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XCV.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell How sweet and lovely dost thou make the Of different flowers in odour and in hue, shame

Could make me any summer's story tell, Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they Doth spot the beauty of thy budding namel grew: Ol in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose. Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, That tongue that tells the story of thy days, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; Making lascivious comments on thy sport,

6 They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Cannot dis praise but in a kind of praise;

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Naming thy name blesses an ill report.

Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away, O! what a mansion have those vices got

As with your shadow I with these did play. Which for their habitation chose out thee,

XCIX,
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
And all things turn to fair that eyes can seel 12 The forward violet thus did I cbide:

Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy swee!
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

that smells,

If not from my love's breath? The purple prite XCVI.

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd. Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;' The lily I condemned for thy hand, Both grace and faults are lov'd of more and less: And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair; Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort.

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, As on the finger of a throned queen

One blushing shame, another white despair; The basest jewel will be well esteem'd, 6 A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both, So are those errors that in thee are seen

And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath; To truths translated and for true things deem'd. But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth 12 How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, A vengeful canker eat him up to death. If like a lamb he could his looks translate!

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see How many gazers mightst thou lead away,

But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee. If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy

state! But do not so; I love thee in such sort,

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'stso long As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spind'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,

Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light: How like a winter hath my absence been

Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

In gentle numbers time so idly spent; What freezings have I felt, what dark days Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem seen!

And gives thy pen both skill and argument. What old December's bareness every where!

Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey, And yet this time remov'd was summer's time; If Time have any wrinkle graven there; The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, 6 If any, be a satire to decay, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,

And make Time's spoils despised every where, 12 Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:

Give my love fame faster than Time wastes Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me

life; But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;

So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,

knife. And, thou away, the very birds are mute:

CI.
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's o truant Muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
From you have I been absent in the spring, Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say, 5
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fixd;
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. But best is best, if never intermix'd?"

c.

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XCVII.

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near.

XCVIII.

11 Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-band,

Excuse not silence so; for 't lies in the Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd;
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.

stand, Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd: 12 To make him seem long hence as he shows For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:

Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

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now.

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ID

CIII.

6

u My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in Let not my love be call’d idolatry, seeming;

Nor my beloved as an idol show, I love not less, though less the show appear: Since all alike my songs and praises be That love is merchandiz'd whose rich esteeming To one, of one, still such, and ever so. The owner's tongue doth publish every where. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Our love was new, and then but in the spring, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; When I was wont to greet it with my lays; o Therefore my verse, to constancy confin'd, As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: 'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument, Not that the summer is less pleasant now Fair, kind, and true,' varying to other words; Than when her mournful hymns did hush the And in this change is my invention spent, night,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope But that wild music burthens every bough,

affords. And sweets grown common lose their dear 'Fair, kind, and true,' have often liv'd alone, delight.

Which three till now never kept seat in one. Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,

CVI.
Because I would not dull you with my song. When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rime, Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, That having such a scope to show her pride, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, The argument, all bare, is of more worth Of band, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, Than when it hath my added praise besidel I see their antique pen would have express'd O! blame me not, if I no more can writel Even such a beauty as you master now. Look in your glass, and there appears a face 6 So all their praises are but prophecies That over-goes my blunt invention quite, Of this our time, all you prefiguring; Dulling my lines and doing mo disgrace. And, for they look'd but with divining eyes, 11 Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: To mar the subject that before was well? For we, wbich now behold these present days, For to no other pass my verses tend

Haveeyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;

CVII. And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Your own glass shows you when you look in Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, it.

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom.
CIV.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,
To me, fair friend, you never can be old, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; 6
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
cold

Now with the drops of this most balmy time Have from the forests shook three summers' My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, pride,

Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime, 11 Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn's While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: In process of the seasons have I seen,

And thou in this shalt find thy monument, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, When týrants' crests and tombs of brass are Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. spent.

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CIX.

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CVIII.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, What's in the brain, that ink may character,

And almost thence my nature is subdu'd Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit? To what it works in, like the dyer's hand: What's new to speak, what new to register, Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd; That may express my love, or thy dear merit? Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine, Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection; I must each day say o'er the very same;

6 No bitterness that I will bitter think, Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Nor double penance, to correct correction. Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name. Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye So that eternal love in love's fresh case

Even that your pity is enough to cure me. Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

CXII.
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;

Your love and pity doth the impression fill Finding the first conceit of love there bred,

Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my bror, Where time and outward form would show it For what care I who calls me well or ill, dead.

So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your Ol never say that I was false of heart,

tongue; Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify. None else to me, nor I to none alive, As easy might I from myself depart

That my steel'd sense of changes right or
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: wrong.
That is my home of love: if I have rang'd, In so profound abysm I throw all care
Like him that travels, I return again; 6 Of other's voices, that my adder's sense
Just to the time, not with the time exchang’d, To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
So that myself bring water for my stain. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That all the world besides methinks are dead.
That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;

CXIII.
For nothing this wide universe I call, Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all. And that which governs me to go about

Doth part his function and is partly blind,

Seems seeing, but effectually is out; Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there, For it no form delivers to the heart And made myself a motley to the view,

Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth lateb: Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is of his quick objects hath the mind no part, most dear,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch; Made old offences of affections new;

For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight, Most true it is that I have look'd on truth The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, Askance and strangely; but, by all above, 6. The mountain or the sea, the day or night, These blenches gave my heart another youth, The crow or dove, it shapes them to your And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love. feature: Now all is done, save what sball have no end: Incapable of more, replete with you, Mine appetite I never more will grind

My most true mind thus maketh mine unOn newer proof, to try an older friend,

true. A god in love, to whom I am confin'd. Then give me welcome, next my heaven the

CXIV. best,

Or whether doth my mind being crown'd with Even to thy pureand most most loving breast. you,

Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?

Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, 01 for my sake do you with Fortune chide And that your love taught it this alchymy, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, To make of monsters and things indigest That did not better for my life provide Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, 6 Than public means which public manners Creating every bad a perfect best, breeds.

As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

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CXI.

12

6

Ol 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in may seeing, Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up: And on just proof surmise accumulate;
Mine eye well knows what wita his gust" is Bring me within the level of your frown,
'greeing,

But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate; 12 And to his palate doth prepare the cup:

Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin

The constancy and virtue of your love.
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

CXVIII.
CXV.

Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
Those lines that I before have writ do lie, With eager compounds we our palate urge;
Even those that said I could not love you As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
dearer:

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge; Yet then my judgment knew no reason why Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetMy most full flame should afterwards burn ness, clearer.

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing. kings,

6 Thus policy in love, to anticipate Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, The ills that were not, grew to faults assur'd, Divert strong minds to the course of altering And brought to medicine a healthful state, 11 things;

Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur'd; Alas! why, fearing of Time's tyranny,

But thence ï learn, and find the lesson true,
Might I not then say, "Now I love you best,' Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? 12

CXIX.
Love is a babe; then might I not say so, What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
To give full growth to that which still doth Distiil'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
grow?

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,

Still losing when I saw myself to win!
CXVI.

What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Let me not to the marriage of true minds Whilst it bath thought itself so blessed never! 6 Admit impediments. Love is not love

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been Which alters when it alteration finds,

fitted, Or bends with the remover to remove:

In the distraction of this madding fever! 0, nol it is an ever-fixed mark,

O benefit of illl now I find true
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 6 That better is by evil still made better;
It is the star to every wandering bark,

And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, Whose worth's unknown, although his height Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. be taken.

So I return rebuk'd to my content, Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come;

CXX. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, That you were once unkind befriends me now, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 12 And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, If this be error, and upon me prov'd,

Needs must I under my transgression bow, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd

Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
CXVII.
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time;

a Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all

And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken Wherein I should your great deserts repay, To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime. Forgot upon your dearest love to call,

Ol that our night of woe might have remember'd Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, Stephany That I have frequent been with unknown minds, And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd 11 y Andgiven to time your own dear-purchas'dright; The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits! That I have hoisted sail to all the winds

But that your trespass now becomes a fee; Which should transport me furthest from your Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransight.

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CXXII.

CXXI.

No, it was buided far from accident; 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd, It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls When not to be receives reproach of being; Under the bluw of thralled discontent, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls: Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing: It fears zot policy, that heretic, For why should others' false adulterate eyes Which works on leases of short number'd Give salutation to my sportive blood?

6

hours, Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, But all alone stands hugely politic, Which in their wills count bad what I think that it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with good?

showers. No, I am that I am, and they that level

To this I witness call the fools of time, At my abuses reckon up their own:

Which die for goodness, who have lir'd for I may be straight though they themselves be crime.

bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be

CXXV. shown;

12 Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy, Unless this general evil they maintain, With my extern the outward honouring, All men are bad and in their badness reign. Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which prove more short then waste or ruining

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favoar Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Lose all and more by paying too much reat, 6 Full character'd with lasting memory,

For compound sweet foregoing simple saFon Which shall above that idle rank remain, Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent? Beyond all date, even to eternity:

No; let me be obsequious in thy heart, Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart And take thou my oblation, poor but free, Have faculty by nature to subsist;

6 Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows 10 Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part

art, Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd. But mutual render, only me for thee. That poor retention could not so much hold, Hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soal Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

When most impeach'd stands least in the Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

control. To trust those tables that receive thee more: 12 To keep an adjunct to remember thee

OXXYI.
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle hour,

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;
Thy pyramids built up with newer might If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee
They are but dressings of a former sight.

back, Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill What thou dost foist upon us that is old; 6 May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill And rather make them born to our desire Yet fear her, thou minion of her pleasure! Than think that we before bave heard them told. She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be
Not wondering at the present nor the past, And her quietus is to render thee.
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual hasie.

CXXVII.
This I do vow, and this shall ever be; In the old age black was not counted fair,
I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee. Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;

But now is black beauty's successive heir,
CXXIV.

And beauty slander'd with a bastard's shame:
If my dear love were but the child of state, For since each hand hath put on Nature's
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd, power,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate, Fairing the foul with Art's false borrow'd face 6
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
gather'd.

But is profan'd, if not lives in disgrace.

CXXIII.

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