text
stringlengths 0
85
|
|---|
36 |
Let me confess that we two must be twain, |
Although our undivided loves are one: |
So shall those blots that do with me remain, |
Without thy help, by me be borne alone. |
In our two loves there is but one respect, |
Though in our lives a separable spite, |
Which though it alter not love's sole effect, |
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight. |
I may not evermore acknowledge thee, |
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, |
Nor thou with public kindness honour me, |
Unless thou take that honour from thy name: |
But do not so, I love thee in such sort, |
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report. |
37 |
As a decrepit father takes delight, |
To see his active child do deeds of youth, |
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite |
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. |
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, |
Or any of these all, or all, or more |
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit, |
I make my love engrafted to this store: |
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, |
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give, |
That I in thy abundance am sufficed, |
And by a part of all thy glory live: |
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee, |
This wish I have, then ten times happy me. |
38 |
How can my muse want subject to invent |
While thou dost breathe that pour'st into my verse, |
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent, |
For every vulgar paper to rehearse? |
O give thy self the thanks if aught in me, |
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight, |
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, |
When thou thy self dost give invention light? |
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth |
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate, |
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth |
Eternal numbers to outlive long date. |
If my slight muse do please these curious days, |
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. |
39 |
O how thy worth with manners may I sing, |
When thou art all the better part of me? |
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring: |
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee? |
Even for this, let us divided live, |
And our dear love lose name of single one, |
That by this separation I may give: |
That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone: |
O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove, |
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave, |
To entertain the time with thoughts of love, |
Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive. |
And that thou teachest how to make one twain, |
By praising him here who doth hence remain. |
40 |
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all, |
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? |
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call, |
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more: |
Then if for my love, thou my love receivest, |
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest, |
But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest |
By wilful taste of what thy self refusest. |
I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief |
Although thou steal thee all my poverty: |
And yet love knows it is a greater grief |
To bear greater wrong, than hate's known injury. |
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, |
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes. |
41 |
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, |
When I am sometime absent from thy heart, |
Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits, |
For still temptation follows where thou art. |
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, |
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed. |
And when a woman woos, what woman's son, |
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed? |
Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, |
And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth, |
Who lead thee in their riot even there |
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth: |