xab

  I have no precious time at all to spend;
  Nor services to do, till you require.
  Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
  Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
  Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
  When you have bid your servant once adieu;
  Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
  Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
  But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
  Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
    So true a fool is love, that in your will,
    Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

  LVIII

  That god forbid, that made me first your slave,
  I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
  Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
  Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
  O! let me suffer, being at your beck,
  The imprison'd absence of your liberty;
  And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
  Without accusing you of injury.
  Be where you list, your charter is so strong
  That you yourself may privilage your time
  To what you will; to you it doth belong
  Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
    I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
    Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

  LIX

  If there be nothing new, but that which is
  Hath been before, how are our brains beguil'd,
  Which labouring for invention bear amiss
  The second burthen of a former child!
  O! that record could with a backward look,
  Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
  Show me your image in some antique book,
  Since mind at first in character was done!
  That I might see what the old world could say
  To this composed wonder of your frame;
  Wh'r we are mended, or wh'r better they,
  Or whether revolution be the same.
    O! sure I am the wits of former days,
    To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

  LX

  Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  Each changing place with that which goes before,
  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  Nativity, once in the main of light,
  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
  Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
  Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
    And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand.
    Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

  LXI

  Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
  My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
  Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
  While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
  Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
  So far from home into my deeds to pry,
  To find out shames and idle hours in me,
  The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?
  O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
  It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
  Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
  To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
    For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
    From me far off, with others all too near.

  LXII

  Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
  And all my soul, and all my every part;
  And for this sin there is no remedy,
  It is so grounded inward in my heart.
  Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
  No shape so true, no truth of such account;
  And for myself mine own worth do define,
  As I all other in all worths surmount.
  But when my glass shows me myself indeed
  Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,
  Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
  Self so self-loving were iniquity.
    'Tis thee,--myself,--that for myself I praise,
    Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

  LXIII

  Against my love shall be as I am now,
  With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
  When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
  With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
  Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night;
  And all those beauties whereof now he's king
  Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
  Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
  For such a time do I now fortify
  Against confounding age's cruel knife,
  That he shall never cut from memory
  My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
    His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
    And they shall live, and he in them still green.

  LXIV

  When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
  The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
  When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd,
  And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
  When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
  Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
  And the firm soil win of the watery main,
  Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
  When I have seen such interchange of state,
  Or state itself confounded, to decay;
  Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate--
  That Time will come and take my love away.
    This thought is as a death which cannot choose
    But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.

  LXV

  Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
  But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
  How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
  Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
  O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
  Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
  When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
  Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
  O fearful meditation! where, alack,
  Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
  Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
  Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
    O! none, unless this miracle have might,
    That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

  LXVI

  Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
  As to behold desert a beggar born,
  And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
  And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
  And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
  And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
  And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
  And strength by limping sway disabled
  And art made tongue-tied by authority,
  And folly--doctor-like--controlling skill,
  And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
  And captive good attending captain ill:
    Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
    Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

  LXVII

  Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,
  And with his presence grace impiety,
  That sin by him advantage should achieve,
  And lace itself with his society?
  Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
  And steel dead seeming of his living hue?
  Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
  Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
  Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,
  Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins?
  For she hath no exchequer now but his,
  And proud of many, lives upon his gains.
    O! him she stores, to show what wealth she had
    In days long since, before these last so bad.

  LXVIII

  Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
  When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
  Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
  Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
  Before the golden tresses of the dead,
  The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
  To live a second life on second head;
  Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
  In him those holy antique hours are seen,
  Without all ornament, itself and true,
  Making no summer of another's green,
  Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
    And him as for a map doth Nature store,
    To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

  LXIX

  Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
  Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
  All tongues--the voice of souls--give thee that due,
  Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
  Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;
  But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own,
  In other accents do this praise confound
  By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
  They look into the beauty of thy mind,
  And that in guess they measure by thy deeds;
  Then--churls--their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,
  To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
    But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
    The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.

  LXX

  That thou art blam'd shall not be thy defect,
  For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
  The ornament of beauty is suspect,
  A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
  So thou be good, slander doth but approve
  Thy worth the greater being woo'd of time;
  For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
  And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
  Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days
  Either not assail'd, or victor being charg'd;
  Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
  To tie up envy, evermore enlarg'd,
    If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show,
    Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

  LXXI

  No longer mourn for me when I am dead
  Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
  Give warning to the world that I am fled
  From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
  Nay, if you read this line, remember not
  The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
  That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
  If thinking on me then should make you woe.
  O! if,--I say you look upon this verse,
  When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
  Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
  But let your love even with my life decay;
    Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
    And mock you with me after I am gone.

  LXXII

  O! lest the world should task you to recite
  What merit lived in me, that you should love
  After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
  For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
  Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
  To do more for me than mine own desert,
  And hang more praise upon deceased I
  Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
  O! lest your true love may seem false in this
  That you for love speak well of me untrue,
  My name be buried where my body is,
  And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
    For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
    And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

  LXXIII

  That time of year thou mayst in me behold
  When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
  Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
  In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
  As after sunset fadeth in the west;
  Which by and by black night doth take away,
  Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
  In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
  That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
  As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
  Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

  LXXIV

  But be contented: when that fell arrest
  Without all bail shall carry me away,
  My life hath in this line some interest,
  Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
  When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
  The very part was consecrate to thee:
  The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
  My spirit is thine, the better part of me:
  So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
  The prey of worms, my body being dead;
  The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
  Too base of thee to be remembered.
    The worth of that is that which it contains,
    And that is this, and this with thee remains.

  LXXV

  So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
  Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
  And for the peace of you I hold such strife
  As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
  Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
  Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
  Now counting best to be with you alone,
  Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:
  Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
  And by and by clean starved for a look;
  Possessing or pursuing no delight,
  Save what is had, or must from you be took.
    Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
    Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

  LXXVI

  Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
  So far from variation or quick change?
  Why with the time do I not glance aside
  To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
  Why write I still all one, ever the same,
  And keep invention in a noted weed,
  That every word doth almost tell my name,
  Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
  O! know sweet love I always write of you,
  And you and love are still my argument;
  So all my best is dressing old words new,
  Spending again what is already spent:
    For as the sun is daily new and old,
    So is my love still telling what is told.

  LXXVII

  Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
  Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
  These vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
  And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
  The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
  Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
  Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
  Time's thievish progress to eternity.
  Look! what thy memory cannot contain,
  Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
  Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain,
  To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
    These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
    Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.

  LXXVIII

  So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,
  And found such fair assistance in my verse
  As every alien pen hath got my use
  And under thee their poesy disperse.
  Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing
  And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,
  Have added feathers to the learned's wing
  And given grace a double majesty.
  Yet be most proud of that which I compile,
  Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:
  In others' works thou dost but mend the style,
  And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;
    But thou art all my art, and dost advance
    As high as learning, my rude ignorance.

  LXXIX

  Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
  My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;
  But now my gracious numbers are decay'd,
  And my sick Muse doth give an other place.
  I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
  Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
  Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
  He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
  He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
  From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
  And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
  No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.
    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
    Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.

  LXXX

  O! how I faint when I of you do write,
  Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
  And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
  To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!
  But since your worth--wide as the ocean is,--
  The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
  My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
  On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
  Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
  Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
  Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat,
  He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
    Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
    The worst was this,--my love was my decay.

  LXXXI

  Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
  Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
  From hence your memory death cannot take,
  Although in me each part will be forgotten.
  Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
  Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
  The earth can yield me but a common grave,
  When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
  Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
  Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
  And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
  When all the breathers of this world are dead;
    You still shall live,--such virtue hath my pen,--
    Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

  LXXXII

  I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
  And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
  The dedicated words which writers use
  Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
  Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
  Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;
  And therefore art enforced to seek anew
  Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
  And do so, love; yet when they have devis'd,
  What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
  Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz'd
  In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;
    And their gross painting might be better us'd
    Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus'd.

  LXXXIII

  I never saw that you did painting need,
  And therefore to your fair no painting set;
  I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
  That barren tender of a poet's debt:
  And therefore have I slept in your report,
  That you yourself, being extant, well might show
  How far a modern quill doth come too short,
  Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
  This silence for my sin you did impute,
  Which shall be most my glory being dumb;
  For I impair not beauty being mute,
  When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
    There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
    Than both your poets can in praise devise.

  LXXXIV

  Who is it that says most, which can say more,
  Than this rich praise,--that you alone, are you?
  In whose confine immured is the store
  Which should example where your equal grew.
  Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
  That to his subject lends not some small glory;
  But he that writes of you, if he can tell
  That you are you, so dignifies his story,
  Let him but copy what in you is writ,
  Not making worse what nature made so clear,
  And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
  Making his style admired every where.
    You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
    Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

  LXXXV

  My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,
  While comments of your praise richly compil'd,
  Reserve their character with golden quill,
  And precious phrase by all the Muses fil'd.
  I think good thoughts, whilst others write good words,
  And like unlettered clerk still cry 'Amen'
  To every hymn that able spirit affords,
  In polish'd form of well-refined pen.
  Hearing you praised, I say ''tis so, 'tis true,'
  And to the most of praise add something more;
  But that is in my thought, whose love to you,
  Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.
    Then others, for the breath of words respect,
    Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

  LXXXVI

  Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
  Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
  That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
  Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
  Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,
  Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
  No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
  Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
  He, nor that affable familiar ghost
  Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
  As victors of my silence cannot boast;
  I was not sick of any fear from thence:
    But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
    Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

  LXXXVII

  Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
  And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
  The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
  My bonds in thee are all determinate.
  For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
  And for that riches where is my deserving?
  The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
  And so my patent back again is swerving.
  Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
  Or me to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
  So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
  Comes home again, on better judgement making.
    Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
    In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

  LXXXVIII

  When thou shalt be dispos'd to set me light,
  And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
  Upon thy side, against myself I'll fight,
  And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.
  With mine own weakness, being best acquainted,
  Upon thy part I can set down a story
  Of faults conceal'd, wherein I am attainted;
  That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:
  And I by this will be a gainer too;
  For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
  The injuries that to myself I do,
  Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
    Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
    That for thy right, myself will bear all wrong.

  LXXXIX

  Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
  And I will comment upon that offence:
  Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,
  Against thy reasons making no defence.
  Thou canst not love disgrace me half so ill,
  To set a form upon desired change,
  As I'll myself disgrace; knowing thy will,
  I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange;
  Be absent from thy walks; and in my tongue
  Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
  Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong,
  And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
    For thee, against my self I'll vow debate,
    For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.

  XC

  Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
  Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
  Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
  And do not drop in for an after-loss:
  Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scap'd this sorrow,
  Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;
  Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
  To linger out a purpos'd overthrow.
  If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
  When other petty griefs have done their spite,
  But in the onset come: so shall I taste
  At first the very worst of fortune's might;
    And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
    Compar'd with loss of thee, will not seem so.

  XCI

  Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
  Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
  Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
  Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
  And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
  Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
  But these particulars are not my measure,
  All these I better in one general best.
  Thy love is better than high birth to me,
  Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' costs,
  Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
  And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
    Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
    All this away, and me most wretchcd make.

  XCII

  But do thy worst to steal thyself away,
  For term of life thou art assured mine;
  And life no longer than thy love will stay,
  For it depends upon that love of thine.
  Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
  When in the least of them my life hath end.
  I see a better state to me belongs
  Than that which on thy humour doth depend:
  Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,
  Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie.
  O! what a happy title do I find,
  Happy to have thy love, happy to die!
    But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot?
    Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.

  XCIII

  So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
  Like a deceived husband; so love's face
  May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;
  Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
  For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
  Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
  In many's looks, the false heart's history
  Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange.
  But heaven in thy creation did decree
  That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
  Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,
  Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.
    How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,
    If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!

  XCIV

  They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
  That do not do the thing they most do show,
  Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
  Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
  They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
  And husband nature's riches from expense;
  They are the lords and owners of their faces,
  Others, but stewards of their excellence.
  The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
  Though to itself, it only live and die,
  But if that flower with base infection meet,
  The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
    For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
    Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

  XCV

  How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
  Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
  Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
  O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.
  That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
  Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
  Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise;
  Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
  O! what a mansion have those vices got
  Which for their habitation chose out thee,
  Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
  And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
    Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
    The hardest knife ill-us'd doth lose his edge.

  XCVI

  Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
  Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
  Both grace and faults are lov'd of more and less:
  Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort.
  As on the finger of a throned queen
  The basest jewel will be well esteem'd,
  So are those errors that in thee are seen
  To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.
  How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
  If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
  How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
  if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
    But do not so; I love thee in such sort,
    As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

  XCVII

  How like a winter hath my absence been
  From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
  What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
  What old December's bareness everywhere!
  And yet this time removed was summer's time;
  The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
  Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
  Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
  Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
  But hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit;
  For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
  And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
    Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
    That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

  XCVIII

  From you have I been absent in the spring,
  When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
  Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
  That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
  Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
  Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
  Could make me any summer's story tell,
  Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
  Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
  Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
  They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
  Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
    Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.

  XCIX

  The forward violet thus did I chide:
  Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
  If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
  Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
  In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
  The lily I condemned for thy hand,
  And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
  The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
  One blushing shame, another white despair;
  A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
  And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
  But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
  A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
    More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
    But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee.

  C

  Where art thou Muse that thou forget'st so long,
  To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
  Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
  Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
  Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,
  In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
  Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem
  And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
  Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
  If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
  If any, be a satire to decay,
  And make time's spoils despised every where.
    Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,
    So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.

  CI

  O truant Muse what shall be thy amends
  For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?
  Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
  So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
  Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,
  'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
  Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
  But best is best, if never intermix'd'?
  Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
  Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee
  To make him much outlive a gilded tomb
  And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.
    Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
    To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

  CII

  My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
  I love not less, though less the show appear;
  That love is merchandiz'd, whose rich esteeming,
  The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
  Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
  When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
  As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
  And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
  Not that the summer is less pleasant now
  Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
  But that wild music burthens every bough,
  And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
    Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:
    Because I would not dull you with my song.

  CIII

  Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,
  That having such a scope to show her pride,
  The argument, all bare, is of more worth
  Than when it hath my added praise beside!
  O! blame me not, if I no more can write!
  Look in your glass, and there appears a face
  That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
  Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
  Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
  To mar the subject that before was well?
  For to no other pass my verses tend
  Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
    And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
    Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

  CIV

  To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
  For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
  Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
  Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
  Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,
  In process of the seasons have I seen,
  Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
  Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
  Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
  Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd;
  So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
  Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd:
    For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:
    Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

  CV

  Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
  Nor my beloved as an idol show,
  Since all alike my songs and praises be
  To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
  Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
  Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
  Therefore my verse to constancy confin'd,
  One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
  'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument,
  'Fair, kind, and true,' varying to other words;
  And in this change is my invention spent,
  Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
    Fair, kind, and true, have often liv'd alone,
    Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

  CVI

  When in the chronicle of wasted time
  I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
  And beauty making beautiful old rime,
  In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
  Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
  Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
  I see their antique pen would have express'd
  Even such a beauty as you master now.
  So all their praises are but prophecies
  Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
  And for they looked but with divining eyes,
  They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
    For we, which now behold these present days,
    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

  CVII

  Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
  Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
  Can yet the lease of my true love control,
  Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom.
  The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,
  And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
  Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
  And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
  Now with the drops of this most balmy time,
  My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
  Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime,
  While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

  CVIII

  What's in the brain, that ink may character,
  Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
  What's new to speak, what now to register,
  That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
  Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
  I must each day say o'er the very same;
  Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
  Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
  So that eternal love in love's fresh case,
  Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
  Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
  But makes antiquity for aye his page;
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
    Where time and outward form would show it dead.

  CIX

  O! never say that I was false of heart,
  Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify,
  As easy might I from my self depart
  As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
  That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,
  Like him that travels, I return again;
  Just to the time, not with the time exchang'd,
  So that myself bring water for my stain.
  Never believe though in my nature reign'd,
  All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
  That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
  To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
    For nothing this wide universe I call,
    Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

  CX

  Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
  And made my self a motley to the view,
  Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
  Made old offences of affections new;
  Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth
  Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
  These blenches gave my heart another youth,
  And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love.
  Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
  Mine appetite I never more will grind
  On newer proof, to try an older friend,
  A god in love, to whom I am confin'd.
    Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
    Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

  CXI

  O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
  The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
  That did not better for my life provide
  Than public means which public manners breeds.
  Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
  And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
  To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
  Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd;
  Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,
  Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
  No bitterness that I will bitter think,
  Nor double penance, to correct correction.
    Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
    Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

  CXII

  Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
  Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
  For what care I who calls me well or ill,
  So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
  You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
  To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
  None else to me, nor I to none alive,
  That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
  In so profound abysm I throw all care
  Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
  To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
  Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
    You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
    That all the world besides methinks are dead.

  CXIII

  Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
  And that which governs me to go about
  Doth part his function and is partly blind,
  Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
  For it no form delivers to the heart
  Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:
  Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
  Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
  For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
  The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
  The mountain or the sea, the day or night:
  The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
    Incapable of more, replete with you,
    My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

  CXIV

  Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you,
  Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?
  Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,
  And that your love taught it this alchemy,
  To make of monsters and things indigest
  Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
  Creating every bad a perfect best,
  As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
  O! 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing,
  And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:
  Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
  And to his palate doth prepare the cup:
    If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin
    That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

  CXV

  Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
  Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
  Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
  My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
  But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents
  Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
  Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
  Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;
  Alas! why fearing of Time's tyranny,
  Might I not then say, 'Now I love you best,'
  When I was certain o'er incertainty,
  Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
    Love is a babe, then might I not say so,
    To give full growth to that which still doth grow?