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SELF-FLATTERY OF HER BEAUTY.

For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformedst creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
To crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature;
Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchymy! To make of monsters, and things indigest, Such cherubims as your sweet self resemble; Creating every bad a perfect best, As fast as objects to his beams assemble. Oh! 'tis the first, 'tis flatt'ry in my seeing,

And my great mind most kindly drinks it up;

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing, And to his palate doth prepare the cup.

If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin,

That mine eye loves it, and doth first begin.

Those lines, that I before have writ, do lye,
E'en those that said I could not love you dearer :
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reck'ning time, whose million accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

A TRIAL OF LOVE'S CONSTANCY.

Can sacred beauty blunt the sharp'st intents,

Divert strong minds to th' course of alt'ring things?
Alas! why fearing of time's tyranny,

Might I not then say, now I love you best,
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowding the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe, then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

A TRIAL OF LOVE'S CONSTANCY.

ACCUSE me thus, that I have scanted all,
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;

That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear purchas'd right;
That I have hoisted sails to all the winds,

Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my wilfulness and error down,
And on just proof surmise, accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:
Since my appeal says, I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.

Like as you make your appetites more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;

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A TRIAL OF LOVE'S CONSTANCY.

As to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken, to shun sickness, when we purge:
Even so being full of your near cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And sick of welfare, found a kind of meekness,
To be diseas'd ere that there was true needing,
Thus policy in love, ť anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,
And brought to medicine a hateful state,
Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured:

But thence I learn, and the fond lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

What potions have I drank of SYREN's tears, Distill'd from limbecks, foul as hell within? Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win. What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never? How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, In the distraction of this madding fever ?

Oh! benefit of ill! now I find true,

That better is by evil still made better;

And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
So I return rebuke to my content,

And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

HIS LOVE'S UNKINDNESS. ERROR IN OPINION.

A GOOD CONSTRUCTION

OF HIS LOVE's UNKINDNESS.

THAT you were once unkind befriends me now;
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless

my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time;
And I a tyrant have no leisure taken,
To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime.
Oh! that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits.
And soon to you, as you to me then tender'd
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee,
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

ERROR IN OPINION.

'TIS better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
When not to be, receives reproach of being
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd,
Not by our feeling, but by others seeing,
For why should others false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?

YOL. II.

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UPON THE RECEIPT OF A TABLE-BOOK, &c.

Or on my frailties, who are frailer spies;

Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses, reckon up their own;

I

may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown; Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

UPON THE RECEIPT OF

A TABLE-BOOK FROM HIS MISTRESS.

THY gift, thy tables, are within my brain,
Full character'd with a lasting memory.
Which shall above that idle rant remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be mist.
That poor attention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me, was I bold
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee,
Were to impart forgetfulness in me.

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