chowdhuryshaif
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2473f0e
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Parent(s):
a6e817b
Upload shakespeare.txt with huggingface_hub
Browse files- shakespeare.txt +2469 -0
shakespeare.txt
ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,2469 @@
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|
1 |
+
THE SONNETS
|
2 |
+
|
3 |
+
by William Shakespeare
|
4 |
+
|
5 |
+
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
|
6 |
+
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
|
7 |
+
But as the riper should by time decease,
|
8 |
+
His tender heir might bear his memory:
|
9 |
+
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
|
10 |
+
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
|
11 |
+
Making a famine where abundance lies,
|
12 |
+
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
|
13 |
+
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
|
14 |
+
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
|
15 |
+
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
|
16 |
+
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:
|
17 |
+
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
|
18 |
+
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
|
19 |
+
|
20 |
+
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
|
21 |
+
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
|
22 |
+
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
|
23 |
+
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
|
24 |
+
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
|
25 |
+
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
|
26 |
+
To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,
|
27 |
+
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
|
28 |
+
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
|
29 |
+
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
|
30 |
+
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse'
|
31 |
+
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
|
32 |
+
This were to be new made when thou art old,
|
33 |
+
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
|
34 |
+
|
35 |
+
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
|
36 |
+
Now is the time that face should form another,
|
37 |
+
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
|
38 |
+
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
|
39 |
+
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
|
40 |
+
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
|
41 |
+
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
|
42 |
+
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
|
43 |
+
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
|
44 |
+
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
|
45 |
+
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
|
46 |
+
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
|
47 |
+
But if thou live remembered not to be,
|
48 |
+
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
|
49 |
+
|
50 |
+
Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,
|
51 |
+
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
|
52 |
+
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
|
53 |
+
And being frank she lends to those are free:
|
54 |
+
Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,
|
55 |
+
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
|
56 |
+
Profitless usurer why dost thou use
|
57 |
+
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
|
58 |
+
For having traffic with thy self alone,
|
59 |
+
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive,
|
60 |
+
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
|
61 |
+
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
|
62 |
+
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
|
63 |
+
Which used lives th' executor to be.
|
64 |
+
|
65 |
+
Those hours that with gentle work did frame
|
66 |
+
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
|
67 |
+
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
|
68 |
+
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
|
69 |
+
For never-resting time leads summer on
|
70 |
+
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
|
71 |
+
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
|
72 |
+
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
|
73 |
+
Then were not summer's distillation left
|
74 |
+
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
|
75 |
+
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
|
76 |
+
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
|
77 |
+
But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
|
78 |
+
Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.
|
79 |
+
|
80 |
+
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
|
81 |
+
In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
|
82 |
+
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,
|
83 |
+
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed:
|
84 |
+
That use is not forbidden usury,
|
85 |
+
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
|
86 |
+
That's for thy self to breed another thee,
|
87 |
+
Or ten times happier be it ten for one,
|
88 |
+
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
|
89 |
+
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
|
90 |
+
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
|
91 |
+
Leaving thee living in posterity?
|
92 |
+
Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair,
|
93 |
+
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.
|
94 |
+
|
95 |
+
Lo in the orient when the gracious light
|
96 |
+
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
|
97 |
+
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
|
98 |
+
Serving with looks his sacred majesty,
|
99 |
+
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
|
100 |
+
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
|
101 |
+
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
|
102 |
+
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
|
103 |
+
But when from highmost pitch with weary car,
|
104 |
+
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
|
105 |
+
The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are
|
106 |
+
From his low tract and look another way:
|
107 |
+
So thou, thy self out-going in thy noon:
|
108 |
+
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
|
109 |
+
|
110 |
+
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
|
111 |
+
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
|
112 |
+
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
|
113 |
+
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
|
114 |
+
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
|
115 |
+
By unions married do offend thine ear,
|
116 |
+
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
|
117 |
+
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:
|
118 |
+
Mark how one string sweet husband to another,
|
119 |
+
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
|
120 |
+
Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
|
121 |
+
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
|
122 |
+
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
|
123 |
+
Sings this to thee, 'Thou single wilt prove none'.
|
124 |
+
|
125 |
+
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
|
126 |
+
That thou consum'st thy self in single life?
|
127 |
+
Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
|
128 |
+
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife,
|
129 |
+
The world will be thy widow and still weep,
|
130 |
+
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
|
131 |
+
When every private widow well may keep,
|
132 |
+
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
|
133 |
+
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
|
134 |
+
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
|
135 |
+
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
|
136 |
+
And kept unused the user so destroys it:
|
137 |
+
No love toward others in that bosom sits
|
138 |
+
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.
|
139 |
+
|
140 |
+
For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any
|
141 |
+
Who for thy self art so unprovident.
|
142 |
+
Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
|
143 |
+
But that thou none lov'st is most evident:
|
144 |
+
For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate,
|
145 |
+
That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire,
|
146 |
+
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
|
147 |
+
Which to repair should be thy chief desire:
|
148 |
+
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,
|
149 |
+
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
|
150 |
+
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,
|
151 |
+
Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,
|
152 |
+
Make thee another self for love of me,
|
153 |
+
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
|
154 |
+
|
155 |
+
As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st,
|
156 |
+
In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
|
157 |
+
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
|
158 |
+
Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,
|
159 |
+
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,
|
160 |
+
Without this folly, age, and cold decay,
|
161 |
+
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
|
162 |
+
And threescore year would make the world away:
|
163 |
+
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
|
164 |
+
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
|
165 |
+
Look whom she best endowed, she gave thee more;
|
166 |
+
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
|
167 |
+
She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
|
168 |
+
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.
|
169 |
+
|
170 |
+
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
|
171 |
+
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,
|
172 |
+
When I behold the violet past prime,
|
173 |
+
And sable curls all silvered o'er with white:
|
174 |
+
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
|
175 |
+
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd
|
176 |
+
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
|
177 |
+
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:
|
178 |
+
Then of thy beauty do I question make
|
179 |
+
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
|
180 |
+
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
|
181 |
+
And die as fast as they see others grow,
|
182 |
+
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
|
183 |
+
Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.
|
184 |
+
|
185 |
+
O that you were your self, but love you are
|
186 |
+
No longer yours, than you your self here live,
|
187 |
+
Against this coming end you should prepare,
|
188 |
+
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
|
189 |
+
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
|
190 |
+
Find no determination, then you were
|
191 |
+
Your self again after your self's decease,
|
192 |
+
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
|
193 |
+
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
|
194 |
+
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
|
195 |
+
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
|
196 |
+
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
|
197 |
+
O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,
|
198 |
+
You had a father, let your son say so.
|
199 |
+
|
200 |
+
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
|
201 |
+
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
|
202 |
+
But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
|
203 |
+
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality,
|
204 |
+
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;
|
205 |
+
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
|
206 |
+
Or say with princes if it shall go well
|
207 |
+
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
|
208 |
+
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
|
209 |
+
And constant stars in them I read such art
|
210 |
+
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
|
211 |
+
If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:
|
212 |
+
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
|
213 |
+
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
|
214 |
+
|
215 |
+
When I consider every thing that grows
|
216 |
+
Holds in perfection but a little moment.
|
217 |
+
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
|
218 |
+
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
|
219 |
+
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
|
220 |
+
Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:
|
221 |
+
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
|
222 |
+
And wear their brave state out of memory.
|
223 |
+
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,
|
224 |
+
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
|
225 |
+
Where wasteful time debateth with decay
|
226 |
+
To change your day of youth to sullied night,
|
227 |
+
And all in war with Time for love of you,
|
228 |
+
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.
|
229 |
+
|
230 |
+
But wherefore do not you a mightier way
|
231 |
+
Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time?
|
232 |
+
And fortify your self in your decay
|
233 |
+
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
|
234 |
+
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
|
235 |
+
And many maiden gardens yet unset,
|
236 |
+
With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,
|
237 |
+
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
|
238 |
+
So should the lines of life that life repair
|
239 |
+
Which this (Time's pencil) or my pupil pen
|
240 |
+
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair
|
241 |
+
Can make you live your self in eyes of men.
|
242 |
+
To give away your self, keeps your self still,
|
243 |
+
And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.
|
244 |
+
|
245 |
+
Who will believe my verse in time to come
|
246 |
+
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
|
247 |
+
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
|
248 |
+
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
|
249 |
+
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
|
250 |
+
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
|
251 |
+
The age to come would say this poet lies,
|
252 |
+
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.
|
253 |
+
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
|
254 |
+
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
|
255 |
+
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,
|
256 |
+
And stretched metre of an antique song.
|
257 |
+
But were some child of yours alive that time,
|
258 |
+
You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.
|
259 |
+
|
260 |
+
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
|
261 |
+
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
|
262 |
+
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
|
263 |
+
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
|
264 |
+
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
|
265 |
+
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
|
266 |
+
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
|
267 |
+
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
|
268 |
+
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
|
269 |
+
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
|
270 |
+
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
|
271 |
+
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
|
272 |
+
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
|
273 |
+
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
|
274 |
+
|
275 |
+
Devouring Time blunt thou the lion's paws,
|
276 |
+
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,
|
277 |
+
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
|
278 |
+
And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,
|
279 |
+
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
|
280 |
+
And do whate'er thou wilt swift-footed Time
|
281 |
+
To the wide world and all her fading sweets:
|
282 |
+
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,
|
283 |
+
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
|
284 |
+
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,
|
285 |
+
Him in thy course untainted do allow,
|
286 |
+
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
|
287 |
+
Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,
|
288 |
+
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
|
289 |
+
|
290 |
+
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
|
291 |
+
Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,
|
292 |
+
A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted
|
293 |
+
With shifting change as is false women's fashion,
|
294 |
+
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:
|
295 |
+
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,
|
296 |
+
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
|
297 |
+
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
|
298 |
+
And for a woman wert thou first created,
|
299 |
+
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
|
300 |
+
And by addition me of thee defeated,
|
301 |
+
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
|
302 |
+
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
|
303 |
+
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
|
304 |
+
|
305 |
+
So is it not with me as with that muse,
|
306 |
+
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
|
307 |
+
Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,
|
308 |
+
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
|
309 |
+
Making a couplement of proud compare
|
310 |
+
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems:
|
311 |
+
With April's first-born flowers and all things rare,
|
312 |
+
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
|
313 |
+
O let me true in love but truly write,
|
314 |
+
And then believe me, my love is as fair,
|
315 |
+
As any mother's child, though not so bright
|
316 |
+
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
|
317 |
+
Let them say more that like of hearsay well,
|
318 |
+
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
|
319 |
+
|
320 |
+
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
|
321 |
+
So long as youth and thou are of one date,
|
322 |
+
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
|
323 |
+
Then look I death my days should expiate.
|
324 |
+
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
|
325 |
+
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
|
326 |
+
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,
|
327 |
+
How can I then be elder than thou art?
|
328 |
+
O therefore love be of thyself so wary,
|
329 |
+
As I not for my self, but for thee will,
|
330 |
+
Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary
|
331 |
+
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
|
332 |
+
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
|
333 |
+
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
|
334 |
+
|
335 |
+
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
|
336 |
+
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
|
337 |
+
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
|
338 |
+
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
|
339 |
+
So I for fear of trust, forget to say,
|
340 |
+
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
|
341 |
+
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
|
342 |
+
O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might:
|
343 |
+
O let my looks be then the eloquence,
|
344 |
+
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
|
345 |
+
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
|
346 |
+
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
|
347 |
+
O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
|
348 |
+
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
|
349 |
+
|
350 |
+
Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,
|
351 |
+
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart,
|
352 |
+
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
|
353 |
+
And perspective it is best painter's art.
|
354 |
+
For through the painter must you see his skill,
|
355 |
+
To find where your true image pictured lies,
|
356 |
+
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
|
357 |
+
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:
|
358 |
+
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,
|
359 |
+
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
|
360 |
+
Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun
|
361 |
+
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;
|
362 |
+
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
|
363 |
+
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.
|
364 |
+
|
365 |
+
Let those who are in favour with their stars,
|
366 |
+
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
|
367 |
+
Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars
|
368 |
+
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;
|
369 |
+
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,
|
370 |
+
But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
|
371 |
+
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
|
372 |
+
For at a frown they in their glory die.
|
373 |
+
The painful warrior famoused for fight,
|
374 |
+
After a thousand victories once foiled,
|
375 |
+
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
|
376 |
+
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:
|
377 |
+
Then happy I that love and am beloved
|
378 |
+
Where I may not remove nor be removed.
|
379 |
+
|
380 |
+
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
|
381 |
+
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;
|
382 |
+
To thee I send this written embassage
|
383 |
+
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
|
384 |
+
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
|
385 |
+
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;
|
386 |
+
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
|
387 |
+
In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it:
|
388 |
+
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,
|
389 |
+
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
|
390 |
+
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
|
391 |
+
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,
|
392 |
+
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
|
393 |
+
Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
|
394 |
+
|
395 |
+
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
|
396 |
+
The dear respose for limbs with travel tired,
|
397 |
+
But then begins a journey in my head
|
398 |
+
To work my mind, when body's work's expired.
|
399 |
+
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
|
400 |
+
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
|
401 |
+
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
|
402 |
+
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
|
403 |
+
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
|
404 |
+
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
|
405 |
+
Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)
|
406 |
+
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
|
407 |
+
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
|
408 |
+
For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.
|
409 |
+
|
410 |
+
How can I then return in happy plight
|
411 |
+
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
|
412 |
+
When day's oppression is not eased by night,
|
413 |
+
But day by night and night by day oppressed.
|
414 |
+
And each (though enemies to either's reign)
|
415 |
+
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
|
416 |
+
The one by toil, the other to complain
|
417 |
+
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
|
418 |
+
I tell the day to please him thou art bright,
|
419 |
+
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
|
420 |
+
So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,
|
421 |
+
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.
|
422 |
+
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
|
423 |
+
And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger
|
424 |
+
|
425 |
+
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
|
426 |
+
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
|
427 |
+
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
|
428 |
+
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
|
429 |
+
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
|
430 |
+
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
|
431 |
+
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
|
432 |
+
With what I most enjoy contented least,
|
433 |
+
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
|
434 |
+
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
|
435 |
+
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
|
436 |
+
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
|
437 |
+
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
|
438 |
+
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
|
439 |
+
|
440 |
+
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
|
441 |
+
I summon up remembrance of things past,
|
442 |
+
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
|
443 |
+
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
|
444 |
+
Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)
|
445 |
+
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
|
446 |
+
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
|
447 |
+
And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight.
|
448 |
+
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
|
449 |
+
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
|
450 |
+
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
|
451 |
+
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
|
452 |
+
But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)
|
453 |
+
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
|
454 |
+
|
455 |
+
Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
|
456 |
+
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
|
457 |
+
And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,
|
458 |
+
And all those friends which I thought buried.
|
459 |
+
How many a holy and obsequious tear
|
460 |
+
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
|
461 |
+
As interest of the dead, which now appear,
|
462 |
+
But things removed that hidden in thee lie.
|
463 |
+
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
|
464 |
+
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
|
465 |
+
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
|
466 |
+
That due of many, now is thine alone.
|
467 |
+
Their images I loved, I view in thee,
|
468 |
+
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.
|
469 |
+
|
470 |
+
If thou survive my well-contented day,
|
471 |
+
When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover
|
472 |
+
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
|
473 |
+
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:
|
474 |
+
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
|
475 |
+
And though they be outstripped by every pen,
|
476 |
+
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
|
477 |
+
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
|
478 |
+
O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,
|
479 |
+
'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
|
480 |
+
A dearer birth than this his love had brought
|
481 |
+
To march in ranks of better equipage:
|
482 |
+
But since he died and poets better prove,
|
483 |
+
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love'.
|
484 |
+
|
485 |
+
Full many a glorious morning have I seen,
|
486 |
+
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
|
487 |
+
Kissing with golden face the meadows green;
|
488 |
+
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:
|
489 |
+
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,
|
490 |
+
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
|
491 |
+
And from the forlorn world his visage hide
|
492 |
+
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
|
493 |
+
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
|
494 |
+
With all triumphant splendour on my brow,
|
495 |
+
But out alack, he was but one hour mine,
|
496 |
+
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
|
497 |
+
Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,
|
498 |
+
Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.
|
499 |
+
|
500 |
+
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
|
501 |
+
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
|
502 |
+
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
|
503 |
+
Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?
|
504 |
+
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
|
505 |
+
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
|
506 |
+
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
|
507 |
+
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
|
508 |
+
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,
|
509 |
+
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,
|
510 |
+
Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
|
511 |
+
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
|
512 |
+
Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
|
513 |
+
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.
|
514 |
+
|
515 |
+
|
516 |
+
|
517 |
+
No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
|
518 |
+
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
|
519 |
+
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
|
520 |
+
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
|
521 |
+
All men make faults, and even I in this,
|
522 |
+
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
|
523 |
+
My self corrupting salving thy amiss,
|
524 |
+
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:
|
525 |
+
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
|
526 |
+
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
|
527 |
+
And 'gainst my self a lawful plea commence:
|
528 |
+
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
|
529 |
+
That I an accessary needs must be,
|
530 |
+
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
|
531 |
+
|
532 |
+
Let me confess that we two must be twain,
|
533 |
+
Although our undivided loves are one:
|
534 |
+
So shall those blots that do with me remain,
|
535 |
+
Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
|
536 |
+
In our two loves there is but one respect,
|
537 |
+
Though in our lives a separable spite,
|
538 |
+
Which though it alter not love's sole effect,
|
539 |
+
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
|
540 |
+
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
|
541 |
+
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,
|
542 |
+
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
|
543 |
+
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
|
544 |
+
But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
|
545 |
+
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
|
546 |
+
|
547 |
+
As a decrepit father takes delight,
|
548 |
+
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
|
549 |
+
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite
|
550 |
+
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
|
551 |
+
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
|
552 |
+
Or any of these all, or all, or more
|
553 |
+
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
|
554 |
+
I make my love engrafted to this store:
|
555 |
+
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
|
556 |
+
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,
|
557 |
+
That I in thy abundance am sufficed,
|
558 |
+
And by a part of all thy glory live:
|
559 |
+
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,
|
560 |
+
This wish I have, then ten times happy me.
|
561 |
+
|
562 |
+
How can my muse want subject to invent
|
563 |
+
While thou dost breathe that pour'st into my verse,
|
564 |
+
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,
|
565 |
+
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
|
566 |
+
O give thy self the thanks if aught in me,
|
567 |
+
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,
|
568 |
+
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
|
569 |
+
When thou thy self dost give invention light?
|
570 |
+
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
|
571 |
+
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,
|
572 |
+
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
|
573 |
+
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
|
574 |
+
If my slight muse do please these curious days,
|
575 |
+
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
|
576 |
+
|
577 |
+
O how thy worth with manners may I sing,
|
578 |
+
When thou art all the better part of me?
|
579 |
+
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring:
|
580 |
+
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
|
581 |
+
Even for this, let us divided live,
|
582 |
+
And our dear love lose name of single one,
|
583 |
+
That by this separation I may give:
|
584 |
+
That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone:
|
585 |
+
O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,
|
586 |
+
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,
|
587 |
+
To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
|
588 |
+
Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.
|
589 |
+
And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
|
590 |
+
By praising him here who doth hence remain.
|
591 |
+
|
592 |
+
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,
|
593 |
+
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
|
594 |
+
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,
|
595 |
+
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:
|
596 |
+
Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,
|
597 |
+
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,
|
598 |
+
But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest
|
599 |
+
By wilful taste of what thy self refusest.
|
600 |
+
I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief
|
601 |
+
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
|
602 |
+
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
|
603 |
+
To bear greater wrong, than hate's known injury.
|
604 |
+
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
|
605 |
+
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.
|
606 |
+
|
607 |
+
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
|
608 |
+
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
|
609 |
+
Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,
|
610 |
+
For still temptation follows where thou art.
|
611 |
+
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
|
612 |
+
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.
|
613 |
+
And when a woman woos, what woman's son,
|
614 |
+
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
|
615 |
+
Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
|
616 |
+
And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
|
617 |
+
Who lead thee in their riot even there
|
618 |
+
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
|
619 |
+
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
|
620 |
+
Thine by thy beauty being false to me.
|
621 |
+
|
622 |
+
That thou hast her it is not all my grief,
|
623 |
+
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,
|
624 |
+
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
|
625 |
+
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
|
626 |
+
Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,
|
627 |
+
Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,
|
628 |
+
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
|
629 |
+
Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.
|
630 |
+
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
|
631 |
+
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,
|
632 |
+
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
|
633 |
+
And both for my sake lay on me this cross,
|
634 |
+
But here's the joy, my friend and I are one,
|
635 |
+
Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.
|
636 |
+
|
637 |
+
When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,
|
638 |
+
For all the day they view things unrespected,
|
639 |
+
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
|
640 |
+
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
|
641 |
+
Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright
|
642 |
+
How would thy shadow's form, form happy show,
|
643 |
+
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
|
644 |
+
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
|
645 |
+
How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,
|
646 |
+
By looking on thee in the living day,
|
647 |
+
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade,
|
648 |
+
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
|
649 |
+
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
|
650 |
+
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
|
651 |
+
|
652 |
+
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
|
653 |
+
Injurious distance should not stop my way,
|
654 |
+
For then despite of space I would be brought,
|
655 |
+
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,
|
656 |
+
No matter then although my foot did stand
|
657 |
+
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
|
658 |
+
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
|
659 |
+
As soon as think the place where he would be.
|
660 |
+
But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought
|
661 |
+
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
|
662 |
+
But that so much of earth and water wrought,
|
663 |
+
I must attend, time's leisure with my moan.
|
664 |
+
Receiving nought by elements so slow,
|
665 |
+
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.
|
666 |
+
|
667 |
+
The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
|
668 |
+
Are both with thee, wherever I abide,
|
669 |
+
The first my thought, the other my desire,
|
670 |
+
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
|
671 |
+
For when these quicker elements are gone
|
672 |
+
In tender embassy of love to thee,
|
673 |
+
My life being made of four, with two alone,
|
674 |
+
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.
|
675 |
+
Until life's composition be recured,
|
676 |
+
By those swift messengers returned from thee,
|
677 |
+
Who even but now come back again assured,
|
678 |
+
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.
|
679 |
+
This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,
|
680 |
+
I send them back again and straight grow sad.
|
681 |
+
|
682 |
+
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
|
683 |
+
How to divide the conquest of thy sight,
|
684 |
+
Mine eye, my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
|
685 |
+
My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,
|
686 |
+
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
|
687 |
+
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)
|
688 |
+
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
|
689 |
+
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
|
690 |
+
To side this title is impanelled
|
691 |
+
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
|
692 |
+
And by their verdict is determined
|
693 |
+
The clear eye's moiety, and the dear heart's part.
|
694 |
+
As thus, mine eye's due is thy outward part,
|
695 |
+
And my heart's right, thy inward love of heart.
|
696 |
+
|
697 |
+
Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
|
698 |
+
And each doth good turns now unto the other,
|
699 |
+
When that mine eye is famished for a look,
|
700 |
+
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;
|
701 |
+
With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,
|
702 |
+
And to the painted banquet bids my heart:
|
703 |
+
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,
|
704 |
+
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.
|
705 |
+
So either by thy picture or my love,
|
706 |
+
Thy self away, art present still with me,
|
707 |
+
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
|
708 |
+
And I am still with them, and they with thee.
|
709 |
+
Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
|
710 |
+
Awakes my heart, to heart's and eye's delight.
|
711 |
+
|
712 |
+
How careful was I when I took my way,
|
713 |
+
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
|
714 |
+
That to my use it might unused stay
|
715 |
+
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
|
716 |
+
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
|
717 |
+
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
|
718 |
+
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
|
719 |
+
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
|
720 |
+
Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
|
721 |
+
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
|
722 |
+
Within the gentle closure of my breast,
|
723 |
+
From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,
|
724 |
+
And even thence thou wilt be stol'n I fear,
|
725 |
+
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
|
726 |
+
|
727 |
+
Against that time (if ever that time come)
|
728 |
+
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
|
729 |
+
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
|
730 |
+
Called to that audit by advised respects,
|
731 |
+
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
|
732 |
+
And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,
|
733 |
+
When love converted from the thing it was
|
734 |
+
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
|
735 |
+
Against that time do I ensconce me here
|
736 |
+
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
|
737 |
+
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
|
738 |
+
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,
|
739 |
+
To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,
|
740 |
+
Since why to love, I can allege no cause.
|
741 |
+
|
742 |
+
How heavy do I journey on the way,
|
743 |
+
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
|
744 |
+
Doth teach that case and that repose to say
|
745 |
+
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.'
|
746 |
+
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
|
747 |
+
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
|
748 |
+
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
|
749 |
+
His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
|
750 |
+
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
|
751 |
+
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
|
752 |
+
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
|
753 |
+
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
|
754 |
+
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
|
755 |
+
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
|
756 |
+
|
757 |
+
Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,
|
758 |
+
Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,
|
759 |
+
From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?
|
760 |
+
Till I return of posting is no need.
|
761 |
+
O what excuse will my poor beast then find,
|
762 |
+
When swift extremity can seem but slow?
|
763 |
+
Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,
|
764 |
+
In winged speed no motion shall I know,
|
765 |
+
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,
|
766 |
+
Therefore desire (of perfect'st love being made)
|
767 |
+
Shall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race,
|
768 |
+
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,
|
769 |
+
Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,
|
770 |
+
Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.
|
771 |
+
|
772 |
+
So am I as the rich whose blessed key,
|
773 |
+
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
|
774 |
+
The which he will not every hour survey,
|
775 |
+
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
|
776 |
+
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
|
777 |
+
Since seldom coming in that long year set,
|
778 |
+
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
|
779 |
+
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
|
780 |
+
So is the time that keeps you as my chest
|
781 |
+
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
|
782 |
+
To make some special instant special-blest,
|
783 |
+
By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.
|
784 |
+
Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
|
785 |
+
Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.
|
786 |
+
|
787 |
+
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
|
788 |
+
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
|
789 |
+
Since every one, hath every one, one shade,
|
790 |
+
And you but one, can every shadow lend:
|
791 |
+
Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,
|
792 |
+
Is poorly imitated after you,
|
793 |
+
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
|
794 |
+
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
|
795 |
+
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
|
796 |
+
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
|
797 |
+
The other as your bounty doth appear,
|
798 |
+
And you in every blessed shape we know.
|
799 |
+
In all external grace you have some part,
|
800 |
+
But you like none, none you for constant heart.
|
801 |
+
|
802 |
+
O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
|
803 |
+
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
|
804 |
+
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
|
805 |
+
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:
|
806 |
+
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye,
|
807 |
+
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
|
808 |
+
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
|
809 |
+
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
|
810 |
+
But for their virtue only is their show,
|
811 |
+
They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,
|
812 |
+
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,
|
813 |
+
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
|
814 |
+
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
|
815 |
+
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
|
816 |
+
|
817 |
+
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
|
818 |
+
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
|
819 |
+
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
|
820 |
+
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
|
821 |
+
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
|
822 |
+
And broils root out the work of masonry,
|
823 |
+
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn:
|
824 |
+
The living record of your memory.
|
825 |
+
'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity
|
826 |
+
Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,
|
827 |
+
Even in the eyes of all posterity
|
828 |
+
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
|
829 |
+
So till the judgment that your self arise,
|
830 |
+
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
|
831 |
+
|
832 |
+
Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said
|
833 |
+
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
|
834 |
+
Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,
|
835 |
+
To-morrow sharpened in his former might.
|
836 |
+
So love be thou, although to-day thou fill
|
837 |
+
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
|
838 |
+
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
|
839 |
+
The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:
|
840 |
+
Let this sad interim like the ocean be
|
841 |
+
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,
|
842 |
+
Come daily to the banks, that when they see:
|
843 |
+
Return of love, more blest may be the view.
|
844 |
+
Or call it winter, which being full of care,
|
845 |
+
Makes summer's welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.
|
846 |
+
|
847 |
+
Being your slave what should I do but tend,
|
848 |
+
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
|
849 |
+
I have no precious time at all to spend;
|
850 |
+
Nor services to do till you require.
|
851 |
+
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
|
852 |
+
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
|
853 |
+
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
|
854 |
+
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
|
855 |
+
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,
|
856 |
+
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
|
857 |
+
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
|
858 |
+
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
|
859 |
+
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
|
860 |
+
(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
|
861 |
+
|
862 |
+
That god forbid, that made me first your slave,
|
863 |
+
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
|
864 |
+
Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave,
|
865 |
+
Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
|
866 |
+
O let me suffer (being at your beck)
|
867 |
+
Th' imprisoned absence of your liberty,
|
868 |
+
And patience tame to sufferance bide each check,
|
869 |
+
Without accusing you of injury.
|
870 |
+
Be where you list, your charter is so strong,
|
871 |
+
That you your self may privilage your time
|
872 |
+
To what you will, to you it doth belong,
|
873 |
+
Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.
|
874 |
+
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
|
875 |
+
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
|
876 |
+
|
877 |
+
If there be nothing new, but that which is,
|
878 |
+
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
|
879 |
+
Which labouring for invention bear amis
|
880 |
+
The second burthen of a former child!
|
881 |
+
O that record could with a backward look,
|
882 |
+
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
|
883 |
+
Show me your image in some antique book,
|
884 |
+
Since mind at first in character was done.
|
885 |
+
That I might see what the old world could say,
|
886 |
+
To this composed wonder of your frame,
|
887 |
+
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
|
888 |
+
Or whether revolution be the same.
|
889 |
+
O sure I am the wits of former days,
|
890 |
+
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
|
891 |
+
|
892 |
+
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
|
893 |
+
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
|
894 |
+
Each changing place with that which goes before,
|
895 |
+
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
|
896 |
+
Nativity once in the main of light,
|
897 |
+
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
|
898 |
+
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
|
899 |
+
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
|
900 |
+
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
|
901 |
+
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
|
902 |
+
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
|
903 |
+
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
|
904 |
+
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
|
905 |
+
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
|
906 |
+
|
907 |
+
Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
|
908 |
+
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
|
909 |
+
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
|
910 |
+
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
|
911 |
+
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
|
912 |
+
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
|
913 |
+
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
|
914 |
+
The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?
|
915 |
+
O no, thy love though much, is not so great,
|
916 |
+
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
|
917 |
+
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
|
918 |
+
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
|
919 |
+
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
|
920 |
+
From me far off, with others all too near.
|
921 |
+
|
922 |
+
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
|
923 |
+
And all my soul, and all my every part;
|
924 |
+
And for this sin there is no remedy,
|
925 |
+
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
|
926 |
+
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
|
927 |
+
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
|
928 |
+
And for my self mine own worth do define,
|
929 |
+
As I all other in all worths surmount.
|
930 |
+
But when my glass shows me my self indeed
|
931 |
+
beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,
|
932 |
+
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:
|
933 |
+
Self, so self-loving were iniquity.
|
934 |
+
'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,
|
935 |
+
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
|
936 |
+
|
937 |
+
Against my love shall be as I am now
|
938 |
+
With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,
|
939 |
+
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
|
940 |
+
With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn
|
941 |
+
Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,
|
942 |
+
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
|
943 |
+
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
|
944 |
+
Stealing away the treasure of his spring:
|
945 |
+
For such a time do I now fortify
|
946 |
+
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
|
947 |
+
That he shall never cut from memory
|
948 |
+
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
|
949 |
+
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
|
950 |
+
And they shall live, and he in them still green.
|
951 |
+
|
952 |
+
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
|
953 |
+
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,
|
954 |
+
When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,
|
955 |
+
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.
|
956 |
+
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
|
957 |
+
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
|
958 |
+
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
|
959 |
+
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.
|
960 |
+
When I have seen such interchange of State,
|
961 |
+
Or state it self confounded, to decay,
|
962 |
+
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
|
963 |
+
That Time will come and take my love away.
|
964 |
+
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
|
965 |
+
But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.
|
966 |
+
|
967 |
+
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
|
968 |
+
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
|
969 |
+
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
|
970 |
+
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
|
971 |
+
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
|
972 |
+
Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,
|
973 |
+
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
|
974 |
+
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
|
975 |
+
O fearful meditation, where alack,
|
976 |
+
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
|
977 |
+
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
|
978 |
+
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
|
979 |
+
O none, unless this miracle have might,
|
980 |
+
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
|
981 |
+
|
982 |
+
Tired with all these for restful death I cry,
|
983 |
+
As to behold desert a beggar born,
|
984 |
+
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
|
985 |
+
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
|
986 |
+
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
|
987 |
+
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
|
988 |
+
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
|
989 |
+
And strength by limping sway disabled
|
990 |
+
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
|
991 |
+
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
|
992 |
+
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
|
993 |
+
And captive good attending captain ill.
|
994 |
+
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
|
995 |
+
Save that to die, I leave my love alone.
|
996 |
+
|
997 |
+
Ah wherefore with infection should he live,
|
998 |
+
And with his presence grace impiety,
|
999 |
+
That sin by him advantage should achieve,
|
1000 |
+
And lace it self with his society?
|
1001 |
+
Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
|
1002 |
+
And steal dead seeming of his living hue?
|
1003 |
+
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek,
|
1004 |
+
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
|
1005 |
+
Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,
|
1006 |
+
Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,
|
1007 |
+
For she hath no exchequer now but his,
|
1008 |
+
And proud of many, lives upon his gains?
|
1009 |
+
O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,
|
1010 |
+
In days long since, before these last so bad.
|
1011 |
+
|
1012 |
+
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
|
1013 |
+
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
|
1014 |
+
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
|
1015 |
+
Or durst inhabit on a living brow:
|
1016 |
+
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
|
1017 |
+
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
|
1018 |
+
To live a second life on second head,
|
1019 |
+
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
|
1020 |
+
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
|
1021 |
+
Without all ornament, it self and true,
|
1022 |
+
Making no summer of another's green,
|
1023 |
+
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,
|
1024 |
+
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
|
1025 |
+
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
|
1026 |
+
|
1027 |
+
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view,
|
1028 |
+
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:
|
1029 |
+
All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that due,
|
1030 |
+
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
|
1031 |
+
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,
|
1032 |
+
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,
|
1033 |
+
In other accents do this praise confound
|
1034 |
+
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
|
1035 |
+
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
|
1036 |
+
And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,
|
1037 |
+
Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)
|
1038 |
+
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
|
1039 |
+
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
|
1040 |
+
The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.
|
1041 |
+
|
1042 |
+
|
1043 |
+
|
1044 |
+
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
|
1045 |
+
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair,
|
1046 |
+
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
|
1047 |
+
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
|
1048 |
+
So thou be good, slander doth but approve,
|
1049 |
+
Thy worth the greater being wooed of time,
|
1050 |
+
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
|
1051 |
+
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
|
1052 |
+
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,
|
1053 |
+
Either not assailed, or victor being charged,
|
1054 |
+
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
|
1055 |
+
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
|
1056 |
+
If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
|
1057 |
+
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
|
1058 |
+
|
1059 |
+
|
1060 |
+
|
1061 |
+
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
|
1062 |
+
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
|
1063 |
+
Give warning to the world that I am fled
|
1064 |
+
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
|
1065 |
+
Nay if you read this line, remember not,
|
1066 |
+
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
|
1067 |
+
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
|
1068 |
+
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
|
1069 |
+
O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
|
1070 |
+
When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
|
1071 |
+
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
|
1072 |
+
But let your love even with my life decay.
|
1073 |
+
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
|
1074 |
+
And mock you with me after I am gone.
|
1075 |
+
|
1076 |
+
|
1077 |
+
|
1078 |
+
O lest the world should task you to recite,
|
1079 |
+
What merit lived in me that you should love
|
1080 |
+
After my death (dear love) forget me quite,
|
1081 |
+
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
|
1082 |
+
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
|
1083 |
+
To do more for me than mine own desert,
|
1084 |
+
And hang more praise upon deceased I,
|
1085 |
+
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
|
1086 |
+
O lest your true love may seem false in this,
|
1087 |
+
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
|
1088 |
+
My name be buried where my body is,
|
1089 |
+
And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.
|
1090 |
+
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
|
1091 |
+
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
|
1092 |
+
|
1093 |
+
|
1094 |
+
|
1095 |
+
That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
|
1096 |
+
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
|
1097 |
+
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
|
1098 |
+
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
|
1099 |
+
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
|
1100 |
+
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
|
1101 |
+
Which by and by black night doth take away,
|
1102 |
+
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
|
1103 |
+
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
|
1104 |
+
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
|
1105 |
+
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
|
1106 |
+
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
|
1107 |
+
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
|
1108 |
+
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
|
1109 |
+
|
1110 |
+
|
1111 |
+
|
1112 |
+
But be contented when that fell arrest,
|
1113 |
+
Without all bail shall carry me away,
|
1114 |
+
My life hath in this line some interest,
|
1115 |
+
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
|
1116 |
+
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,
|
1117 |
+
The very part was consecrate to thee,
|
1118 |
+
The earth can have but earth, which is his due,
|
1119 |
+
My spirit is thine the better part of me,
|
1120 |
+
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
|
1121 |
+
The prey of worms, my body being dead,
|
1122 |
+
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
|
1123 |
+
Too base of thee to be remembered,
|
1124 |
+
The worth of that, is that which it contains,
|
1125 |
+
And that is this, and this with thee remains.
|
1126 |
+
|
1127 |
+
|
1128 |
+
|
1129 |
+
So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
|
1130 |
+
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
|
1131 |
+
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
|
1132 |
+
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
|
1133 |
+
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
|
1134 |
+
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
|
1135 |
+
Now counting best to be with you alone,
|
1136 |
+
Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,
|
1137 |
+
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
|
1138 |
+
And by and by clean starved for a look,
|
1139 |
+
Possessing or pursuing no delight
|
1140 |
+
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
|
1141 |
+
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
|
1142 |
+
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
|
1143 |
+
|
1144 |
+
|
1145 |
+
|
1146 |
+
Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
|
1147 |
+
So far from variation or quick change?
|
1148 |
+
Why with the time do I not glance aside
|
1149 |
+
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
|
1150 |
+
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
|
1151 |
+
And keep invention in a noted weed,
|
1152 |
+
That every word doth almost tell my name,
|
1153 |
+
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
|
1154 |
+
O know sweet love I always write of you,
|
1155 |
+
And you and love are still my argument:
|
1156 |
+
So all my best is dressing old words new,
|
1157 |
+
Spending again what is already spent:
|
1158 |
+
For as the sun is daily new and old,
|
1159 |
+
So is my love still telling what is told.
|
1160 |
+
|
1161 |
+
|
1162 |
+
|
1163 |
+
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
|
1164 |
+
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,
|
1165 |
+
These vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
|
1166 |
+
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
|
1167 |
+
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
|
1168 |
+
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
|
1169 |
+
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know,
|
1170 |
+
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
|
1171 |
+
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
|
1172 |
+
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
|
1173 |
+
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
|
1174 |
+
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
|
1175 |
+
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
|
1176 |
+
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.
|
1177 |
+
|
1178 |
+
|
1179 |
+
|
1180 |
+
So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,
|
1181 |
+
And found such fair assistance in my verse,
|
1182 |
+
As every alien pen hath got my use,
|
1183 |
+
And under thee their poesy disperse.
|
1184 |
+
Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,
|
1185 |
+
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
|
1186 |
+
Have added feathers to the learned's wing,
|
1187 |
+
And given grace a double majesty.
|
1188 |
+
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
|
1189 |
+
Whose influence is thine, and born of thee,
|
1190 |
+
In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
|
1191 |
+
And arts with thy sweet graces graced be.
|
1192 |
+
But thou art all my art, and dost advance
|
1193 |
+
As high as learning, my rude ignorance.
|
1194 |
+
|
1195 |
+
|
1196 |
+
|
1197 |
+
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
|
1198 |
+
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
|
1199 |
+
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
|
1200 |
+
And my sick muse doth give an other place.
|
1201 |
+
I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument
|
1202 |
+
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
|
1203 |
+
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,
|
1204 |
+
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,
|
1205 |
+
He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,
|
1206 |
+
From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give
|
1207 |
+
And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
|
1208 |
+
No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.
|
1209 |
+
Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
|
1210 |
+
Since what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.
|
1211 |
+
|
1212 |
+
|
1213 |
+
|
1214 |
+
O how I faint when I of you do write,
|
1215 |
+
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
|
1216 |
+
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
|
1217 |
+
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
|
1218 |
+
But since your worth (wide as the ocean is)
|
1219 |
+
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
|
1220 |
+
My saucy bark (inferior far to his)
|
1221 |
+
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
|
1222 |
+
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
|
1223 |
+
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,
|
1224 |
+
Or (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat,
|
1225 |
+
He of tall building, and of goodly pride.
|
1226 |
+
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
|
1227 |
+
The worst was this, my love was my decay.
|
1228 |
+
|
1229 |
+
|
1230 |
+
|
1231 |
+
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
|
1232 |
+
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
|
1233 |
+
From hence your memory death cannot take,
|
1234 |
+
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
|
1235 |
+
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
|
1236 |
+
Though I (once gone) to all the world must die,
|
1237 |
+
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
|
1238 |
+
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie,
|
1239 |
+
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
|
1240 |
+
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
|
1241 |
+
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
|
1242 |
+
When all the breathers of this world are dead,
|
1243 |
+
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
|
1244 |
+
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
|
1245 |
+
|
1246 |
+
|
1247 |
+
|
1248 |
+
I grant thou wert not married to my muse,
|
1249 |
+
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
|
1250 |
+
The dedicated words which writers use
|
1251 |
+
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
|
1252 |
+
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
|
1253 |
+
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
|
1254 |
+
And therefore art enforced to seek anew,
|
1255 |
+
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
|
1256 |
+
And do so love, yet when they have devised,
|
1257 |
+
What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
|
1258 |
+
Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathized,
|
1259 |
+
In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.
|
1260 |
+
And their gross painting might be better used,
|
1261 |
+
Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.
|
1262 |
+
|
1263 |
+
|
1264 |
+
|
1265 |
+
I never saw that you did painting need,
|
1266 |
+
And therefore to your fair no painting set,
|
1267 |
+
I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,
|
1268 |
+
That barren tender of a poet's debt:
|
1269 |
+
And therefore have I slept in your report,
|
1270 |
+
That you your self being extant well might show,
|
1271 |
+
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
|
1272 |
+
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
|
1273 |
+
This silence for my sin you did impute,
|
1274 |
+
Which shall be most my glory being dumb,
|
1275 |
+
For I impair not beauty being mute,
|
1276 |
+
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
|
1277 |
+
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,
|
1278 |
+
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
|
1279 |
+
|
1280 |
+
|
1281 |
+
|
1282 |
+
Who is it that says most, which can say more,
|
1283 |
+
Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you?
|
1284 |
+
In whose confine immured is the store,
|
1285 |
+
Which should example where your equal grew.
|
1286 |
+
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,
|
1287 |
+
That to his subject lends not some small glory,
|
1288 |
+
But he that writes of you, if he can tell,
|
1289 |
+
That you are you, so dignifies his story.
|
1290 |
+
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
|
1291 |
+
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
|
1292 |
+
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
|
1293 |
+
Making his style admired every where.
|
1294 |
+
You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
|
1295 |
+
Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.
|
1296 |
+
|
1297 |
+
|
1298 |
+
|
1299 |
+
My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still,
|
1300 |
+
While comments of your praise richly compiled,
|
1301 |
+
Reserve their character with golden quill,
|
1302 |
+
And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.
|
1303 |
+
I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,
|
1304 |
+
And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,
|
1305 |
+
To every hymn that able spirit affords,
|
1306 |
+
In polished form of well refined pen.
|
1307 |
+
Hearing you praised, I say 'tis so, 'tis true,
|
1308 |
+
And to the most of praise add something more,
|
1309 |
+
But that is in my thought, whose love to you
|
1310 |
+
(Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,
|
1311 |
+
Then others, for the breath of words respect,
|
1312 |
+
Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
|
1313 |
+
|
1314 |
+
|
1315 |
+
|
1316 |
+
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
|
1317 |
+
Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you,
|
1318 |
+
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
|
1319 |
+
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
|
1320 |
+
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,
|
1321 |
+
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
|
1322 |
+
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
|
1323 |
+
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
|
1324 |
+
He nor that affable familiar ghost
|
1325 |
+
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
|
1326 |
+
As victors of my silence cannot boast,
|
1327 |
+
I was not sick of any fear from thence.
|
1328 |
+
But when your countenance filled up his line,
|
1329 |
+
Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.
|
1330 |
+
|
1331 |
+
|
1332 |
+
|
1333 |
+
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
|
1334 |
+
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
|
1335 |
+
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:
|
1336 |
+
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
|
1337 |
+
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
|
1338 |
+
And for that riches where is my deserving?
|
1339 |
+
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
|
1340 |
+
And so my patent back again is swerving.
|
1341 |
+
Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
|
1342 |
+
Or me to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking,
|
1343 |
+
So thy great gift upon misprision growing,
|
1344 |
+
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
|
1345 |
+
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,
|
1346 |
+
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
|
1347 |
+
|
1348 |
+
|
1349 |
+
|
1350 |
+
When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
|
1351 |
+
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
|
1352 |
+
Upon thy side, against my self I'll fight,
|
1353 |
+
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:
|
1354 |
+
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
|
1355 |
+
Upon thy part I can set down a story
|
1356 |
+
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:
|
1357 |
+
That thou in losing me, shalt win much glory:
|
1358 |
+
And I by this will be a gainer too,
|
1359 |
+
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
|
1360 |
+
The injuries that to my self I do,
|
1361 |
+
Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
|
1362 |
+
Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
|
1363 |
+
That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.
|
1364 |
+
|
1365 |
+
|
1366 |
+
|
1367 |
+
Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
|
1368 |
+
And I will comment upon that offence,
|
1369 |
+
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:
|
1370 |
+
Against thy reasons making no defence.
|
1371 |
+
Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,
|
1372 |
+
To set a form upon desired change,
|
1373 |
+
As I'll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,
|
1374 |
+
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:
|
1375 |
+
Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,
|
1376 |
+
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
|
1377 |
+
Lest I (too much profane) should do it wronk:
|
1378 |
+
And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
|
1379 |
+
For thee, against my self I'll vow debate,
|
1380 |
+
For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.
|
1381 |
+
|
1382 |
+
|
1383 |
+
|
1384 |
+
Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,
|
1385 |
+
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
|
1386 |
+
join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
|
1387 |
+
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
|
1388 |
+
Ah do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
|
1389 |
+
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe,
|
1390 |
+
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
|
1391 |
+
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
|
1392 |
+
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
|
1393 |
+
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
|
1394 |
+
But in the onset come, so shall I taste
|
1395 |
+
At first the very worst of fortune's might.
|
1396 |
+
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
|
1397 |
+
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.
|
1398 |
+
|
1399 |
+
|
1400 |
+
|
1401 |
+
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
|
1402 |
+
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
|
1403 |
+
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:
|
1404 |
+
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.
|
1405 |
+
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
|
1406 |
+
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
|
1407 |
+
But these particulars are not my measure,
|
1408 |
+
All these I better in one general best.
|
1409 |
+
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
|
1410 |
+
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' costs,
|
1411 |
+
Of more delight than hawks and horses be:
|
1412 |
+
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast.
|
1413 |
+
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,
|
1414 |
+
All this away, and me most wretchcd make.
|
1415 |
+
|
1416 |
+
|
1417 |
+
|
1418 |
+
But do thy worst to steal thy self away,
|
1419 |
+
For term of life thou art assured mine,
|
1420 |
+
And life no longer than thy love will stay,
|
1421 |
+
For it depends upon that love of thine.
|
1422 |
+
Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
|
1423 |
+
When in the least of them my life hath end,
|
1424 |
+
I see, a better state to me belongs
|
1425 |
+
Than that, which on thy humour doth depend.
|
1426 |
+
Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,
|
1427 |
+
Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,
|
1428 |
+
O what a happy title do I find,
|
1429 |
+
Happy to have thy love, happy to die!
|
1430 |
+
But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot?
|
1431 |
+
Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.
|
1432 |
+
|
1433 |
+
|
1434 |
+
|
1435 |
+
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
|
1436 |
+
Like a deceived husband, so love's face,
|
1437 |
+
May still seem love to me, though altered new:
|
1438 |
+
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.
|
1439 |
+
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
|
1440 |
+
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,
|
1441 |
+
In many's looks, the false heart's history
|
1442 |
+
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.
|
1443 |
+
But heaven in thy creation did decree,
|
1444 |
+
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,
|
1445 |
+
Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
|
1446 |
+
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
|
1447 |
+
How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
|
1448 |
+
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.
|
1449 |
+
|
1450 |
+
|
1451 |
+
|
1452 |
+
They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
|
1453 |
+
That do not do the thing, they most do show,
|
1454 |
+
Who moving others, are themselves as stone,
|
1455 |
+
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
|
1456 |
+
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
|
1457 |
+
And husband nature's riches from expense,
|
1458 |
+
Tibey are the lords and owners of their faces,
|
1459 |
+
Others, but stewards of their excellence:
|
1460 |
+
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
|
1461 |
+
Though to it self, it only live and die,
|
1462 |
+
But if that flower with base infection meet,
|
1463 |
+
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
|
1464 |
+
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,
|
1465 |
+
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.
|
1466 |
+
|
1467 |
+
|
1468 |
+
|
1469 |
+
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,
|
1470 |
+
Which like a canker in the fragrant rose,
|
1471 |
+
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
|
1472 |
+
O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
|
1473 |
+
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
|
1474 |
+
(Making lascivious comments on thy sport)
|
1475 |
+
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,
|
1476 |
+
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
|
1477 |
+
O what a mansion have those vices got,
|
1478 |
+
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
|
1479 |
+
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
|
1480 |
+
And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!
|
1481 |
+
Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,
|
1482 |
+
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.
|
1483 |
+
|
1484 |
+
|
1485 |
+
|
1486 |
+
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
|
1487 |
+
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,
|
1488 |
+
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:
|
1489 |
+
Thou mak'st faults graces, that to thee resort:
|
1490 |
+
As on the finger of a throned queen,
|
1491 |
+
The basest jewel will be well esteemed:
|
1492 |
+
So are those errors that in thee are seen,
|
1493 |
+
To truths translated, and for true things deemed.
|
1494 |
+
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
|
1495 |
+
If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
|
1496 |
+
How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
|
1497 |
+
if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
|
1498 |
+
But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
|
1499 |
+
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
|
1500 |
+
|
1501 |
+
|
1502 |
+
|
1503 |
+
How like a winter hath my absence been
|
1504 |
+
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
|
1505 |
+
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
|
1506 |
+
What old December's bareness everywhere!
|
1507 |
+
And yet this time removed was summer's time,
|
1508 |
+
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
|
1509 |
+
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
|
1510 |
+
Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease:
|
1511 |
+
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
|
1512 |
+
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,
|
1513 |
+
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
|
1514 |
+
And thou away, the very birds are mute.
|
1515 |
+
Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
|
1516 |
+
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
|
1517 |
+
|
1518 |
+
|
1519 |
+
|
1520 |
+
From you have I been absent in the spring,
|
1521 |
+
When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)
|
1522 |
+
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:
|
1523 |
+
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
|
1524 |
+
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
|
1525 |
+
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
|
1526 |
+
Could make me any summer's story tell:
|
1527 |
+
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
|
1528 |
+
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
|
1529 |
+
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,
|
1530 |
+
They were but sweet, but figures of delight:
|
1531 |
+
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
|
1532 |
+
Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
|
1533 |
+
As with your shadow I with these did play.
|
1534 |
+
|
1535 |
+
|
1536 |
+
|
1537 |
+
The forward violet thus did I chide,
|
1538 |
+
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
|
1539 |
+
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
|
1540 |
+
Which on thy soft check for complexion dwells,
|
1541 |
+
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
|
1542 |
+
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
|
1543 |
+
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair,
|
1544 |
+
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
|
1545 |
+
One blushing shame, another white despair:
|
1546 |
+
A third nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
|
1547 |
+
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,
|
1548 |
+
But for his theft in pride of all his growth
|
1549 |
+
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
|
1550 |
+
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
|
1551 |
+
But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.
|
1552 |
+
|
1553 |
+
|
1554 |
+
|
1555 |
+
Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long,
|
1556 |
+
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
|
1557 |
+
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
|
1558 |
+
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
|
1559 |
+
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
|
1560 |
+
In gentle numbers time so idly spent,
|
1561 |
+
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
|
1562 |
+
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
|
1563 |
+
Rise resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
|
1564 |
+
If time have any wrinkle graven there,
|
1565 |
+
If any, be a satire to decay,
|
1566 |
+
And make time's spoils despised everywhere.
|
1567 |
+
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
|
1568 |
+
So thou prevent'st his scythe, and crooked knife.
|
1569 |
+
|
1570 |
+
|
1571 |
+
|
1572 |
+
O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,
|
1573 |
+
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
|
1574 |
+
Both truth and beauty on my love depends:
|
1575 |
+
So dost thou too, and therein dignified:
|
1576 |
+
Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,
|
1577 |
+
'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,
|
1578 |
+
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:
|
1579 |
+
But best is best, if never intermixed'?
|
1580 |
+
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
|
1581 |
+
Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,
|
1582 |
+
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:
|
1583 |
+
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
|
1584 |
+
Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,
|
1585 |
+
To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.
|
1586 |
+
|
1587 |
+
|
1588 |
+
|
1589 |
+
My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,
|
1590 |
+
I love not less, though less the show appear,
|
1591 |
+
That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,
|
1592 |
+
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
|
1593 |
+
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
|
1594 |
+
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
|
1595 |
+
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
|
1596 |
+
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
|
1597 |
+
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
|
1598 |
+
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
|
1599 |
+
But that wild music burthens every bough,
|
1600 |
+
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
|
1601 |
+
Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:
|
1602 |
+
Because I would not dull you with my song.
|
1603 |
+
|
1604 |
+
|
1605 |
+
|
1606 |
+
Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,
|
1607 |
+
That having such a scope to show her pride,
|
1608 |
+
The argument all bare is of more worth
|
1609 |
+
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
|
1610 |
+
O blame me not if I no more can write!
|
1611 |
+
Look in your glass and there appears a face,
|
1612 |
+
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
|
1613 |
+
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
|
1614 |
+
Were it not sinful then striving to mend,
|
1615 |
+
To mar the subject that before was well?
|
1616 |
+
For to no other pass my verses tend,
|
1617 |
+
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.
|
1618 |
+
And more, much more than in my verse can sit,
|
1619 |
+
Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.
|
1620 |
+
|
1621 |
+
|
1622 |
+
|
1623 |
+
To me fair friend you never can be old,
|
1624 |
+
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
|
1625 |
+
Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,
|
1626 |
+
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
|
1627 |
+
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,
|
1628 |
+
In process of the seasons have I seen,
|
1629 |
+
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
|
1630 |
+
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
|
1631 |
+
Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,
|
1632 |
+
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived,
|
1633 |
+
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand
|
1634 |
+
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
|
1635 |
+
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,
|
1636 |
+
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
|
1637 |
+
|
1638 |
+
|
1639 |
+
|
1640 |
+
Let not my love be called idolatry,
|
1641 |
+
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
|
1642 |
+
Since all alike my songs and praises be
|
1643 |
+
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
|
1644 |
+
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
|
1645 |
+
Still constant in a wondrous excellence,
|
1646 |
+
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
|
1647 |
+
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
|
1648 |
+
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
|
1649 |
+
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words,
|
1650 |
+
And in this change is my invention spent,
|
1651 |
+
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
|
1652 |
+
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
|
1653 |
+
Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
|
1654 |
+
|
1655 |
+
|
1656 |
+
|
1657 |
+
When in the chronicle of wasted time,
|
1658 |
+
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
|
1659 |
+
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
|
1660 |
+
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,
|
1661 |
+
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
|
1662 |
+
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
|
1663 |
+
I see their antique pen would have expressed,
|
1664 |
+
Even such a beauty as you master now.
|
1665 |
+
So all their praises are but prophecies
|
1666 |
+
Of this our time, all you prefiguring,
|
1667 |
+
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
|
1668 |
+
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
|
1669 |
+
For we which now behold these present days,
|
1670 |
+
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
|
1671 |
+
|
1672 |
+
|
1673 |
+
|
1674 |
+
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,
|
1675 |
+
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
|
1676 |
+
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
|
1677 |
+
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
|
1678 |
+
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
|
1679 |
+
And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
|
1680 |
+
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
|
1681 |
+
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
|
1682 |
+
Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
|
1683 |
+
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
|
1684 |
+
Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,
|
1685 |
+
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
|
1686 |
+
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
|
1687 |
+
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
|
1688 |
+
|
1689 |
+
|
1690 |
+
|
1691 |
+
What's in the brain that ink may character,
|
1692 |
+
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit,
|
1693 |
+
What's new to speak, what now to register,
|
1694 |
+
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
|
1695 |
+
Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine,
|
1696 |
+
I must each day say o'er the very same,
|
1697 |
+
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
|
1698 |
+
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
|
1699 |
+
So that eternal love in love's fresh case,
|
1700 |
+
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
|
1701 |
+
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
|
1702 |
+
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
|
1703 |
+
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
|
1704 |
+
Where time and outward form would show it dead.
|
1705 |
+
|
1706 |
+
|
1707 |
+
|
1708 |
+
O never say that I was false of heart,
|
1709 |
+
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
|
1710 |
+
As easy might I from my self depart,
|
1711 |
+
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
|
1712 |
+
That is my home of love, if I have ranged,
|
1713 |
+
Like him that travels I return again,
|
1714 |
+
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
|
1715 |
+
So that my self bring water for my stain,
|
1716 |
+
Never believe though in my nature reigned,
|
1717 |
+
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
|
1718 |
+
That it could so preposterously be stained,
|
1719 |
+
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
|
1720 |
+
For nothing this wide universe I call,
|
1721 |
+
Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.
|
1722 |
+
|
1723 |
+
|
1724 |
+
|
1725 |
+
Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
|
1726 |
+
And made my self a motley to the view,
|
1727 |
+
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
|
1728 |
+
Made old offences of affections new.
|
1729 |
+
Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
|
1730 |
+
Askance and strangely: but by all above,
|
1731 |
+
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
|
1732 |
+
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
|
1733 |
+
Now all is done, have what shall have no end,
|
1734 |
+
Mine appetite I never more will grind
|
1735 |
+
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
|
1736 |
+
A god in love, to whom I am confined.
|
1737 |
+
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
|
1738 |
+
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
|
1739 |
+
|
1740 |
+
|
1741 |
+
|
1742 |
+
O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
|
1743 |
+
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
|
1744 |
+
That did not better for my life provide,
|
1745 |
+
Than public means which public manners breeds.
|
1746 |
+
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
|
1747 |
+
And almost thence my nature is subdued
|
1748 |
+
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
|
1749 |
+
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
|
1750 |
+
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,
|
1751 |
+
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection,
|
1752 |
+
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
|
1753 |
+
Nor double penance to correct correction.
|
1754 |
+
Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,
|
1755 |
+
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
|
1756 |
+
|
1757 |
+
|
1758 |
+
|
1759 |
+
Your love and pity doth th' impression fill,
|
1760 |
+
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,
|
1761 |
+
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
|
1762 |
+
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
|
1763 |
+
You are my all the world, and I must strive,
|
1764 |
+
To know my shames and praises from your tongue,
|
1765 |
+
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
|
1766 |
+
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
|
1767 |
+
In so profound abysm I throw all care
|
1768 |
+
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense,
|
1769 |
+
To critic and to flatterer stopped are:
|
1770 |
+
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.
|
1771 |
+
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
|
1772 |
+
That all the world besides methinks are dead.
|
1773 |
+
|
1774 |
+
|
1775 |
+
|
1776 |
+
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
|
1777 |
+
And that which governs me to go about,
|
1778 |
+
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
|
1779 |
+
Seems seeing, but effectually is out:
|
1780 |
+
For it no form delivers to the heart
|
1781 |
+
Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch,
|
1782 |
+
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
|
1783 |
+
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:
|
1784 |
+
For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
|
1785 |
+
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
|
1786 |
+
The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:
|
1787 |
+
The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
|
1788 |
+
Incapable of more, replete with you,
|
1789 |
+
My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.
|
1790 |
+
|
1791 |
+
|
1792 |
+
|
1793 |
+
Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you
|
1794 |
+
Drink up the monarch's plague this flattery?
|
1795 |
+
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,
|
1796 |
+
And that your love taught it this alchemy?
|
1797 |
+
To make of monsters, and things indigest,
|
1798 |
+
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
|
1799 |
+
Creating every bad a perfect best
|
1800 |
+
As fast as objects to his beams assemble:
|
1801 |
+
O 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing,
|
1802 |
+
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,
|
1803 |
+
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
|
1804 |
+
And to his palate doth prepare the cup.
|
1805 |
+
If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin,
|
1806 |
+
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.
|
1807 |
+
|
1808 |
+
|
1809 |
+
|
1810 |
+
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
|
1811 |
+
Even those that said I could not love you dearer,
|
1812 |
+
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,
|
1813 |
+
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,
|
1814 |
+
But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents
|
1815 |
+
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
|
1816 |
+
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
|
1817 |
+
Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things:
|
1818 |
+
Alas why fearing of time's tyranny,
|
1819 |
+
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'
|
1820 |
+
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
|
1821 |
+
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
|
1822 |
+
Love is a babe, then might I not say so
|
1823 |
+
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.
|
1824 |
+
|
1825 |
+
|
1826 |
+
|
1827 |
+
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
|
1828 |
+
Admit impediments, love is not love
|
1829 |
+
Which alters when it alteration finds,
|
1830 |
+
Or bends with the remover to remove.
|
1831 |
+
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
|
1832 |
+
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
|
1833 |
+
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
|
1834 |
+
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
|
1835 |
+
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
|
1836 |
+
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
|
1837 |
+
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
|
1838 |
+
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
|
1839 |
+
If this be error and upon me proved,
|
1840 |
+
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
|
1841 |
+
|
1842 |
+
|
1843 |
+
|
1844 |
+
Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,
|
1845 |
+
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
|
1846 |
+
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
|
1847 |
+
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,
|
1848 |
+
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
|
1849 |
+
And given to time your own dear-purchased right,
|
1850 |
+
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
|
1851 |
+
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
|
1852 |
+
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
|
1853 |
+
And on just proof surmise, accumulate,
|
1854 |
+
Bring me within the level of your frown,
|
1855 |
+
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:
|
1856 |
+
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
|
1857 |
+
The constancy and virtue of your love.
|
1858 |
+
|
1859 |
+
|
1860 |
+
|
1861 |
+
Like as to make our appetite more keen
|
1862 |
+
With eager compounds we our palate urge,
|
1863 |
+
As to prevent our maladies unseen,
|
1864 |
+
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.
|
1865 |
+
Even so being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
|
1866 |
+
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
|
1867 |
+
And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,
|
1868 |
+
To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
|
1869 |
+
Thus policy in love t' anticipate
|
1870 |
+
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,
|
1871 |
+
And brought to medicine a healthful state
|
1872 |
+
Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.
|
1873 |
+
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
|
1874 |
+
Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you.
|
1875 |
+
|
1876 |
+
|
1877 |
+
|
1878 |
+
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears
|
1879 |
+
Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
|
1880 |
+
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
|
1881 |
+
Still losing when I saw my self to win!
|
1882 |
+
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
|
1883 |
+
Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!
|
1884 |
+
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
|
1885 |
+
In the distraction of this madding fever!
|
1886 |
+
O benefit of ill, now I find true
|
1887 |
+
That better is, by evil still made better.
|
1888 |
+
And ruined love when it is built anew
|
1889 |
+
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
|
1890 |
+
So I return rebuked to my content,
|
1891 |
+
And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.
|
1892 |
+
|
1893 |
+
|
1894 |
+
|
1895 |
+
That you were once unkind befriends me now,
|
1896 |
+
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
|
1897 |
+
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
|
1898 |
+
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
|
1899 |
+
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
|
1900 |
+
As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time,
|
1901 |
+
And I a tyrant have no leisure taken
|
1902 |
+
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
|
1903 |
+
O that our night of woe might have remembered
|
1904 |
+
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
|
1905 |
+
And soon to you, as you to me then tendered
|
1906 |
+
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
|
1907 |
+
But that your trespass now becomes a fee,
|
1908 |
+
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
|
1909 |
+
|
1910 |
+
|
1911 |
+
|
1912 |
+
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
|
1913 |
+
When not to be, receives reproach of being,
|
1914 |
+
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
|
1915 |
+
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
|
1916 |
+
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
|
1917 |
+
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
|
1918 |
+
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
|
1919 |
+
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
|
1920 |
+
No, I am that I am, and they that level
|
1921 |
+
At my abuses, reckon up their own,
|
1922 |
+
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
|
1923 |
+
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown
|
1924 |
+
Unless this general evil they maintain,
|
1925 |
+
All men are bad and in their badness reign.
|
1926 |
+
|
1927 |
+
|
1928 |
+
|
1929 |
+
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
|
1930 |
+
Full charactered with lasting memory,
|
1931 |
+
Which shall above that idle rank remain
|
1932 |
+
Beyond all date even to eternity.
|
1933 |
+
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
|
1934 |
+
Have faculty by nature to subsist,
|
1935 |
+
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
|
1936 |
+
Of thee, thy record never can be missed:
|
1937 |
+
That poor retention could not so much hold,
|
1938 |
+
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,
|
1939 |
+
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
|
1940 |
+
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
|
1941 |
+
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
|
1942 |
+
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
|
1943 |
+
|
1944 |
+
|
1945 |
+
|
1946 |
+
No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,
|
1947 |
+
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
|
1948 |
+
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
|
1949 |
+
They are but dressings Of a former sight:
|
1950 |
+
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,
|
1951 |
+
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
|
1952 |
+
And rather make them born to our desire,
|
1953 |
+
Than think that we before have heard them told:
|
1954 |
+
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
|
1955 |
+
Not wond'ring at the present, nor the past,
|
1956 |
+
For thy records, and what we see doth lie,
|
1957 |
+
Made more or less by thy continual haste:
|
1958 |
+
This I do vow and this shall ever be,
|
1959 |
+
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.
|
1960 |
+
|
1961 |
+
|
1962 |
+
|
1963 |
+
If my dear love were but the child of state,
|
1964 |
+
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
|
1965 |
+
As subject to time's love or to time's hate,
|
1966 |
+
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
|
1967 |
+
No it was builded far from accident,
|
1968 |
+
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
|
1969 |
+
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
|
1970 |
+
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
|
1971 |
+
It fears not policy that heretic,
|
1972 |
+
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
|
1973 |
+
But all alone stands hugely politic,
|
1974 |
+
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
|
1975 |
+
To this I witness call the fools of time,
|
1976 |
+
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
|
1977 |
+
|
1978 |
+
|
1979 |
+
|
1980 |
+
Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
|
1981 |
+
With my extern the outward honouring,
|
1982 |
+
Or laid great bases for eternity,
|
1983 |
+
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
|
1984 |
+
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
|
1985 |
+
Lose all, and more by paying too much rent
|
1986 |
+
For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,
|
1987 |
+
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?
|
1988 |
+
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
|
1989 |
+
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
|
1990 |
+
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
|
1991 |
+
But mutual render, only me for thee.
|
1992 |
+
Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul
|
1993 |
+
When most impeached, stands least in thy control.
|
1994 |
+
|
1995 |
+
|
1996 |
+
|
1997 |
+
O thou my lovely boy who in thy power,
|
1998 |
+
Dost hold Time's fickle glass his fickle hour:
|
1999 |
+
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st,
|
2000 |
+
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st.
|
2001 |
+
If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)
|
2002 |
+
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
|
2003 |
+
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
|
2004 |
+
May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
|
2005 |
+
Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,
|
2006 |
+
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!
|
2007 |
+
Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
|
2008 |
+
And her quietus is to render thee.
|
2009 |
+
|
2010 |
+
|
2011 |
+
|
2012 |
+
In the old age black was not counted fair,
|
2013 |
+
Or if it were it bore not beauty's name:
|
2014 |
+
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
|
2015 |
+
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,
|
2016 |
+
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
|
2017 |
+
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
|
2018 |
+
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
|
2019 |
+
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
|
2020 |
+
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
|
2021 |
+
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
|
2022 |
+
At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
|
2023 |
+
Slandering creation with a false esteem,
|
2024 |
+
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
|
2025 |
+
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
|
2026 |
+
|
2027 |
+
|
2028 |
+
|
2029 |
+
How oft when thou, my music, music play'st,
|
2030 |
+
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
|
2031 |
+
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st
|
2032 |
+
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
|
2033 |
+
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,
|
2034 |
+
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
|
2035 |
+
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,
|
2036 |
+
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand.
|
2037 |
+
To be so tickled they would change their state
|
2038 |
+
And situation with those dancing chips,
|
2039 |
+
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
|
2040 |
+
Making dead wood more blest than living lips,
|
2041 |
+
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
|
2042 |
+
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
|
2043 |
+
|
2044 |
+
|
2045 |
+
|
2046 |
+
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
|
2047 |
+
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
|
2048 |
+
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame,
|
2049 |
+
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
|
2050 |
+
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
|
2051 |
+
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
|
2052 |
+
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
|
2053 |
+
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
|
2054 |
+
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
|
2055 |
+
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,
|
2056 |
+
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,
|
2057 |
+
Before a joy proposed behind a dream.
|
2058 |
+
All this the world well knows yet none knows well,
|
2059 |
+
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
|
2060 |
+
|
2061 |
+
|
2062 |
+
|
2063 |
+
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,
|
2064 |
+
Coral is far more red, than her lips red,
|
2065 |
+
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
|
2066 |
+
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:
|
2067 |
+
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
|
2068 |
+
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
|
2069 |
+
And in some perfumes is there more delight,
|
2070 |
+
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
|
2071 |
+
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
|
2072 |
+
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
|
2073 |
+
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
|
2074 |
+
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
|
2075 |
+
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,
|
2076 |
+
As any she belied with false compare.
|
2077 |
+
|
2078 |
+
|
2079 |
+
|
2080 |
+
Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
|
2081 |
+
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
|
2082 |
+
For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
|
2083 |
+
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
|
2084 |
+
Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,
|
2085 |
+
Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;
|
2086 |
+
To say they err, I dare not be so bold,
|
2087 |
+
Although I swear it to my self alone.
|
2088 |
+
And to be sure that is not false I swear,
|
2089 |
+
A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,
|
2090 |
+
One on another's neck do witness bear
|
2091 |
+
Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place.
|
2092 |
+
In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
|
2093 |
+
And thence this slander as I think proceeds.
|
2094 |
+
|
2095 |
+
|
2096 |
+
|
2097 |
+
Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,
|
2098 |
+
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
|
2099 |
+
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
|
2100 |
+
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
|
2101 |
+
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
|
2102 |
+
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
|
2103 |
+
Nor that full star that ushers in the even
|
2104 |
+
Doth half that glory to the sober west
|
2105 |
+
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
|
2106 |
+
O let it then as well beseem thy heart
|
2107 |
+
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
|
2108 |
+
And suit thy pity like in every part.
|
2109 |
+
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
|
2110 |
+
And all they foul that thy complexion lack.
|
2111 |
+
|
2112 |
+
|
2113 |
+
|
2114 |
+
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
|
2115 |
+
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;
|
2116 |
+
Is't not enough to torture me alone,
|
2117 |
+
But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
|
2118 |
+
Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,
|
2119 |
+
And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,
|
2120 |
+
Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,
|
2121 |
+
A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:
|
2122 |
+
Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
|
2123 |
+
But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail,
|
2124 |
+
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,
|
2125 |
+
Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.
|
2126 |
+
And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,
|
2127 |
+
Perforce am thine and all that is in me.
|
2128 |
+
|
2129 |
+
|
2130 |
+
|
2131 |
+
So now I have confessed that he is thine,
|
2132 |
+
And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,
|
2133 |
+
My self I'll forfeit, so that other mine,
|
2134 |
+
Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:
|
2135 |
+
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
|
2136 |
+
For thou art covetous, and he is kind,
|
2137 |
+
He learned but surety-like to write for me,
|
2138 |
+
Under that bond that him as fist doth bind.
|
2139 |
+
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
|
2140 |
+
Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,
|
2141 |
+
And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,
|
2142 |
+
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
|
2143 |
+
Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,
|
2144 |
+
He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
|
2145 |
+
|
2146 |
+
|
2147 |
+
|
2148 |
+
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
|
2149 |
+
And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in over-plus,
|
2150 |
+
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
|
2151 |
+
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
|
2152 |
+
Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
|
2153 |
+
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
|
2154 |
+
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
|
2155 |
+
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
|
2156 |
+
The sea all water, yet receives rain still,
|
2157 |
+
And in abundance addeth to his store,
|
2158 |
+
So thou being rich in will add to thy will
|
2159 |
+
One will of mine to make thy large will more.
|
2160 |
+
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,
|
2161 |
+
Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'
|
2162 |
+
|
2163 |
+
|
2164 |
+
|
2165 |
+
If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
|
2166 |
+
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy 'Will',
|
2167 |
+
And will thy soul knows is admitted there,
|
2168 |
+
Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.
|
2169 |
+
'Will', will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
|
2170 |
+
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one,
|
2171 |
+
In things of great receipt with case we prove,
|
2172 |
+
Among a number one is reckoned none.
|
2173 |
+
Then in the number let me pass untold,
|
2174 |
+
Though in thy store's account I one must be,
|
2175 |
+
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,
|
2176 |
+
That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.
|
2177 |
+
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
|
2178 |
+
And then thou lov'st me for my name is Will.
|
2179 |
+
|
2180 |
+
|
2181 |
+
|
2182 |
+
Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
|
2183 |
+
That they behold and see not what they see?
|
2184 |
+
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
|
2185 |
+
Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.
|
2186 |
+
If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,
|
2187 |
+
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
|
2188 |
+
Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
|
2189 |
+
Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
|
2190 |
+
Why should my heart think that a several plot,
|
2191 |
+
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?
|
2192 |
+
Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not
|
2193 |
+
To put fair truth upon so foul a face?
|
2194 |
+
In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,
|
2195 |
+
And to this false plague are they now transferred.
|
2196 |
+
|
2197 |
+
|
2198 |
+
|
2199 |
+
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
|
2200 |
+
I do believe her though I know she lies,
|
2201 |
+
That she might think me some untutored youth,
|
2202 |
+
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
|
2203 |
+
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
|
2204 |
+
Although she knows my days are past the best,
|
2205 |
+
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue,
|
2206 |
+
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
|
2207 |
+
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
|
2208 |
+
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
|
2209 |
+
O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
|
2210 |
+
And age in love, loves not to have years told.
|
2211 |
+
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
|
2212 |
+
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
|
2213 |
+
|
2214 |
+
|
2215 |
+
|
2216 |
+
O call not me to justify the wrong,
|
2217 |
+
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart,
|
2218 |
+
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,
|
2219 |
+
Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
|
2220 |
+
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,
|
2221 |
+
Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,
|
2222 |
+
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
|
2223 |
+
Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?
|
2224 |
+
Let me excuse thee, ah my love well knows,
|
2225 |
+
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
|
2226 |
+
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
|
2227 |
+
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
|
2228 |
+
Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,
|
2229 |
+
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.
|
2230 |
+
|
2231 |
+
|
2232 |
+
|
2233 |
+
Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press
|
2234 |
+
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:
|
2235 |
+
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express,
|
2236 |
+
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
|
2237 |
+
If I might teach thee wit better it were,
|
2238 |
+
Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,
|
2239 |
+
As testy sick men when their deaths be near,
|
2240 |
+
No news but health from their physicians know.
|
2241 |
+
For if I should despair I should grow mad,
|
2242 |
+
And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
|
2243 |
+
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
|
2244 |
+
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
|
2245 |
+
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
|
2246 |
+
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.
|
2247 |
+
|
2248 |
+
|
2249 |
+
|
2250 |
+
In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
|
2251 |
+
For they in thee a thousand errors note,
|
2252 |
+
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
|
2253 |
+
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.
|
2254 |
+
Nor are mine cars with thy tongue's tune delighted,
|
2255 |
+
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
|
2256 |
+
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
|
2257 |
+
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
|
2258 |
+
But my five wits, nor my five senses can
|
2259 |
+
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
|
2260 |
+
Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
|
2261 |
+
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:
|
2262 |
+
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
|
2263 |
+
That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.
|
2264 |
+
|
2265 |
+
|
2266 |
+
|
2267 |
+
Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
|
2268 |
+
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,
|
2269 |
+
O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,
|
2270 |
+
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,
|
2271 |
+
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,
|
2272 |
+
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,
|
2273 |
+
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
|
2274 |
+
Robbed others' beds' revenues of their rents.
|
2275 |
+
Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov'st those,
|
2276 |
+
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,
|
2277 |
+
Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,
|
2278 |
+
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
|
2279 |
+
If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
|
2280 |
+
By self-example mayst thou be denied.
|
2281 |
+
|
2282 |
+
|
2283 |
+
|
2284 |
+
Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,
|
2285 |
+
One of her feathered creatures broke away,
|
2286 |
+
Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch
|
2287 |
+
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:
|
2288 |
+
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
|
2289 |
+
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,
|
2290 |
+
To follow that which flies before her face:
|
2291 |
+
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
|
2292 |
+
So run'st thou after that which flies from thee,
|
2293 |
+
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind,
|
2294 |
+
But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:
|
2295 |
+
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind.
|
2296 |
+
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
|
2297 |
+
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
|
2298 |
+
|
2299 |
+
|
2300 |
+
|
2301 |
+
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
|
2302 |
+
Which like two spirits do suggest me still,
|
2303 |
+
The better angel is a man right fair:
|
2304 |
+
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
|
2305 |
+
To win me soon to hell my female evil,
|
2306 |
+
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
|
2307 |
+
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:
|
2308 |
+
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
|
2309 |
+
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
|
2310 |
+
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,
|
2311 |
+
But being both from me both to each friend,
|
2312 |
+
I guess one angel in another's hell.
|
2313 |
+
Yet this shall I ne'er know but live in doubt,
|
2314 |
+
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
|
2315 |
+
|
2316 |
+
|
2317 |
+
|
2318 |
+
Those lips that Love's own hand did make,
|
2319 |
+
Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate',
|
2320 |
+
To me that languished for her sake:
|
2321 |
+
But when she saw my woeful state,
|
2322 |
+
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
|
2323 |
+
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,
|
2324 |
+
Was used in giving gentle doom:
|
2325 |
+
And taught it thus anew to greet:
|
2326 |
+
'I hate' she altered with an end,
|
2327 |
+
That followed it as gentle day,
|
2328 |
+
Doth follow night who like a fiend
|
2329 |
+
From heaven to hell is flown away.
|
2330 |
+
'I hate', from hate away she threw,
|
2331 |
+
And saved my life saying 'not you'.
|
2332 |
+
|
2333 |
+
Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,
|
2334 |
+
My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
|
2335 |
+
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
|
2336 |
+
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
|
2337 |
+
Why so large cost having so short a lease,
|
2338 |
+
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
|
2339 |
+
Shall worms inheritors of this excess
|
2340 |
+
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
|
2341 |
+
Then soul live thou upon thy servant's loss,
|
2342 |
+
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
|
2343 |
+
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
|
2344 |
+
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
|
2345 |
+
So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
|
2346 |
+
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.
|
2347 |
+
|
2348 |
+
My love is as a fever longing still,
|
2349 |
+
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
|
2350 |
+
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
|
2351 |
+
Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please:
|
2352 |
+
My reason the physician to my love,
|
2353 |
+
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept
|
2354 |
+
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
|
2355 |
+
Desire is death, which physic did except.
|
2356 |
+
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
|
2357 |
+
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest,
|
2358 |
+
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,
|
2359 |
+
At random from the truth vainly expressed.
|
2360 |
+
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
|
2361 |
+
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
|
2362 |
+
|
2363 |
+
O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,
|
2364 |
+
Which have no correspondence with true sight,
|
2365 |
+
Or if they have, where is my judgment fled,
|
2366 |
+
That censures falsely what they see aright?
|
2367 |
+
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
|
2368 |
+
What means the world to say it is not so?
|
2369 |
+
If it be not, then love doth well denote,
|
2370 |
+
Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,
|
2371 |
+
How can it? O how can love's eye be true,
|
2372 |
+
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?
|
2373 |
+
No marvel then though I mistake my view,
|
2374 |
+
The sun it self sees not, till heaven clears.
|
2375 |
+
O cunning love, with tears thou keep'st me blind,
|
2376 |
+
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
|
2377 |
+
|
2378 |
+
Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,
|
2379 |
+
When I against my self with thee partake?
|
2380 |
+
Do I not think on thee when I forgot
|
2381 |
+
Am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?
|
2382 |
+
Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,
|
2383 |
+
On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon,
|
2384 |
+
Nay if thou lour'st on me do I not spend
|
2385 |
+
Revenge upon my self with present moan?
|
2386 |
+
What merit do I in my self respect,
|
2387 |
+
That is so proud thy service to despise,
|
2388 |
+
When all my best doth worship thy defect,
|
2389 |
+
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
|
2390 |
+
But love hate on for now I know thy mind,
|
2391 |
+
Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind.
|
2392 |
+
|
2393 |
+
O from what power hast thou this powerful might,
|
2394 |
+
With insufficiency my heart to sway,
|
2395 |
+
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
|
2396 |
+
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
|
2397 |
+
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
|
2398 |
+
That in the very refuse of thy deeds,
|
2399 |
+
There is such strength and warrantise of skill,
|
2400 |
+
That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?
|
2401 |
+
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,
|
2402 |
+
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
|
2403 |
+
O though I love what others do abhor,
|
2404 |
+
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.
|
2405 |
+
If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
|
2406 |
+
More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
|
2407 |
+
|
2408 |
+
Love is too young to know what conscience is,
|
2409 |
+
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
|
2410 |
+
Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss,
|
2411 |
+
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.
|
2412 |
+
For thou betraying me, I do betray
|
2413 |
+
My nobler part to my gross body's treason,
|
2414 |
+
My soul doth tell my body that he may,
|
2415 |
+
Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason,
|
2416 |
+
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,
|
2417 |
+
As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,
|
2418 |
+
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,
|
2419 |
+
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.
|
2420 |
+
No want of conscience hold it that I call,
|
2421 |
+
Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.
|
2422 |
+
|
2423 |
+
In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
|
2424 |
+
But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,
|
2425 |
+
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,
|
2426 |
+
In vowing new hate after new love bearing:
|
2427 |
+
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
|
2428 |
+
When I break twenty? I am perjured most,
|
2429 |
+
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:
|
2430 |
+
And all my honest faith in thee is lost.
|
2431 |
+
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:
|
2432 |
+
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
|
2433 |
+
And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,
|
2434 |
+
Or made them swear against the thing they see.
|
2435 |
+
For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured I,
|
2436 |
+
To swear against the truth so foul a be.
|
2437 |
+
|
2438 |
+
Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,
|
2439 |
+
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
|
2440 |
+
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
|
2441 |
+
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground:
|
2442 |
+
Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love,
|
2443 |
+
A dateless lively heat still to endure,
|
2444 |
+
And grew a seeting bath which yet men prove,
|
2445 |
+
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:
|
2446 |
+
But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
|
2447 |
+
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast,
|
2448 |
+
I sick withal the help of bath desired,
|
2449 |
+
And thither hied a sad distempered guest.
|
2450 |
+
But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,
|
2451 |
+
Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress' eyes.
|
2452 |
+
|
2453 |
+
The little Love-god lying once asleep,
|
2454 |
+
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
|
2455 |
+
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,
|
2456 |
+
Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,
|
2457 |
+
The fairest votary took up that fire,
|
2458 |
+
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,
|
2459 |
+
And so the general of hot desire,
|
2460 |
+
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.
|
2461 |
+
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
|
2462 |
+
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
|
2463 |
+
Growing a bath and healthful remedy,
|
2464 |
+
For men discased, but I my mistress' thrall,
|
2465 |
+
Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
|
2466 |
+
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
|
2467 |
+
|
2468 |
+
|
2469 |
+
THE END
|