-Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
-Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
-Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
-For, thou betraying me, I do betray
-My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
-My soul doth tell my body that he may
-Triumph in love; flesh stays no father reason;
-But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee
-As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
-He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
-To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
-  No want of conscience hold it that I call
-  Her 'love' for whose dear love I rise and fall.
-
-CLII.
-
-In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
-But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,
-In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
-In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
-But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
-When I break twenty? I am perjured most;
-For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee
-And all my honest faith in thee is lost,
-For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
-Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
-And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
-Or made them swear against the thing they see;
-  For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,
-  To swear against the truth so foul a lie!
-
-CLIII.
-
-Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
-A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
-And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
-In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
-Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love
-A dateless lively heat, still to endure,
-And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
-Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
-But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
-The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
-I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
-And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,
-  But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
-  Where Cupid got new fire--my mistress' eyes.
-
-CLIV.
-
-The little Love-god lying once asleep
-Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
-Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep
-Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
-The fairest votary took up that fire
-Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
-And so the general of hot desire
-Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.
-This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
-Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
-Growing a bath and healthful remedy
-For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
-  Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
-  Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.