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diff --git a/old/1041-h/1041-h.htm b/old/1041-h/1041-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b96062 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1041-h/1041-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3615 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sonnets, by William Shakespeare</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-right: 20%; + margin-left: 20%; + text-align: justify } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1041 ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>THE SONNETS</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by William Shakespeare</h2> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>I</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +From fairest creatures we desire increase,<br /> +That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,<br /> +But as the riper should by time decease,<br /> +His tender heir might bear his memory:<br /> +But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,<br /> +Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,<br /> +Making a famine where abundance lies,<br /> +Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:<br /> +Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,<br /> +And only herald to the gaudy spring,<br /> +Within thine own bud buriest thy content,<br /> +And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding:<br /> + Pity the world, or else this glutton be,<br /> + To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>II</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,<br /> +And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,<br /> +Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,<br /> +Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held:<br /> +Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,<br /> +Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;<br /> +To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,<br /> +Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.<br /> +How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,<br /> +If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine<br /> +Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’<br /> +Proving his beauty by succession thine!<br /> + This were to be new made when thou art old,<br /> + And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>III</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest<br /> +Now is the time that face should form another;<br /> +Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,<br /> +Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.<br /> +For where is she so fair whose unear’d womb<br /> +Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?<br /> +Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,<br /> +Of his self-love to stop posterity?<br /> +Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee<br /> +Calls back the lovely April of her prime;<br /> +So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,<br /> +Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.<br /> + But if thou live, remember’d not to be,<br /> + Die single and thine image dies with thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>IV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend<br /> +Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?<br /> +Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,<br /> +And being frank she lends to those are free:<br /> +Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse<br /> +The bounteous largess given thee to give?<br /> +Profitless usurer, why dost thou use<br /> +So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?<br /> +For having traffic with thyself alone,<br /> +Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive:<br /> +Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,<br /> +What acceptable audit canst thou leave?<br /> + Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,<br /> + Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>V</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Those hours, that with gentle work did frame<br /> +The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,<br /> +Will play the tyrants to the very same<br /> +And that unfair which fairly doth excel;<br /> +For never-resting time leads summer on<br /> +To hideous winter, and confounds him there;<br /> +Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,<br /> +Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where:<br /> +Then were not summer’s distillation left,<br /> +A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,<br /> +Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,<br /> +Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:<br /> + But flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet,<br /> + Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>VI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,<br /> +In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d:<br /> +Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place<br /> +With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-kill’d.<br /> +That use is not forbidden usury,<br /> +Which happies those that pay the willing loan;<br /> +That’s for thyself to breed another thee,<br /> +Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;<br /> +Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,<br /> +If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee:<br /> +Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,<br /> +Leaving thee living in posterity?<br /> + Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair<br /> + To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>VII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Lo! in the orient when the gracious light<br /> +Lifts up his burning head, each under eye<br /> +Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,<br /> +Serving with looks his sacred majesty;<br /> +And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill,<br /> +Resembling strong youth in his middle age,<br /> +Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,<br /> +Attending on his golden pilgrimage:<br /> +But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,<br /> +Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,<br /> +The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are<br /> +From his low tract, and look another way:<br /> + So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon:<br /> + Unlook’d, on diest unless thou get a son.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>VIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?<br /> +Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:<br /> +Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,<br /> +Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?<br /> +If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,<br /> +By unions married, do offend thine ear,<br /> +They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds<br /> +In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.<br /> +Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,<br /> +Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;<br /> +Resembling sire and child and happy mother,<br /> +Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:<br /> + Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,<br /> + Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>IX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,<br /> +That thou consum’st thyself in single life?<br /> +Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,<br /> +The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;<br /> +The world will be thy widow and still weep<br /> +That thou no form of thee hast left behind,<br /> +When every private widow well may keep<br /> +By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:<br /> +Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spend<br /> +Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;<br /> +But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,<br /> +And kept unused the user so destroys it.<br /> + No love toward others in that bosom sits<br /> + That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>X</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +For shame! deny that thou bear’st love to any,<br /> +Who for thyself art so unprovident.<br /> +Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov’d of many,<br /> +But that thou none lov’st is most evident:<br /> +For thou art so possess’d with murderous hate,<br /> +That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,<br /> +Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate<br /> +Which to repair should be thy chief desire.<br /> +O! change thy thought, that I may change my mind:<br /> +Shall hate be fairer lodg’d than gentle love?<br /> +Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,<br /> +Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:<br /> + Make thee another self for love of me,<br /> + That beauty still may live in thine or thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st,<br /> +In one of thine, from that which thou departest;<br /> +And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,<br /> +Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest,<br /> +Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;<br /> +Without this folly, age, and cold decay:<br /> +If all were minded so, the times should cease<br /> +And threescore year would make the world away.<br /> +Let those whom nature hath not made for store,<br /> +Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:<br /> +Look, whom she best endow’d, she gave thee more;<br /> +Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:<br /> + She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby,<br /> + Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When I do count the clock that tells the time,<br /> +And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;<br /> +When I behold the violet past prime,<br /> +And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;<br /> +When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,<br /> +Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,<br /> +And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,<br /> +Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,<br /> +Then of thy beauty do I question make,<br /> +That thou among the wastes of time must go,<br /> +Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake<br /> +And die as fast as they see others grow;<br /> + And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence<br /> + Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! that you were your self; but, love you are<br /> +No longer yours, than you yourself here live:<br /> +Against this coming end you should prepare,<br /> +And your sweet semblance to some other give:<br /> +So should that beauty which you hold in lease<br /> +Find no determination; then you were<br /> +Yourself again, after yourself’s decease,<br /> +When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.<br /> +Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,<br /> +Which husbandry in honour might uphold,<br /> +Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day<br /> +And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?<br /> + O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,<br /> + You had a father: let your son say so.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;<br /> +And yet methinks I have astronomy,<br /> +But not to tell of good or evil luck,<br /> +Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;<br /> +Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,<br /> +Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,<br /> +Or say with princes if it shall go well<br /> +By oft predict that I in heaven find:<br /> +But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,<br /> +And constant stars in them I read such art<br /> +As ‘Truth and beauty shall together thrive,<br /> +If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert’;<br /> + Or else of thee this I prognosticate:<br /> + ‘Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.’<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When I consider everything that grows<br /> +Holds in perfection but a little moment,<br /> +That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows<br /> +Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;<br /> +When I perceive that men as plants increase,<br /> +Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,<br /> +Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,<br /> +And wear their brave state out of memory;<br /> +Then the conceit of this inconstant stay<br /> +Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,<br /> +Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay<br /> +To change your day of youth to sullied night,<br /> + And all in war with Time for love of you,<br /> + As he takes from you, I engraft you new.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +But wherefore do not you a mightier way<br /> +Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?<br /> +And fortify yourself in your decay<br /> +With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?<br /> +Now stand you on the top of happy hours,<br /> +And many maiden gardens, yet unset,<br /> +With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,<br /> +Much liker than your painted counterfeit:<br /> +So should the lines of life that life repair,<br /> +Which this, Time’s pencil, or my pupil pen,<br /> +Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,<br /> +Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.<br /> + To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,<br /> + And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Who will believe my verse in time to come,<br /> +If it were fill’d with your most high deserts?<br /> +Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb<br /> +Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.<br /> +If I could write the beauty of your eyes,<br /> +And in fresh numbers number all your graces,<br /> +The age to come would say ‘This poet lies;<br /> +Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’<br /> +So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,<br /> +Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue,<br /> +And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage<br /> +And stretched metre of an antique song:<br /> + But were some child of yours alive that time,<br /> + You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?<br /> +Thou art more lovely and more temperate:<br /> +Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,<br /> +And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:<br /> +Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,<br /> +And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,<br /> +And every fair from fair sometime declines,<br /> +By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:<br /> +But thy eternal summer shall not fade,<br /> +Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,<br /> +Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,<br /> +When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,<br /> + So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,<br /> + So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,<br /> +And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;<br /> +Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,<br /> +And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;<br /> +Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,<br /> +And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,<br /> +To the wide world and all her fading sweets;<br /> +But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:<br /> +O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,<br /> +Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;<br /> +Him in thy course untainted do allow<br /> +For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.<br /> + Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,<br /> + My love shall in my verse ever live young.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,<br /> +Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;<br /> +A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted<br /> +With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion:<br /> +An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,<br /> +Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;<br /> +A man in hue all ‘hues’ in his controlling,<br /> +Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.<br /> +And for a woman wert thou first created;<br /> +Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,<br /> +And by addition me of thee defeated,<br /> +By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.<br /> + But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,<br /> + Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +So is it not with me as with that Muse,<br /> +Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,<br /> +Who heaven itself for ornament doth use<br /> +And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,<br /> +Making a couplement of proud compare.<br /> +With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,<br /> +With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare,<br /> +That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.<br /> +O! let me, true in love, but truly write,<br /> +And then believe me, my love is as fair<br /> +As any mother’s child, though not so bright<br /> +As those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air:<br /> + Let them say more that like of hearsay well;<br /> + I will not praise that purpose not to sell.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +My glass shall not persuade me I am old,<br /> +So long as youth and thou are of one date;<br /> +But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,<br /> +Then look I death my days should expiate.<br /> +For all that beauty that doth cover thee,<br /> +Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,<br /> +Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:<br /> +How can I then be elder than thou art?<br /> +O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary<br /> +As I, not for myself, but for thee will;<br /> +Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary<br /> +As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.<br /> + Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,<br /> + Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +As an unperfect actor on the stage,<br /> +Who with his fear is put beside his part,<br /> +Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,<br /> +Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;<br /> +So I, for fear of trust, forget to say<br /> +The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,<br /> +And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,<br /> +O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.<br /> +O! let my looks be then the eloquence<br /> +And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,<br /> +Who plead for love, and look for recompense,<br /> +More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.<br /> + O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:<br /> + To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d,<br /> +Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;<br /> +My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,<br /> +And perspective it is best painter’s art.<br /> +For through the painter must you see his skill,<br /> +To find where your true image pictur’d lies,<br /> +Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,<br /> +That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.<br /> +Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:<br /> +Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me<br /> +Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun<br /> +Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;<br /> + Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,<br /> + They draw but what they see, know not the heart.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Let those who are in favour with their stars<br /> +Of public honour and proud titles boast,<br /> +Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars<br /> +Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most.<br /> +Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread<br /> +But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,<br /> +And in themselves their pride lies buried,<br /> +For at a frown they in their glory die.<br /> +The painful warrior famoused for fight,<br /> +After a thousand victories once foil’d,<br /> +Is from the book of honour razed quite,<br /> +And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d:<br /> + Then happy I, that love and am belov’d,<br /> + Where I may not remove nor be remov’d.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage<br /> +Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,<br /> +To thee I send this written embassage,<br /> +To witness duty, not to show my wit:<br /> +Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine<br /> +May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,<br /> +But that I hope some good conceit of thine<br /> +In thy soul’s thought, all naked, will bestow it:<br /> +Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,<br /> +Points on me graciously with fair aspect,<br /> +And puts apparel on my tatter’d loving,<br /> +To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:<br /> + Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;<br /> + Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,<br /> +The dear respose for limbs with travel tir’d;<br /> +But then begins a journey in my head<br /> +To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:<br /> +For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,<br /> +Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,<br /> +And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,<br /> +Looking on darkness which the blind do see:<br /> +Save that my soul’s imaginary sight<br /> +Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,<br /> +Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,<br /> +Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.<br /> + Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,<br /> + For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How can I then return in happy plight,<br /> +That am debarre’d the benefit of rest?<br /> +When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night,<br /> +But day by night and night by day oppress’d,<br /> +And each, though enemies to either’s reign,<br /> +Do in consent shake hands to torture me,<br /> +The one by toil, the other to complain<br /> +How far I toil, still farther off from thee.<br /> +I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,<br /> +And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:<br /> +So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night,<br /> +When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.<br /> + But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,<br /> + And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes<br /> +I all alone beweep my outcast state,<br /> +And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,<br /> +And look upon myself, and curse my fate,<br /> +Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,<br /> +Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,<br /> +Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,<br /> +With what I most enjoy contented least;<br /> +Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,<br /> +Haply I think on thee, and then my state,<br /> +Like to the lark at break of day arising<br /> +From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;<br /> + For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings<br /> + That then I scorn to change my state with kings.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When to the sessions of sweet silent thought<br /> +I summon up remembrance of things past,<br /> +I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,<br /> +And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:<br /> +Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,<br /> +For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,<br /> +And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,<br /> +And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:<br /> +Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,<br /> +And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er<br /> +The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,<br /> +Which I new pay as if not paid before.<br /> + But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,<br /> + All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,<br /> +Which I by lacking have supposed dead;<br /> +And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,<br /> +And all those friends which I thought buried.<br /> +How many a holy and obsequious tear<br /> +Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,<br /> +As interest of the dead, which now appear<br /> +But things remov’d that hidden in thee lie!<br /> +Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,<br /> +Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,<br /> +Who all their parts of me to thee did give,<br /> +That due of many now is thine alone:<br /> + Their images I lov’d, I view in thee,<br /> + And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +If thou survive my well-contented day,<br /> +When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover<br /> +And shalt by fortune once more re-survey<br /> +These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,<br /> +Compare them with the bett’ring of the time,<br /> +And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,<br /> +Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,<br /> +Exceeded by the height of happier men.<br /> +O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:<br /> +‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,<br /> +A dearer birth than this his love had brought,<br /> +To march in ranks of better equipage:<br /> + But since he died and poets better prove,<br /> + Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Full many a glorious morning have I seen<br /> +Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,<br /> +Kissing with golden face the meadows green,<br /> +Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;<br /> +Anon permit the basest clouds to ride<br /> +With ugly rack on his celestial face,<br /> +And from the forlorn world his visage hide,<br /> +Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:<br /> +Even so my sun one early morn did shine,<br /> +With all triumphant splendour on my brow;<br /> +But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,<br /> +The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.<br /> + Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;<br /> + Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,<br /> +And make me travel forth without my cloak,<br /> +To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,<br /> +Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?<br /> +’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,<br /> +To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,<br /> +For no man well of such a salve can speak,<br /> +That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:<br /> +Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;<br /> +Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:<br /> +The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief<br /> +To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.<br /> + Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,<br /> + And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +No more be griev’d at that which thou hast done:<br /> +Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:<br /> +Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,<br /> +And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.<br /> +All men make faults, and even I in this,<br /> +Authorizing thy trespass with compare,<br /> +Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,<br /> +Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;<br /> +For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense;<br /> +Thy adverse party is thy advocate,<br /> +And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence:<br /> +Such civil war is in my love and hate,<br /> + That I an accessary needs must be,<br /> + To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Let me confess that we two must be twain,<br /> +Although our undivided loves are one:<br /> +So shall those blots that do with me remain,<br /> +Without thy help, by me be borne alone.<br /> +In our two loves there is but one respect,<br /> +Though in our lives a separable spite,<br /> +Which though it alter not love’s sole effect,<br /> +Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight.<br /> +I may not evermore acknowledge thee,<br /> +Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,<br /> +Nor thou with public kindness honour me,<br /> +Unless thou take that honour from thy name:<br /> + But do not so, I love thee in such sort,<br /> + As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +As a decrepit father takes delight<br /> +To see his active child do deeds of youth,<br /> +So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite,<br /> +Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;<br /> +For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,<br /> +Or any of these all, or all, or more,<br /> +Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,<br /> +I make my love engrafted, to this store:<br /> +So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis’d,<br /> +Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give<br /> +That I in thy abundance am suffic’d,<br /> +And by a part of all thy glory live.<br /> + Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:<br /> + This wish I have; then ten times happy me!<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How can my Muse want subject to invent,<br /> +While thou dost breathe, that pour’st into my verse<br /> +Thine own sweet argument, too excellent<br /> +For every vulgar paper to rehearse?<br /> +O! give thyself the thanks, if aught in me<br /> +Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;<br /> +For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee,<br /> +When thou thyself dost give invention light?<br /> +Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth<br /> +Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;<br /> +And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth<br /> +Eternal numbers to outlive long date.<br /> + If my slight Muse do please these curious days,<br /> + The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XXXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! how thy worth with manners may I sing,<br /> +When thou art all the better part of me?<br /> +What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?<br /> +And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee?<br /> +Even for this, let us divided live,<br /> +And our dear love lose name of single one,<br /> +That by this separation I may give<br /> +That due to thee which thou deserv’st alone.<br /> +O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove,<br /> +Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,<br /> +To entertain the time with thoughts of love,<br /> +Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive,<br /> + And that thou teachest how to make one twain,<br /> + By praising him here who doth hence remain.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XL</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;<br /> +What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?<br /> +No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;<br /> +All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.<br /> +Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,<br /> +I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;<br /> +But yet be blam’d, if thou thyself deceivest<br /> +By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.<br /> +I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,<br /> +Although thou steal thee all my poverty:<br /> +And yet, love knows it is a greater grief<br /> +To bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury.<br /> + Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,<br /> + Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,<br /> +When I am sometime absent from thy heart,<br /> +Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,<br /> +For still temptation follows where thou art.<br /> +Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,<br /> +Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d;<br /> +And when a woman woos, what woman’s son<br /> +Will sourly leave her till he have prevail’d?<br /> +Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,<br /> +And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,<br /> +Who lead thee in their riot even there<br /> +Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:<br /> + Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,<br /> + Thine by thy beauty being false to me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +That thou hast her it is not all my grief,<br /> +And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;<br /> +That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,<br /> +A loss in love that touches me more nearly.<br /> +Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye:<br /> +Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her;<br /> +And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,<br /> +Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.<br /> +If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,<br /> +And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;<br /> +Both find each other, and I lose both twain,<br /> +And both for my sake lay on me this cross:<br /> + But here’s the joy; my friend and I are one;<br /> + Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,<br /> +For all the day they view things unrespected;<br /> +But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,<br /> +And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.<br /> +Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,<br /> +How would thy shadow’s form form happy show<br /> +To the clear day with thy much clearer light,<br /> +When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!<br /> +How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made<br /> +By looking on thee in the living day,<br /> +When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade<br /> +Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!<br /> + All days are nights to see till I see thee,<br /> + And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,<br /> +Injurious distance should not stop my way;<br /> +For then despite of space I would be brought,<br /> +From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.<br /> +No matter then although my foot did stand<br /> +Upon the farthest earth remov’d from thee;<br /> +For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,<br /> +As soon as think the place where he would be.<br /> +But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,<br /> +To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,<br /> +But that so much of earth and water wrought,<br /> +I must attend time’s leisure with my moan;<br /> + Receiving nought by elements so slow<br /> + But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The other two, slight air, and purging fire<br /> +Are both with thee, wherever I abide;<br /> +The first my thought, the other my desire,<br /> +These present-absent with swift motion slide.<br /> +For when these quicker elements are gone<br /> +In tender embassy of love to thee,<br /> +My life, being made of four, with two alone<br /> +Sinks down to death, oppress’d with melancholy;<br /> +Until life’s composition be recur’d<br /> +By those swift messengers return’d from thee,<br /> +Who even but now come back again, assur’d,<br /> +Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:<br /> + This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,<br /> + I send them back again, and straight grow sad.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,<br /> +How to divide the conquest of thy sight;<br /> +Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,<br /> +My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.<br /> +My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,<br /> +A closet never pierced with crystal eyes;<br /> +But the defendant doth that plea deny,<br /> +And says in him thy fair appearance lies.<br /> +To side this title is impannelled<br /> +A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;<br /> +And by their verdict is determined<br /> +The clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part:<br /> + As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part,<br /> + And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,<br /> +And each doth good turns now unto the other:<br /> +When that mine eye is famish’d for a look,<br /> +Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,<br /> +With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,<br /> +And to the painted banquet bids my heart;<br /> +Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest,<br /> +And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:<br /> +So, either by thy picture or my love,<br /> +Thyself away, art present still with me;<br /> +For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,<br /> +And I am still with them, and they with thee;<br /> + Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight<br /> + Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eye’s delight.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How careful was I when I took my way,<br /> +Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,<br /> +That to my use it might unused stay<br /> +From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!<br /> +But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,<br /> +Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,<br /> +Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,<br /> +Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.<br /> +Thee have I not lock’d up in any chest,<br /> +Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,<br /> +Within the gentle closure of my breast,<br /> +From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;<br /> + And even thence thou wilt be stol’n I fear,<br /> + For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XLIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Against that time, if ever that time come,<br /> +When I shall see thee frown on my defects,<br /> +When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,<br /> +Call’d to that audit by advis’d respects;<br /> +Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,<br /> +And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,<br /> +When love, converted from the thing it was,<br /> +Shall reasons find of settled gravity;<br /> +Against that time do I ensconce me here,<br /> +Within the knowledge of mine own desert,<br /> +And this my hand, against my self uprear,<br /> +To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:<br /> + To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,<br /> + Since why to love I can allege no cause.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>L</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How heavy do I journey on the way,<br /> +When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,<br /> +Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,<br /> +‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’<br /> +The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,<br /> +Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,<br /> +As if by some instinct the wretch did know<br /> +His rider lov’d not speed, being made from thee:<br /> +The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,<br /> +That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,<br /> +Which heavily he answers with a groan,<br /> +More sharp to me than spurring to his side;<br /> + For that same groan doth put this in my mind,<br /> + My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thus can my love excuse the slow offence<br /> +Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:<br /> +From where thou art why should I haste me thence?<br /> +Till I return, of posting is no need.<br /> +O! what excuse will my poor beast then find,<br /> +When swift extremity can seem but slow?<br /> +Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind,<br /> +In winged speed no motion shall I know,<br /> +Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;<br /> +Therefore desire, of perfect’st love being made,<br /> +Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race,<br /> +But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade:<br /> + ‘Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,<br /> + Towards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go.’<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +So am I as the rich, whose blessed key,<br /> +Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,<br /> +The which he will not every hour survey,<br /> +For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.<br /> +Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,<br /> +Since, seldom coming in that long year set,<br /> +Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,<br /> +Or captain jewels in the carcanet.<br /> +So is the time that keeps you as my chest,<br /> +Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,<br /> +To make some special instant special-blest,<br /> +By new unfolding his imprison’d pride.<br /> + Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,<br /> + Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +What is your substance, whereof are you made,<br /> +That millions of strange shadows on you tend?<br /> +Since every one, hath every one, one shade,<br /> +And you but one, can every shadow lend.<br /> +Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit<br /> +Is poorly imitated after you;<br /> +On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,<br /> +And you in Grecian tires are painted new:<br /> +Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,<br /> +The one doth shadow of your beauty show,<br /> +The other as your bounty doth appear;<br /> +And you in every blessed shape we know.<br /> + In all external grace you have some part,<br /> + But you like none, none you, for constant heart.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem<br /> +By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.<br /> +The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem<br /> +For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.<br /> +The canker blooms have full as deep a dye<br /> +As the perfumed tincture of the roses.<br /> +Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly<br /> +When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:<br /> +But, for their virtue only is their show,<br /> +They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;<br /> +Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;<br /> +Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:<br /> + And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,<br /> + When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Not marble, nor the gilded monuments<br /> +Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;<br /> +But you shall shine more bright in these contents<br /> +Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.<br /> +When wasteful war shall statues overturn,<br /> +And broils root out the work of masonry,<br /> +Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn<br /> +The living record of your memory.<br /> +’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity<br /> +Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room<br /> +Even in the eyes of all posterity<br /> +That wear this world out to the ending doom.<br /> + So, till the judgement that yourself arise,<br /> + You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said<br /> +Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,<br /> +Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d,<br /> +To-morrow sharpened in his former might:<br /> +So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fill<br /> +Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,<br /> +To-morrow see again, and do not kill<br /> +The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness.<br /> +Let this sad interim like the ocean be<br /> +Which parts the shore, where two contracted new<br /> +Come daily to the banks, that when they see<br /> +Return of love, more blest may be the view;<br /> + Or call it winter, which being full of care,<br /> + Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Being your slave what should I do but tend,<br /> +Upon the hours, and times of your desire?<br /> +I have no precious time at all to spend;<br /> +Nor services to do, till you require.<br /> +Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,<br /> +Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,<br /> +Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,<br /> +When you have bid your servant once adieu;<br /> +Nor dare I question with my jealous thought<br /> +Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,<br /> +But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought<br /> +Save, where you are, how happy you make those.<br /> + So true a fool is love, that in your will,<br /> + Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +That god forbid, that made me first your slave,<br /> +I should in thought control your times of pleasure,<br /> +Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,<br /> +Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!<br /> +O! let me suffer, being at your beck,<br /> +The imprison’d absence of your liberty;<br /> +And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,<br /> +Without accusing you of injury.<br /> +Be where you list, your charter is so strong<br /> +That you yourself may privilage your time<br /> +To what you will; to you it doth belong<br /> +Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.<br /> + I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,<br /> + Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +If there be nothing new, but that which is<br /> +Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,<br /> +Which labouring for invention bear amiss<br /> +The second burthen of a former child!<br /> +O! that record could with a backward look,<br /> +Even of five hundred courses of the sun,<br /> +Show me your image in some antique book,<br /> +Since mind at first in character was done!<br /> +That I might see what the old world could say<br /> +To this composed wonder of your frame;<br /> +Wh’r we are mended, or wh’r better they,<br /> +Or whether revolution be the same.<br /> + O! sure I am the wits of former days,<br /> + To subjects worse have given admiring praise.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,<br /> +So do our minutes hasten to their end;<br /> +Each changing place with that which goes before,<br /> +In sequent toil all forwards do contend.<br /> +Nativity, once in the main of light,<br /> +Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,<br /> +Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,<br /> +And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.<br /> +Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth<br /> +And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,<br /> +Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,<br /> +And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:<br /> + And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand.<br /> + Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Is it thy will, thy image should keep open<br /> +My heavy eyelids to the weary night?<br /> +Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,<br /> +While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?<br /> +Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from thee<br /> +So far from home into my deeds to pry,<br /> +To find out shames and idle hours in me,<br /> +The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?<br /> +O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:<br /> +It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:<br /> +Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,<br /> +To play the watchman ever for thy sake:<br /> + For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,<br /> + From me far off, with others all too near.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye<br /> +And all my soul, and all my every part;<br /> +And for this sin there is no remedy,<br /> +It is so grounded inward in my heart.<br /> +Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,<br /> +No shape so true, no truth of such account;<br /> +And for myself mine own worth do define,<br /> +As I all other in all worths surmount.<br /> +But when my glass shows me myself indeed<br /> +Beated and chopp’d with tanned antiquity,<br /> +Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;<br /> +Self so self-loving were iniquity.<br /> + ’Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,<br /> + Painting my age with beauty of thy days.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Against my love shall be as I am now,<br /> +With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn;<br /> +When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his brow<br /> +With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn<br /> +Hath travell’d on to age’s steepy night;<br /> +And all those beauties whereof now he’s king<br /> +Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,<br /> +Stealing away the treasure of his spring;<br /> +For such a time do I now fortify<br /> +Against confounding age’s cruel knife,<br /> +That he shall never cut from memory<br /> +My sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life:<br /> + His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,<br /> + And they shall live, and he in them still green.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d<br /> +The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;<br /> +When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,<br /> +And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;<br /> +When I have seen the hungry ocean gain<br /> +Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,<br /> +And the firm soil win of the watery main,<br /> +Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;<br /> +When I have seen such interchange of state,<br /> +Or state itself confounded, to decay;<br /> +Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate:<br /> +That Time will come and take my love away.<br /> + This thought is as a death which cannot choose<br /> + But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,<br /> +But sad mortality o’ersways their power,<br /> +How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,<br /> +Whose action is no stronger than a flower?<br /> +O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,<br /> +Against the wrackful siege of battering days,<br /> +When rocks impregnable are not so stout,<br /> +Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?<br /> +O fearful meditation! where, alack,<br /> +Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?<br /> +Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?<br /> +Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?<br /> + O! none, unless this miracle have might,<br /> + That in black ink my love may still shine bright.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Tired with all these, for restful death I cry:<br /> +As to behold desert a beggar born,<br /> +And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,<br /> +And purest faith unhappily forsworn,<br /> +And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,<br /> +And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,<br /> +And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,<br /> +And strength by limping sway disabled<br /> +And art made tongue-tied by authority,<br /> +And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,<br /> +And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,<br /> +And captive good attending captain ill:<br /> + Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,<br /> + Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,<br /> +And with his presence grace impiety,<br /> +That sin by him advantage should achieve,<br /> +And lace itself with his society?<br /> +Why should false painting imitate his cheek,<br /> +And steel dead seeming of his living hue?<br /> +Why should poor beauty indirectly seek<br /> +Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?<br /> +Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,<br /> +Beggar’d of blood to blush through lively veins?<br /> +For she hath no exchequer now but his,<br /> +And proud of many, lives upon his gains.<br /> + O! him she stores, to show what wealth she had<br /> + In days long since, before these last so bad.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,<br /> +When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,<br /> +Before these bastard signs of fair were born,<br /> +Or durst inhabit on a living brow;<br /> +Before the golden tresses of the dead,<br /> +The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,<br /> +To live a second life on second head;<br /> +Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:<br /> +In him those holy antique hours are seen,<br /> +Without all ornament, itself and true,<br /> +Making no summer of another’s green,<br /> +Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;<br /> + And him as for a map doth Nature store,<br /> + To show false Art what beauty was of yore.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view<br /> +Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;<br /> +All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,<br /> +Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.<br /> +Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown’d;<br /> +But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own,<br /> +In other accents do this praise confound<br /> +By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.<br /> +They look into the beauty of thy mind,<br /> +And that in guess they measure by thy deeds;<br /> +Then churls their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,<br /> +To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:<br /> + But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,<br /> + The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +That thou art blam’d shall not be thy defect,<br /> +For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;<br /> +The ornament of beauty is suspect,<br /> +A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.<br /> +So thou be good, slander doth but approve<br /> +Thy worth the greater being woo’d of time;<br /> +For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,<br /> +And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.<br /> +Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days<br /> +Either not assail’d, or victor being charg’d;<br /> +Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,<br /> +To tie up envy, evermore enlarg’d,<br /> + If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show,<br /> + Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +No longer mourn for me when I am dead<br /> +Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell<br /> +Give warning to the world that I am fled<br /> +From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:<br /> +Nay, if you read this line, remember not<br /> +The hand that writ it, for I love you so,<br /> +That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,<br /> +If thinking on me then should make you woe.<br /> +O if, I say, you look upon this verse,<br /> +When I perhaps compounded am with clay,<br /> +Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;<br /> +But let your love even with my life decay;<br /> + Lest the wise world should look into your moan,<br /> + And mock you with me after I am gone.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! lest the world should task you to recite<br /> +What merit lived in me, that you should love<br /> +After my death, dear love, forget me quite,<br /> +For you in me can nothing worthy prove;<br /> +Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,<br /> +To do more for me than mine own desert,<br /> +And hang more praise upon deceased I<br /> +Than niggard truth would willingly impart:<br /> +O! lest your true love may seem false in this<br /> +That you for love speak well of me untrue,<br /> +My name be buried where my body is,<br /> +And live no more to shame nor me nor you.<br /> + For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,<br /> + And so should you, to love things nothing worth.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +That time of year thou mayst in me behold<br /> +When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang<br /> +Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,<br /> +Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.<br /> +In me thou see’st the twilight of such day<br /> +As after sunset fadeth in the west;<br /> +Which by and by black night doth take away,<br /> +Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.<br /> +In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,<br /> +That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,<br /> +As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,<br /> +Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.<br /> + This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,<br /> + To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +But be contented: when that fell arrest<br /> +Without all bail shall carry me away,<br /> +My life hath in this line some interest,<br /> +Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.<br /> +When thou reviewest this, thou dost review<br /> +The very part was consecrate to thee:<br /> +The earth can have but earth, which is his due;<br /> +My spirit is thine, the better part of me:<br /> +So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,<br /> +The prey of worms, my body being dead;<br /> +The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,<br /> +Too base of thee to be remembered.<br /> + The worth of that is that which it contains,<br /> + And that is this, and this with thee remains.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +So are you to my thoughts as food to life,<br /> +Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground;<br /> +And for the peace of you I hold such strife<br /> +As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found.<br /> +Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon<br /> +Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;<br /> +Now counting best to be with you alone,<br /> +Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure:<br /> +Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,<br /> +And by and by clean starved for a look;<br /> +Possessing or pursuing no delight,<br /> +Save what is had, or must from you be took.<br /> + Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,<br /> + Or gluttoning on all, or all away.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Why is my verse so barren of new pride,<br /> +So far from variation or quick change?<br /> +Why with the time do I not glance aside<br /> +To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?<br /> +Why write I still all one, ever the same,<br /> +And keep invention in a noted weed,<br /> +That every word doth almost tell my name,<br /> +Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?<br /> +O! know sweet love I always write of you,<br /> +And you and love are still my argument;<br /> +So all my best is dressing old words new,<br /> +Spending again what is already spent:<br /> + For as the sun is daily new and old,<br /> + So is my love still telling what is told.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,<br /> +Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;<br /> +These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,<br /> +And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.<br /> +The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show<br /> +Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;<br /> +Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know<br /> +Time’s thievish progress to eternity.<br /> +Look! what thy memory cannot contain,<br /> +Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find<br /> +Those children nursed, deliver’d from thy brain,<br /> +To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.<br /> + These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,<br /> + Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,<br /> +And found such fair assistance in my verse<br /> +As every alien pen hath got my use<br /> +And under thee their poesy disperse.<br /> +Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing<br /> +And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,<br /> +Have added feathers to the learned’s wing<br /> +And given grace a double majesty.<br /> +Yet be most proud of that which I compile,<br /> +Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:<br /> +In others’ works thou dost but mend the style,<br /> +And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;<br /> + But thou art all my art, and dost advance<br /> + As high as learning, my rude ignorance.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,<br /> +My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;<br /> +But now my gracious numbers are decay’d,<br /> +And my sick Muse doth give an other place.<br /> +I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument<br /> +Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;<br /> +Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent<br /> +He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.<br /> +He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word<br /> +From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,<br /> +And found it in thy cheek: he can afford<br /> +No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.<br /> + Then thank him not for that which he doth say,<br /> + Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O how I faint when I of you do write,<br /> +Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,<br /> +And in the praise thereof spends all his might,<br /> +To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!<br /> +But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,<br /> +The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,<br /> +My saucy bark, inferior far to his,<br /> +On your broad main doth wilfully appear.<br /> +Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,<br /> +Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;<br /> +Or, being wrack’d, I am a worthless boat,<br /> +He of tall building, and of goodly pride:<br /> + Then if he thrive and I be cast away,<br /> + The worst was this: my love was my decay.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Or I shall live your epitaph to make,<br /> +Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;<br /> +From hence your memory death cannot take,<br /> +Although in me each part will be forgotten.<br /> +Your name from hence immortal life shall have,<br /> +Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:<br /> +The earth can yield me but a common grave,<br /> +When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.<br /> +Your monument shall be my gentle verse,<br /> +Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;<br /> +And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,<br /> +When all the breathers of this world are dead;<br /> + You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,<br /> + Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,<br /> +And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook<br /> +The dedicated words which writers use<br /> +Of their fair subject, blessing every book.<br /> +Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,<br /> +Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;<br /> +And therefore art enforced to seek anew<br /> +Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.<br /> +And do so, love; yet when they have devis’d,<br /> +What strained touches rhetoric can lend,<br /> +Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz’d<br /> +In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;<br /> + And their gross painting might be better us’d<br /> + Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus’d.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +I never saw that you did painting need,<br /> +And therefore to your fair no painting set;<br /> +I found, or thought I found, you did exceed<br /> +That barren tender of a poet’s debt:<br /> +And therefore have I slept in your report,<br /> +That you yourself, being extant, well might show<br /> +How far a modern quill doth come too short,<br /> +Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.<br /> +This silence for my sin you did impute,<br /> +Which shall be most my glory being dumb;<br /> +For I impair not beauty being mute,<br /> +When others would give life, and bring a tomb.<br /> + There lives more life in one of your fair eyes<br /> + Than both your poets can in praise devise.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Who is it that says most, which can say more,<br /> +Than this rich praise: that you alone are you,<br /> +In whose confine immured is the store<br /> +Which should example where your equal grew.<br /> +Lean penury within that pen doth dwell<br /> +That to his subject lends not some small glory;<br /> +But he that writes of you, if he can tell<br /> +That you are you, so dignifies his story,<br /> +Let him but copy what in you is writ,<br /> +Not making worse what nature made so clear,<br /> +And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,<br /> +Making his style admired every where.<br /> + You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,<br /> + Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,<br /> +While comments of your praise richly compil’d,<br /> +Reserve their character with golden quill,<br /> +And precious phrase by all the Muses fil’d.<br /> +I think good thoughts, whilst others write good words,<br /> +And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’<br /> +To every hymn that able spirit affords,<br /> +In polish’d form of well-refined pen.<br /> +Hearing you praised, I say ‘’tis so, ’tis true,’<br /> +And to the most of praise add something more;<br /> +But that is in my thought, whose love to you,<br /> +Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.<br /> + Then others, for the breath of words respect,<br /> + Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,<br /> +Bound for the prize of all too precious you,<br /> +That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,<br /> +Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?<br /> +Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,<br /> +Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?<br /> +No, neither he, nor his compeers by night<br /> +Giving him aid, my verse astonished.<br /> +He, nor that affable familiar ghost<br /> +Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,<br /> +As victors of my silence cannot boast;<br /> +I was not sick of any fear from thence:<br /> + But when your countenance fill’d up his line,<br /> + Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,<br /> +And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,<br /> +The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;<br /> +My bonds in thee are all determinate.<br /> +For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?<br /> +And for that riches where is my deserving?<br /> +The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,<br /> +And so my patent back again is swerving.<br /> +Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,<br /> +Or me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;<br /> +So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,<br /> +Comes home again, on better judgement making.<br /> + Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,<br /> + In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When thou shalt be dispos’d to set me light,<br /> +And place my merit in the eye of scorn,<br /> +Upon thy side, against myself I’ll fight,<br /> +And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.<br /> +With mine own weakness, being best acquainted,<br /> +Upon thy part I can set down a story<br /> +Of faults conceal’d, wherein I am attainted;<br /> +That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:<br /> +And I by this will be a gainer too;<br /> +For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,<br /> +The injuries that to myself I do,<br /> +Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.<br /> + Such is my love, to thee I so belong,<br /> + That for thy right, myself will bear all wrong.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>LXXXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,<br /> +And I will comment upon that offence:<br /> +Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,<br /> +Against thy reasons making no defence.<br /> +Thou canst not love disgrace me half so ill,<br /> +To set a form upon desired change,<br /> +As I’ll myself disgrace; knowing thy will,<br /> +I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange;<br /> +Be absent from thy walks; and in my tongue<br /> +Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,<br /> +Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong,<br /> +And haply of our old acquaintance tell.<br /> + For thee, against my self I’ll vow debate,<br /> + For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XC</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;<br /> +Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,<br /> +Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,<br /> +And do not drop in for an after-loss:<br /> +Ah! do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow,<br /> +Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;<br /> +Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,<br /> +To linger out a purpos’d overthrow.<br /> +If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,<br /> +When other petty griefs have done their spite,<br /> +But in the onset come: so shall I taste<br /> +At first the very worst of fortune’s might;<br /> + And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,<br /> + Compar’d with loss of thee, will not seem so.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,<br /> +Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force,<br /> +Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;<br /> +Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;<br /> +And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,<br /> +Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:<br /> +But these particulars are not my measure,<br /> +All these I better in one general best.<br /> +Thy love is better than high birth to me,<br /> +Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs,<br /> +Of more delight than hawks and horses be;<br /> +And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast:<br /> + Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take<br /> + All this away, and me most wretched make.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +But do thy worst to steal thyself away,<br /> +For term of life thou art assured mine;<br /> +And life no longer than thy love will stay,<br /> +For it depends upon that love of thine.<br /> +Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,<br /> +When in the least of them my life hath end.<br /> +I see a better state to me belongs<br /> +Than that which on thy humour doth depend:<br /> +Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,<br /> +Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie.<br /> +O! what a happy title do I find,<br /> +Happy to have thy love, happy to die!<br /> + But what’s so blessed-fair that fears no blot?<br /> + Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +So shall I live, supposing thou art true,<br /> +Like a deceived husband; so love’s face<br /> +May still seem love to me, though alter’d new;<br /> +Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:<br /> +For there can live no hatred in thine eye,<br /> +Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.<br /> +In many’s looks, the false heart’s history<br /> +Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.<br /> +But heaven in thy creation did decree<br /> +That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;<br /> +Whate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be,<br /> +Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.<br /> + How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,<br /> + If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +They that have power to hurt, and will do none,<br /> +That do not do the thing they most do show,<br /> +Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,<br /> +Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;<br /> +They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,<br /> +And husband nature’s riches from expense;<br /> +They are the lords and owners of their faces,<br /> +Others, but stewards of their excellence.<br /> +The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,<br /> +Though to itself, it only live and die,<br /> +But if that flower with base infection meet,<br /> +The basest weed outbraves his dignity:<br /> + For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;<br /> + Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame<br /> +Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,<br /> +Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!<br /> +O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.<br /> +That tongue that tells the story of thy days,<br /> +Making lascivious comments on thy sport,<br /> +Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise;<br /> +Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.<br /> +O! what a mansion have those vices got<br /> +Which for their habitation chose out thee,<br /> +Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot<br /> +And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!<br /> + Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;<br /> + The hardest knife ill-us’d doth lose his edge.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;<br /> +Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;<br /> +Both grace and faults are lov’d of more and less:<br /> +Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort.<br /> +As on the finger of a throned queen<br /> +The basest jewel will be well esteem’d,<br /> +So are those errors that in thee are seen<br /> +To truths translated, and for true things deem’d.<br /> +How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,<br /> +If like a lamb he could his looks translate!<br /> +How many gazers mightst thou lead away,<br /> +If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!<br /> + But do not so; I love thee in such sort,<br /> + As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How like a winter hath my absence been<br /> +From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!<br /> +What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!<br /> +What old December’s bareness everywhere!<br /> +And yet this time removed was summer’s time;<br /> +The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,<br /> +Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,<br /> +Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:<br /> +Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me<br /> +But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;<br /> +For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,<br /> +And, thou away, the very birds are mute:<br /> + Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,<br /> + That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +From you have I been absent in the spring,<br /> +When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,<br /> +Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,<br /> +That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.<br /> +Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell<br /> +Of different flowers in odour and in hue,<br /> +Could make me any summer’s story tell,<br /> +Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:<br /> +Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,<br /> +Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;<br /> +They were but sweet, but figures of delight,<br /> +Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.<br /> + Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,<br /> + As with your shadow I with these did play.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>XCIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The forward violet thus did I chide:<br /> +Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,<br /> +If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride<br /> +Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells<br /> +In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d.<br /> +The lily I condemned for thy hand,<br /> +And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;<br /> +The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,<br /> +One blushing shame, another white despair;<br /> +A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,<br /> +And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath;<br /> +But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth<br /> +A vengeful canker eat him up to death.<br /> + More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,<br /> + But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>C</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long,<br /> +To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?<br /> +Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,<br /> +Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?<br /> +Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,<br /> +In gentle numbers time so idly spent;<br /> +Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem<br /> +And gives thy pen both skill and argument.<br /> +Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,<br /> +If Time have any wrinkle graven there;<br /> +If any, be a satire to decay,<br /> +And make time’s spoils despised every where.<br /> + Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,<br /> + So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O truant Muse what shall be thy amends<br /> +For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy’d?<br /> +Both truth and beauty on my love depends;<br /> +So dost thou too, and therein dignified.<br /> +Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,<br /> +‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix’d;<br /> +Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;<br /> +But best is best, if never intermix’d’?<br /> +Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?<br /> +Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee<br /> +To make him much outlive a gilded tomb<br /> +And to be prais’d of ages yet to be.<br /> + Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how<br /> + To make him seem long hence as he shows now.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming;<br /> +I love not less, though less the show appear;<br /> +That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming,<br /> +The owner’s tongue doth publish every where.<br /> +Our love was new, and then but in the spring,<br /> +When I was wont to greet it with my lays;<br /> +As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,<br /> +And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:<br /> +Not that the summer is less pleasant now<br /> +Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,<br /> +But that wild music burthens every bough,<br /> +And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.<br /> + Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:<br /> + Because I would not dull you with my song.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,<br /> +That having such a scope to show her pride,<br /> +The argument, all bare, is of more worth<br /> +Than when it hath my added praise beside!<br /> +O! blame me not, if I no more can write!<br /> +Look in your glass, and there appears a face<br /> +That over-goes my blunt invention quite,<br /> +Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.<br /> +Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,<br /> +To mar the subject that before was well?<br /> +For to no other pass my verses tend<br /> +Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;<br /> + And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,<br /> + Your own glass shows you when you look in it.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +To me, fair friend, you never can be old,<br /> +For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,<br /> +Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,<br /> +Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,<br /> +Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d,<br /> +In process of the seasons have I seen,<br /> +Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,<br /> +Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.<br /> +Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,<br /> +Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;<br /> +So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,<br /> +Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d:<br /> + For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:<br /> + Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Let not my love be call’d idolatry,<br /> +Nor my beloved as an idol show,<br /> +Since all alike my songs and praises be<br /> +To one, of one, still such, and ever so.<br /> +Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,<br /> +Still constant in a wondrous excellence;<br /> +Therefore my verse to constancy confin’d,<br /> +One thing expressing, leaves out difference.<br /> +‘Fair, kind, and true,’ is all my argument,<br /> +‘Fair, kind, and true,’ varying to other words;<br /> +And in this change is my invention spent,<br /> +Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.<br /> + Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone,<br /> + Which three till now, never kept seat in one.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When in the chronicle of wasted time<br /> +I see descriptions of the fairest wights,<br /> +And beauty making beautiful old rime,<br /> +In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,<br /> +Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,<br /> +Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,<br /> +I see their antique pen would have express’d<br /> +Even such a beauty as you master now.<br /> +So all their praises are but prophecies<br /> +Of this our time, all you prefiguring;<br /> +And for they looked but with divining eyes,<br /> +They had not skill enough your worth to sing:<br /> + For we, which now behold these present days,<br /> + Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul<br /> +Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,<br /> +Can yet the lease of my true love control,<br /> +Supposed as forfeit to a confin’d doom.<br /> +The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,<br /> +And the sad augurs mock their own presage;<br /> +Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,<br /> +And peace proclaims olives of endless age.<br /> +Now with the drops of this most balmy time,<br /> +My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,<br /> +Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rime,<br /> +While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:<br /> + And thou in this shalt find thy monument,<br /> + When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +What’s in the brain, that ink may character,<br /> +Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?<br /> +What’s new to speak, what now to register,<br /> +That may express my love, or thy dear merit?<br /> +Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,<br /> +I must each day say o’er the very same;<br /> +Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,<br /> +Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.<br /> +So that eternal love in love’s fresh case,<br /> +Weighs not the dust and injury of age,<br /> +Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,<br /> +But makes antiquity for aye his page;<br /> + Finding the first conceit of love there bred,<br /> + Where time and outward form would show it dead.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! never say that I was false of heart,<br /> +Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify,<br /> +As easy might I from my self depart<br /> +As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:<br /> +That is my home of love: if I have rang’d,<br /> +Like him that travels, I return again;<br /> +Just to the time, not with the time exchang’d,<br /> +So that myself bring water for my stain.<br /> +Never believe though in my nature reign’d,<br /> +All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,<br /> +That it could so preposterously be stain’d,<br /> +To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;<br /> + For nothing this wide universe I call,<br /> + Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there,<br /> +And made my self a motley to the view,<br /> +Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,<br /> +Made old offences of affections new;<br /> +Most true it is, that I have look’d on truth<br /> +Askance and strangely; but, by all above,<br /> +These blenches gave my heart another youth,<br /> +And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love.<br /> +Now all is done, save what shall have no end:<br /> +Mine appetite I never more will grind<br /> +On newer proof, to try an older friend,<br /> +A god in love, to whom I am confin’d.<br /> + Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,<br /> + Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,<br /> +The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,<br /> +That did not better for my life provide<br /> +Than public means which public manners breeds.<br /> +Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,<br /> +And almost thence my nature is subdu’d<br /> +To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:<br /> +Pity me, then, and wish I were renew’d;<br /> +Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,<br /> +Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection;<br /> +No bitterness that I will bitter think,<br /> +Nor double penance, to correct correction.<br /> + Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,<br /> + Even that your pity is enough to cure me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Your love and pity doth the impression fill,<br /> +Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;<br /> +For what care I who calls me well or ill,<br /> +So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?<br /> +You are my all-the-world, and I must strive<br /> +To know my shames and praises from your tongue;<br /> +None else to me, nor I to none alive,<br /> +That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.<br /> +In so profound abysm I throw all care<br /> +Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense<br /> +To critic and to flatterer stopped are.<br /> +Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:<br /> + You are so strongly in my purpose bred,<br /> + That all the world besides methinks are dead.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;<br /> +And that which governs me to go about<br /> +Doth part his function and is partly blind,<br /> +Seems seeing, but effectually is out;<br /> +For it no form delivers to the heart<br /> +Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:<br /> +Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,<br /> +Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;<br /> +For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,<br /> +The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,<br /> +The mountain or the sea, the day or night:<br /> +The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.<br /> + Incapable of more, replete with you,<br /> + My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you,<br /> +Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?<br /> +Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,<br /> +And that your love taught it this alchemy,<br /> +To make of monsters and things indigest<br /> +Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,<br /> +Creating every bad a perfect best,<br /> +As fast as objects to his beams assemble?<br /> +O! ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing,<br /> +And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:<br /> +Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing,<br /> +And to his palate doth prepare the cup:<br /> + If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin<br /> + That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Those lines that I before have writ do lie,<br /> +Even those that said I could not love you dearer:<br /> +Yet then my judgement knew no reason why<br /> +My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.<br /> +But reckoning Time, whose million’d accidents<br /> +Creep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,<br /> +Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,<br /> +Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;<br /> +Alas! why fearing of Time’s tyranny,<br /> +Might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best,’<br /> +When I was certain o’er incertainty,<br /> +Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?<br /> + Love is a babe, then might I not say so,<br /> + To give full growth to that which still doth grow?<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Let me not to the marriage of true minds<br /> +Admit impediments. Love is not love<br /> +Which alters when it alteration finds,<br /> +Or bends with the remover to remove:<br /> +O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,<br /> +That looks on tempests and is never shaken;<br /> +It is the star to every wandering bark,<br /> +Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.<br /> +Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks<br /> +Within his bending sickle’s compass come;<br /> +Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,<br /> +But bears it out even to the edge of doom.<br /> + If this be error and upon me prov’d,<br /> + I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,<br /> +Wherein I should your great deserts repay,<br /> +Forgot upon your dearest love to call,<br /> +Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;<br /> +That I have frequent been with unknown minds,<br /> +And given to time your own dear-purchas’d right;<br /> +That I have hoisted sail to all the winds<br /> +Which should transport me farthest from your sight.<br /> +Book both my wilfulness and errors down,<br /> +And on just proof surmise, accumulate;<br /> +Bring me within the level of your frown,<br /> +But shoot not at me in your waken’d hate;<br /> + Since my appeal says I did strive to prove<br /> + The constancy and virtue of your love.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Like as, to make our appetite more keen,<br /> +With eager compounds we our palate urge;<br /> +As, to prevent our maladies unseen,<br /> +We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;<br /> +Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,<br /> +To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;<br /> +And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness<br /> +To be diseas’d, ere that there was true needing.<br /> +Thus policy in love, to anticipate<br /> +The ills that were not, grew to faults assur’d,<br /> +And brought to medicine a healthful state<br /> +Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d;<br /> + But thence I learn and find the lesson true,<br /> + Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,<br /> +Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within,<br /> +Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,<br /> +Still losing when I saw myself to win!<br /> +What wretched errors hath my heart committed,<br /> +Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!<br /> +How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,<br /> +In the distraction of this madding fever!<br /> +O benefit of ill! now I find true<br /> +That better is, by evil still made better;<br /> +And ruin’d love, when it is built anew,<br /> +Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.<br /> + So I return rebuk’d to my content,<br /> + And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +That you were once unkind befriends me now,<br /> +And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,<br /> +Needs must I under my transgression bow,<br /> +Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel.<br /> +For if you were by my unkindness shaken,<br /> +As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time;<br /> +And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken<br /> +To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime.<br /> +O! that our night of woe might have remember’d<br /> +My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,<br /> +And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’d<br /> +The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!<br /> + But that your trespass now becomes a fee;<br /> + Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,<br /> +When not to be receives reproach of being;<br /> +And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d<br /> +Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:<br /> +For why should others’ false adulterate eyes<br /> +Give salutation to my sportive blood?<br /> +Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,<br /> +Which in their wills count bad what I think good?<br /> +No, I am that I am, and they that level<br /> +At my abuses reckon up their own:<br /> +I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;<br /> +By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown;<br /> + Unless this general evil they maintain,<br /> + All men are bad and in their badness reign.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain<br /> +Full character’d with lasting memory,<br /> +Which shall above that idle rank remain,<br /> +Beyond all date; even to eternity:<br /> +Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart<br /> +Have faculty by nature to subsist;<br /> +Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part<br /> +Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.<br /> +That poor retention could not so much hold,<br /> +Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;<br /> +Therefore to give them from me was I bold,<br /> +To trust those tables that receive thee more:<br /> + To keep an adjunct to remember thee<br /> + Were to import forgetfulness in me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:<br /> +Thy pyramids built up with newer might<br /> +To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;<br /> +They are but dressings of a former sight.<br /> +Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire<br /> +What thou dost foist upon us that is old;<br /> +And rather make them born to our desire<br /> +Than think that we before have heard them told.<br /> +Thy registers and thee I both defy,<br /> +Not wondering at the present nor the past,<br /> +For thy records and what we see doth lie,<br /> +Made more or less by thy continual haste.<br /> + This I do vow and this shall ever be;<br /> + I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +If my dear love were but the child of state,<br /> +It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,<br /> +As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,<br /> +Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d.<br /> +No, it was builded far from accident;<br /> +It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls<br /> +Under the blow of thralled discontent,<br /> +Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:<br /> +It fears not policy, that heretic,<br /> +Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,<br /> +But all alone stands hugely politic,<br /> +That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.<br /> + To this I witness call the fools of time,<br /> + Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,<br /> +With my extern the outward honouring,<br /> +Or laid great bases for eternity,<br /> +Which proves more short than waste or ruining?<br /> +Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour<br /> +Lose all and more by paying too much rent<br /> +For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,<br /> +Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?<br /> +No; let me be obsequious in thy heart,<br /> +And take thou my oblation, poor but free,<br /> +Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art,<br /> +But mutual render, only me for thee.<br /> + Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul<br /> + When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power<br /> +Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour;<br /> +Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st<br /> +Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.<br /> +If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,<br /> +As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,<br /> +She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill<br /> +May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.<br /> +Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!<br /> +She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:<br /> + Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,<br /> + And her quietus is to render thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In the old age black was not counted fair,<br /> +Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;<br /> +But now is black beauty’s successive heir,<br /> +And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:<br /> +For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,<br /> +Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,<br /> +Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,<br /> +But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace.<br /> +Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,<br /> +Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem<br /> +At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,<br /> +Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:<br /> + Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,<br /> + That every tongue says beauty should look so.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How oft when thou, my music, music play’st,<br /> +Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds<br /> +With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st<br /> +The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,<br /> +Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,<br /> +To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,<br /> +Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,<br /> +At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!<br /> +To be so tickled, they would change their state<br /> +And situation with those dancing chips,<br /> +O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,<br /> +Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips.<br /> + Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,<br /> + Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The expense of spirit in a waste of shame<br /> +Is lust in action: and till action, lust<br /> +Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,<br /> +Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;<br /> +Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;<br /> +Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,<br /> +Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,<br /> +On purpose laid to make the taker mad:<br /> +Mad in pursuit and in possession so;<br /> +Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme;<br /> +A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;<br /> +Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.<br /> + All this the world well knows; yet none knows well<br /> + To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;<br /> +Coral is far more red, than her lips red:<br /> +If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;<br /> +If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.<br /> +I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,<br /> +But no such roses see I in her cheeks;<br /> +And in some perfumes is there more delight<br /> +Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.<br /> +I love to hear her speak, yet well I know<br /> +That music hath a far more pleasing sound:<br /> +I grant I never saw a goddess go;<br /> +My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:<br /> + And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,<br /> + As any she belied with false compare.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,<br /> +As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;<br /> +For well thou know’st to my dear doting heart<br /> +Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.<br /> +Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold,<br /> +Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;<br /> +To say they err I dare not be so bold,<br /> +Although I swear it to myself alone.<br /> +And to be sure that is not false I swear,<br /> +A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,<br /> +One on another’s neck, do witness bear<br /> +Thy black is fairest in my judgement’s place.<br /> + In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,<br /> + And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,<br /> +Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,<br /> +Have put on black and loving mourners be,<br /> +Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.<br /> +And truly not the morning sun of heaven<br /> +Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,<br /> +Nor that full star that ushers in the even,<br /> +Doth half that glory to the sober west,<br /> +As those two mourning eyes become thy face:<br /> +O! let it then as well beseem thy heart<br /> +To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,<br /> +And suit thy pity like in every part.<br /> + Then will I swear beauty herself is black,<br /> + And all they foul that thy complexion lack.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan<br /> +For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!<br /> +Is’t not enough to torture me alone,<br /> +But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be?<br /> +Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,<br /> +And my next self thou harder hast engross’d:<br /> +Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken;<br /> +A torment thrice three-fold thus to be cross’d:<br /> +Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,<br /> +But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail;<br /> +Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;<br /> +Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail:<br /> + And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,<br /> + Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +So, now I have confess’d that he is thine,<br /> +And I my self am mortgag’d to thy will,<br /> +Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine<br /> +Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:<br /> +But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,<br /> +For thou art covetous, and he is kind;<br /> +He learn’d but surety-like to write for me,<br /> +Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.<br /> +The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,<br /> +Thou usurer, that putt’st forth all to use,<br /> +And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;<br /> +So him I lose through my unkind abuse.<br /> + Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:<br /> + He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’<br /> +And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in over-plus;<br /> +More than enough am I that vex’d thee still,<br /> +To thy sweet will making addition thus.<br /> +Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,<br /> +Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?<br /> +Shall will in others seem right gracious,<br /> +And in my will no fair acceptance shine?<br /> +The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,<br /> +And in abundance addeth to his store;<br /> +So thou, being rich in ‘Will,’ add to thy ‘Will’<br /> +One will of mine, to make thy large will more.<br /> + Let no unkind ‘No’ fair beseechers kill;<br /> + Think all but one, and me in that one ‘Will.’<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +If thy soul check thee that I come so near,<br /> +Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will’,<br /> +And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;<br /> +Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.<br /> +‘Will’, will fulfil the treasure of thy love,<br /> +Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.<br /> +In things of great receipt with ease we prove<br /> +Among a number one is reckon’d none:<br /> +Then in the number let me pass untold,<br /> +Though in thy store’s account I one must be;<br /> +For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold<br /> +That nothing me, a something sweet to thee:<br /> + Make but my name thy love, and love that still,<br /> + And then thou lov’st me for my name is ‘Will.’<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,<br /> +That they behold, and see not what they see?<br /> +They know what beauty is, see where it lies,<br /> +Yet what the best is take the worst to be.<br /> +If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,<br /> +Be anchor’d in the bay where all men ride,<br /> +Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,<br /> +Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied?<br /> +Why should my heart think that a several plot,<br /> +Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place?<br /> +Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,<br /> +To put fair truth upon so foul a face?<br /> + In things right true my heart and eyes have err’d,<br /> + And to this false plague are they now transferr’d.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +When my love swears that she is made of truth,<br /> +I do believe her though I know she lies,<br /> +That she might think me some untutor’d youth,<br /> +Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.<br /> +Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,<br /> +Although she knows my days are past the best,<br /> +Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:<br /> +On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:<br /> +But wherefore says she not she is unjust?<br /> +And wherefore say not I that I am old?<br /> +O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,<br /> +And age in love, loves not to have years told:<br /> + Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,<br /> + And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXXXIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! call not me to justify the wrong<br /> +That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;<br /> +Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:<br /> +Use power with power, and slay me not by art,<br /> +Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,<br /> +Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:<br /> +What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy might<br /> +Is more than my o’erpress’d defence can bide?<br /> +Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows<br /> +Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;<br /> +And therefore from my face she turns my foes,<br /> +That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:<br /> + Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,<br /> + Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXL</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press<br /> +My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;<br /> +Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express<br /> +The manner of my pity-wanting pain.<br /> +If I might teach thee wit, better it were,<br /> +Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,<br /> +As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,<br /> +No news but health from their physicians know.<br /> +For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,<br /> +And in my madness might speak ill of thee;<br /> +Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,<br /> +Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.<br /> + That I may not be so, nor thou belied,<br /> + Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,<br /> +For they in thee a thousand errors note;<br /> +But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,<br /> +Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.<br /> +Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted;<br /> +Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,<br /> +Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited<br /> +To any sensual feast with thee alone:<br /> +But my five wits nor my five senses can<br /> +Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,<br /> +Who leaves unsway’d the likeness of a man,<br /> +Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be:<br /> + Only my plague thus far I count my gain,<br /> + That she that makes me sin awards me pain.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,<br /> +Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:<br /> +O! but with mine compare thou thine own state,<br /> +And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;<br /> +Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,<br /> +That have profan’d their scarlet ornaments<br /> +And seal’d false bonds of love as oft as mine,<br /> +Robb’d others’ beds’ revenues of their rents.<br /> +Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov’st those<br /> +Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:<br /> +Root pity in thy heart, that, when it grows,<br /> +Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.<br /> + If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,<br /> + By self-example mayst thou be denied!<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch<br /> +One of her feather’d creatures broke away,<br /> +Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch<br /> +In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;<br /> +Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,<br /> +Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent<br /> +To follow that which flies before her face,<br /> +Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;<br /> +So runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,<br /> +Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;<br /> +But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,<br /> +And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind;<br /> + So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’<br /> + If thou turn back and my loud crying still.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Two loves I have of comfort and despair,<br /> +Which like two spirits do suggest me still:<br /> +The better angel is a man right fair,<br /> +The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill.<br /> +To win me soon to hell, my female evil,<br /> +Tempteth my better angel from my side,<br /> +And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,<br /> +Wooing his purity with her foul pride.<br /> +And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,<br /> +Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;<br /> +But being both from me, both to each friend,<br /> +I guess one angel in another’s hell:<br /> + Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,<br /> + Till my bad angel fire my good one out.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Those lips that Love’s own hand did make,<br /> +Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’,<br /> +To me that languish’d for her sake:<br /> +But when she saw my woeful state,<br /> +Straight in her heart did mercy come,<br /> +Chiding that tongue that ever sweet<br /> +Was us’d in giving gentle doom;<br /> +And taught it thus anew to greet;<br /> +‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,<br /> +That followed it as gentle day,<br /> +Doth follow night, who like a fiend<br /> +From heaven to hell is flown away.<br /> + ‘I hate’, from hate away she threw,<br /> + And sav’d my life, saying ‘not you’.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLVI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,<br /> +My sinful earth these rebel powers array,<br /> +Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,<br /> +Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?<br /> +Why so large cost, having so short a lease,<br /> +Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?<br /> +Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,<br /> +Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?<br /> +Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,<br /> +And let that pine to aggravate thy store;<br /> +Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;<br /> +Within be fed, without be rich no more:<br /> + So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,<br /> + And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLVII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +My love is as a fever longing still,<br /> +For that which longer nurseth the disease;<br /> +Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,<br /> +The uncertain sickly appetite to please.<br /> +My reason, the physician to my love,<br /> +Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,<br /> +Hath left me, and I desperate now approve<br /> +Desire is death, which physic did except.<br /> +Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,<br /> +And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;<br /> +My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,<br /> +At random from the truth vainly express’d;<br /> + For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,<br /> + Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLVIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head,<br /> +Which have no correspondence with true sight;<br /> +Or, if they have, where is my judgement fled,<br /> +That censures falsely what they see aright?<br /> +If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,<br /> +What means the world to say it is not so?<br /> +If it be not, then love doth well denote<br /> +Love’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no,<br /> +How can it? O! how can Love’s eye be true,<br /> +That is so vexed with watching and with tears?<br /> +No marvel then, though I mistake my view;<br /> +The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.<br /> + O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind,<br /> + Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CXLIX</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,<br /> +When I against myself with thee partake?<br /> +Do I not think on thee, when I forgot<br /> +Am of my self, all tyrant, for thy sake?<br /> +Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,<br /> +On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon,<br /> +Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend<br /> +Revenge upon myself with present moan?<br /> +What merit do I in my self respect,<br /> +That is so proud thy service to despise,<br /> +When all my best doth worship thy defect,<br /> +Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?<br /> + But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;<br /> + Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CL</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +O! from what power hast thou this powerful might,<br /> +With insufficiency my heart to sway?<br /> +To make me give the lie to my true sight,<br /> +And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?<br /> +Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,<br /> +That in the very refuse of thy deeds<br /> +There is such strength and warrantise of skill,<br /> +That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?<br /> +Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,<br /> +The more I hear and see just cause of hate?<br /> +O! though I love what others do abhor,<br /> +With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:<br /> + If thy unworthiness rais’d love in me,<br /> + More worthy I to be belov’d of thee.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CLI</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Love is too young to know what conscience is,<br /> +Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?<br /> +Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,<br /> +Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:<br /> +For, thou betraying me, I do betray<br /> +My nobler part to my gross body’s treason;<br /> +My soul doth tell my body that he may<br /> +Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,<br /> +But rising at thy name doth point out thee,<br /> +As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,<br /> +He is contented thy poor drudge to be,<br /> +To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.<br /> + No want of conscience hold it that I call<br /> + Her ‘love,’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CLII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,<br /> +But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;<br /> +In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,<br /> +In vowing new hate after new love bearing:<br /> +But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,<br /> +When I break twenty? I am perjur’d most;<br /> +For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,<br /> +And all my honest faith in thee is lost:<br /> +For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,<br /> +Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;<br /> +And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,<br /> +Or made them swear against the thing they see;<br /> + For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,<br /> + but I my mistress so foul a lie.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CLIII</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep:<br /> +A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,<br /> +And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep<br /> +In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;<br /> +Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love,<br /> +A dateless lively heat, still to endure,<br /> +And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove<br /> +Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.<br /> +But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,<br /> +The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;<br /> +I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,<br /> +And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest,<br /> + But found no cure, the bath for my help lies<br /> + Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CLIV</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The little Love-god lying once asleep,<br /> +Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,<br /> +Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep<br /> +Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand<br /> +The fairest votary took up that fire<br /> +Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;<br /> +And so the general of hot desire<br /> +Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarm’d.<br /> +This brand she quenched in a cool well by,<br /> +Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,<br /> +Growing a bath and healthful remedy,<br /> +For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,<br /> + Came there for cure and this by that I prove,<br /> + Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.<br /> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1041 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + |