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TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.

THESE/INSVING.SONNETS.

Mr.W.H. / ALL.HAPPINESSE.

AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.

PROMISED.

BY.

OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET.

WISHETH.

THE.WELL-WISHING.

ADVENTVRER.IN.

SETTING.FORTH.

T.T.

FRom fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heire might beare his memory:

But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes,

Feed'st thy lights flame with selfe substantiall fewell,

Making a famine where aboundance lies,

Thy selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell:

Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament,

And only herauld to the gaudy spring,

Within thine owne bud buriest thy content,

And tender chorle makst wast in niggarding:

Pitty the world, or else this glutton be,

To eate the worlds due, by the graue and thee.

WHen fortie Winters shall beseige thy brow,

And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field,

Thy youthes proud liuery so gaz'd on now,

Wil be a totter'd weed of smal worth held :

Then being askt, where all thy beautie lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty daies;

To say within thine owne deepe sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame, and thriftlesse praise.

How much more praise deseru'd thy beauties vse,

If thou couldst answere this faire child of mine

Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse

Proouing his beautie by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art ould,.

And see thy blood warme when thou feel'st it could,

LOoke in thy glasse and tell the face thou vewest,

Now is the time that face should forme an other,

Whose fresh repaire if now thou not renewest,

Thou doo'st beguile the world, vnblesse some mother.

For where is she so faire whose vn-eard wombe

Disdaines the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tombe,

Of his selfe loue to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mothers glasse and she in thee

Calls backe the louely Aprill of her prime,

So thou through windowes of thine age shalt see,

Dispight of wrinkles this thy goulden time.

But if thou liue remembred not to be,

Die single and thine Image dies with thee.

VNthrifty louelinesse why dost thou spend,

Vpon thy selfe thy beauties legacy?

Natures bequest giues nothing but doth lend,

And being franck she lends to those are free:

Then beautious nigard why doost thou abuse,

The bountious largesse giuen thee to giue?

Profitles vserer why doost thou vse

So great a summe of summes yet can'st not liue?

For hauing traffike with thy selfe alone,

Thou of thy selfe thy sweet selfe dost deceaue,

Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable Audit can'st thou leaue?

Thy vnus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee,

Which vsed liues th'executor to be.

THose howers that with gentle worke did frame,

The louely gaze where euery eye doth dwell

Will play the tirants to the very same,

And that vnfaire which fairely doth excell:

For neuer resting time leads Summer on,

To hidious winter and confounds him there,

Sap checkt with frost and lustie leau's quite gon.

Beauty ore-snow'd and barenes euery where,

Then were not summers distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glasse,

Beauties effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor noe remembrance what it was.

But flowers distil'd though they with winter meete,

Leese but their show, their substance still liues sweet.

THen let not winters wragged hand deface,

In thee thy summer ere thou be distil'd:

Make sweet some viall; treasure thou some place,

With beautits treasure ere it be selfe kil'd:

That vse is not forbidden vsery,

Which happies those that pay the willing lone;

That 's for thy selfe to breed an other thee,

Or ten times happier be it ten for one,

Ten times thy selfe were happier then thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee,

Then what could death doe if thou should'st depart,

Leauing thee liuing in posterity?

Be not selfe-wild for thou art much too faire,

To be deaths conquest and make wormes thine heire.

LOe in the Orient when the gracious light,

Lifts vp his burning head, each vnder eye

Doth homage to his new appearing sight,

Seruing with lookes his sacred maiesty,

And hauing climb'd the steepe vp heauenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortall lookes adore his beauty still,

Attending on his goulden pilgrimage:

But when from high-most pich with wery car,

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes (fore dutious) now conuerted are

From his low tract and looke an other way:

So thou, thy selfe out-going in thy noon:

Vnlok'd on diest vnlesse thou get a sonne.

MVsick to heare, why hear'st thou musick sadly,

Sweets with sweets warre not, ioy delights in ioy:

Why lou'st thou that which thou receaust not gladly,

Or else receau'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well tuned sounds,

By vnions married do offend thine eare,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singlenesse the parts that thou should'st beare:

Marke how one string sweet husband to an other,

Strikes each in each by mutuall ordering;

Resembling sier, and child, and happy mother,

Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

Whose speechlesse song being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee thou single wilt proue none.

IS it for feare to wet a widdowes eye,

That thou consum'st thy selfe in single life?

Ah; if thou issulesse shalt hap to die,

The world will waile thee like a makelesse wife,

The world wilbe thy widdow and still weepe,

That thou no forme of thee hast left behind,

When euery priuat widdow well may keepe,

By childrens eyes, her husbands shape in minde:

Looke what an vnthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world inioyes it

But beauties waste hath in the world an end,

And kept vnvsde the vser so destroyes it:

No loue toward others in that bosome sits

That on himselfe such murdrous shame commits.

FOr shame deny that thou bear'st loue to any

Who for thy selfe art so vnprouident

Graunt if thou wilt, thou art belou'd of many,

But that thou none lou'st is most euident:

For thou art so possest with murdrous hate,

That gainst thy selfe thou stickst not to conspire,

Seeking that beautious roofe to ruinate

Which to repaire should be thy chiefe desire:

O change thy thought, that I may change my minde,

Shall hate be fairer log'd then gentle loue?

Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,

Or to thy selfe at least kind harted proue,

Make thee an other selfe for loue of me,

That beauty still may liue in thine or thee.

AS fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st,

In one of thine, from that which thou departest,

And that fresh bloud which yongly thou bestow'st,

Thou maist call thine, when thou from youth conuertest,

Herein liues wisdome, beauty, and increase,

Without this follie, age, and could decay,

If all were minded so, the times should cease,

And threescoore yeare would make the world away:

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featurelesse, and rude, barrenly perrish,

Looke whom she best indow'd. she gaue the more;

Which bountious guift thou shouldst in bounty cherrish,

She caru'd thee for her seale, and ment therby,

Thou shouldst print more, not let that coppy die.

WHen I doe count the clock that tels the time,

And see the braue day sunck in hidious night,

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls or siluer'd ore with white:

When lofty trees I see barren of leaues,

Which erst from heat did canopie the herd

And Sommers greene all girded vp in sheaues

Borne on the beare with white and bristly beard:

Then of thy beauty do I question make

That thou among the wastes of time must goe,

Since sweets and beauties do them-selues forsake,

And die as fast as they see others grow,

And nothing gainst Times sieth can make defence

Saue breed to braue him, when he takes thee hence.

O That you were your selfe, but loue you are

No longer yours, then you your selfe here liue,

Against this cumming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other giue.

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination, then you were

You selfe again after your selfes decease,

When your sweet issue your sweet forme should beare.

Who lets so faire a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honour might vphold,

Against the stormy gusts of winters day

And barren rage of deaths eternall cold?

O none but vnthrifts, deare my loue you know,

You had a Father, let your Son say so.

NOt from the stars do I my iudgement plucke,

And yet me thinkes I haue Astronomy,

But not to tell of good, or euil lucke,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons quallity,

Nor can I fortune to breefe mynuits tell;

Pointing to each his thunder, raine and winde,

Or say with Princes if it shal go wel

By oft predict that I in heauen finde.

But from thine eies my knowledge I deriue,

And constant stars in them I read such art

As truth and beautie shal together thriue

If from thy selfe, to store thou wouldst conuert:

Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date.

WHen I consider euery thing that growes

Holds in perfection but a little moment.

That this huge stage presenteth nought but showes

Whereon the Stars in secret influence comment.

When I perceiue that men as plants increase,

Cheared and checkt euen by the selfe-same skie:

Vaunt in their youthfull sap, at height decrease,

And were their braue state out of memory.

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wastfull time debateth with decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night,

And all in war with Time for loue of you

As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.

BVt wherefore do not you a mightier waie

Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant time?

And fortifie your selfe in your decay

With meanes more blessed then my barren rime?

Now stand you on the top of happie houres,

And many maiden gardens yet vnset,

With vertuous wish would beare your liuing flowers,

Much liker then your painted counterfeit:

So should the lines of life that life repaire

Which this (Times pensel or my pupill pen)

Neither in inward worth nor outward faire

Can make you liue your selfe in eies of men,

To giue away your selfe, keeps your selfe still,

And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill,

WHo will beleeue my verse in time to come

If it were fild with your most high deserts?

Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe

Which hides your life, and shewes not halfe your parts:

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say this Poet lies,

Such heauenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

Be scorn'd, like old men of lesse truth then tongue,

And your true rights be termd a Poets rage,

And stretched miter of an Antique song.

But were some childe of yours aliue that time,

You should liue twise in it, and in my rime.

SHall I compare thee to a Summers day?

Thou art more louely and more temperate:

Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,

And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,

And euery faire from faire some-time declines,

By chance, or natures changing course vntrim'd:

But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,

Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow'st,

Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade,

When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breath or eyes can see,

So long liues this, and this giues life to thee,

DEvouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes,

And make the earth deuoure her owne sweet brood,

Plucke the keene teeth from the fierce Tygers yawes,

And burne the long liu'd Phanix in her blood,

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,

And do what ere thou wilt swift-footed time

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most hainous crime,

O carue not with thy howers my loues faire brow,

Nor draw noe lines there with thine antique pen,

Him in thy course vntainted doe allow,

For beauties patterne to succeding men.

Yet doe thy worst ould Time dispight thy wrong,

My loue shall in my verse euer liue young.

A Womans face with natures owne hand painted,

Haste thou the Master Mistris of my passion,

A womans gentle hart but not acquainted

With shifting change as is false womens fashion,

An eye more bright then theirs, lesse false in rowling:

Gilding the obiect where-vpon it gazeth,

A man in hew all Hews in his controwling,

Which steales mens eyes and womens soules amaseth.

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till nature as she wrought thee fell a dotinge,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she prickt thee out for womens pleasure,

Mine be thy loue and thy loues vse their treasure.

SO is it not with me as with that Muse,

Stird by a painted beauty to his verse,

Who heauen it selfe for ornament doth vse,

And euery faire with his faire doth reherse,

Making a coopelment of proud compare

With Sunne and Moone, with earth and seas rich gems:

With Aprills first borne flowers and all things rare,

That heauens ayre in this huge rondure hems,

O let me true in loue but truly write,

And then beleeue me, my loue is as faire,

As any mothers childe, though not so bright

As those gould candells fixt in heauens ayer:

Let them say more that like of heare-say well,

I will not prayse that purpose not to sell.

MY glasse shall not perswade me I am ould,

So long as youth and thou are of one date,

But when in thee times forrwes I behould,

Then look I death my daies should expiate.

For all that beauty that doth couer thee,

Is but the seemely rayment of my heart,

Which in thy brest doth liue, as thine in me,

How can I then be elder then thou art?

O therefore loue be of thy selfe so wary,

As I not for my selfe, but for thee will,

Bearing thy heart which I will keepe so chary

As tender nurse her babe from faring ill,

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slaine,

Thou gau'st me thine not to giue backe againe.

AS an vnperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his feare is put besides his part,

Or some fierce thing repleat with too much rage,

Whose strengths abondance weakens his owne heart;

So I for feare of trust, forget to say,

The perfect ceremony of loues right,

And in mine owne loues strength seeme to decay,

Ore-charg'd with burthen of mine owne loues might:

O let my books be then the eloquence,

And domb presagers of my speaking brest,

Who pleade for loue, and look for recompence,

More then that tonge that more hath more exprest.

O learne to read what silent loue hath writ,

To heare wit eies belongs to loues fine wiht.

MIne eye hath play'd the painter and hath steeld,

Thy beauties forme in table of my heart,

My body is the frame wherein ti's held,

And perspectiue it is best Painters art.

For through the Painter must you see his skill,

To finde where your true Image pictur'd lies,

Which in my bosomes shop is hanging stil,

That hath his windowes glazed with thine eyes:

Now see what good-turnes eyes for eies haue done,

Mine eyes haue drawne thy shape, and thine for me

Are windowes to my brest, where-through the Sun

Delights to peepe, to gaze therein on thee

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art

They draw but what they see, know not the hart.

LEt those who are in fauor with their stars,

Of publike honour and proud titles bost,

Whilst I whome fortune of such tryumph bars

Vnlookt for ioy in that I honour most;

Great Princes fauorites their faire leaues spread,

But as the Marygold at the suns eye,

And in them-selues their pride lies buried,

For at a frowne they in their glory die.

The painefull warrier famosed for worth,

After a thousand victories once foild,

Is from the booke of honour rased quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toild:

Then happy I that loue and am beloued

Where I may not remoue, nor be remoued.

LOrd of my loue, to whome in vassalage

Thy merrit hath my dutie strongly knit;

To thee I send this written ambassage

To witnesse duty, not to shew my wit.

Duty so great, which wit so poore as mine

May make seeme bare, in wanting words to shew it;

But that I hope some good conceipt of thine

In thy soules thought (all naked) will bestow it:

Til whatsoeuer star that guides my mouing,

Points on me gratiously with faire aspect,

And puts apparrell on my tottered louing,

To show me worthy of their sweet respect,

Then may I dare to boast how I doe loue thee,

Til then, not show my head where thou maist proue me

WEary with toyle, I hast me to my bed,

The deare repose for lims with trauaill tired,

But then begins a iourny in my head

To worke my mind, when boddies work's expired.

For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)

Intend a zelous pilgrimage to thee;

And keepe my drooping eye-lids open wide,

Looking on darknes which the blind doe see.

Saue that my soules imaginary sight

Presents their shaddoe to my sightles view,

Which like a iewell (hunge in gastly night)

Makes blacke night beautious, and her old face new.

Loe thus by day my lims, by night my mind,

For thee, and for my selfe, noe quiet finde.

HOw can I then returne in happy plight

That am debard the benifit of rest?

When daies oppression is not eazd by night,

But day by night and night by day oprest.

And each (though enimes to ethers raigne)

Doe in consent shake hands to torture me,

The one by toyle, the other to complaine

How far I toyle, still farther off from thee.

I tell the Day to please him thou art bright,

And do'st him grace when clouds doe blot the heauen:

So flatter I the swart complexiond night,

When sparkling stars twire not thou guil'st th' eauen.

But day doth daily draw my sorrowes longer,

And night doth nightly make greefes length seeme stronger

WHen in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes,

I all alone beweepe my out-cast state,

And trouble deafe heauen with my bootlesse cries,

And looke vpon my selfe and curse my fate.

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest,

Desiring this mans art, and that mans skope,

With what I most inioy contented least,

Yet in these thoughts my selfe almost despising,

Haplye I thinke on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the Larke at breake of daye arising)

From sullen earth sings himns at Heauens gate,

For thy sweet loue remembred such welth brings,

That then I skorne to change my state with Kings.

WHen to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,

I sommon vp remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:

Then can I drowne an eye (vn-vs'd to flow)

For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night,

And weepe a fresh loues long since canceld woe,

And mone th'expence of many a vannisht sight.

Then can I greeue at greeuances fore-gon,

And heauily from woe to woe tell ore

The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,

Which I new pay, as if not payd before.

But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)

All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.

Thy bosome is indeared with all hearts,

Which I by lacking haue supposed dead,

And there raignes Loue and all Loues louing parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious teare

Hath deare religious loue stolne from mine eye,

As interest of the dead, which now appeare,

But things remou'd that hidden in there lie.

Thou art the graue where buried loue doth liue,

Hung with the tropheis of my louers gon,

Who all their parts of me to thee did giue,

That due of many, now is thine alone.

Their images I lou'd, I view in thee,

And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

IF thou suruiue my well contented daie,

When that churle death my bones with dust shall couer

And shalt by fortune once more re-suruay:

These poore rude lines of thy deceased Louer:

Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,

And though they be out-stript by euery pen,

Reserue them for my loue, not for their rime,

Exceeded by the hight of happier men.

Oh then voutsafe me but this louing thought,

Had my friends Muse growne with this growing age,

A dearer birth then this his loue had brought

To march in ranckes of better equipage:

But since he died and Poets better proue,

Theirs for their stile ile read, his for his loue.

FVll many a glorious morning haue I seene,

Flatter the mountaine tops with soueraine eie,

Kissing with golden face the meddowes greene;

Guilding pale streames with heauenly alcumy:

Anon permit the basest cloudes to ride,

With ougly rack on his celestiall face,

And from the for-lorne world his visage hide

Stealing vnseene to west with this disgrace:

Euen so my Sunne one early morne did shine,

With all triumphant splendor on my brow,

But out alack, he was but one houre mine,

The region cloude hath mask'd him from me now.

Yet him for this, my loue no whit disdaineth,

Suns of the world may staine, whẽ heauens sun stainteh.

WHy didst thou promise such a beautious day,

And make me trauaile forth without my cloake,

To let bace cloudes ore-take me in my way,

Hiding thy brau'ry in their rotten smoke.

Tis not enough that through the cloude thou breake,

To dry the raine on my storme-beaten face,

For no man well of such a salue can speake,

That heales the wound, and cures not the disgrace:

Nor can thy shame giue phisicke to my griefe,

Though thou repent, yet I haue still the losse,

Th' offenders sorrow lends but weake reliefe

To him that beares the strong offenses losse.

Ah but those teares are pearle which thy loue sheeds,

And they are ritch, and ransome all ill deeds.

NO more bee greeu'd at that which thou hast done,

Roses haue thornes, and siluer fountaines mud,

Cloudes and eclipses staine both Moone and Sunne,

And loathsome canker liues in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and euen I in this,

Authorizing thy trespas with compare,

My selfe corrupting saluing thy amisse,

Excusing their sins more then their sins are:

For to thy sensuall fault I bring in sence,

Thy aduerse party is thy Aduocate,

And gainst my selfe a lawfull plea commence,

Such ciuill war is in my loue and hate,

That I an accessary needs must be,

To that sweet theefe which sourely robs from me,

LEt me confesse that we two must be twaine,

Although our vndeuided loues are one:

So shall those blots that do with me remaine,

Without thy helpe, by me be borne alone.

In our two loues there is but one respect,

Though in our liues a seperable spight,

Which though it alter not loues sole effect,

Yet doth it steale sweet houres from loues delight,

I may not euer-more acknowledge thee,

Least my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,

Nor thou with publike kindnesse honour me,

Vnlesse thou take that honour from thy name:

But doe not so, I loue thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

AS a decrepit father takes delight,

To see his actiue childe do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by Fortunes dearest spight

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

Intitled in their parts, do crowned sit,

I make my loue ingrafted to this store:

So then I am not lame, poore, nor dispis'd,

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance giue,

That I in thy abundance am suffic'd,

And by a part of all thy glory liue:

Looke what is best, that best I wish in thee,

This wish I haue, then ten times happy me.

HOw can my Muse want subiect to inuent

While thou dost breath that poor'st into my verse,

Thine owne sweet argument, to excellent,

For euery vulgar paper to rehearse:

Oh giue thy selfe the thankes if ought in me,

Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,

For who's so dumbe that cannot write to thee,

When thou thy selfe dost giue inuention light?

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth

Then those old nine which rimers inuocate,

And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth

Eternal numbers to out-liue long date.

If my slight Muse doe please these curious daies,

The paine be mine, but thine shal be the praise.

OH how thy worth with manners may I singe,

When thou art all the better part of me?

What can mine owne praise to mine owne selfe bring;

And what is't but mine owne when I praise thee,

Euen for this, let vs deuided liue,

And our deare loue loose name of single one,

That by this seperation I may giue:

That due to thee which thou deseru'st alone:

Oh absence what a torment wouldst thou proue,

Were it not thy soure leisure gaue sweet leaue,

To entertaine the time with thoughts of loue,

Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceiue.

And that thou teachest how to make one twaine,

By praising him here who doth hence remaine.

TAke all my loues, my loue, yea take them all,

What hast thou then more then thou hadst before?

No loue, my loue, that thou maist true loue call,

All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:

Then if for my loue, thou my loue receiuest,

I cannot blame thee, for my loue thou vsest,

But yet be blam'd, if thou this selfe deceauest

By wilfull taste of what thy selfe refusest.

I doe forgiue thy robb'rie gentle theefe

Although thou steale thee all my pouerty:

And yet loue knowes it is a greater griefe

To beare loues wrong, then hates knowne iniury.

Lasciuious grace, in whom all il wel showes,

Kill me with spights yet we must not be foes.

THose pretty wrongs that liberty commits,

When I am some-time absent from thy heart,

Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,

For still temptation followes where thou art.

Gentle thou art, and therefore to be wonne,

Beautious thou art, therefore to be assailed.

And when a woman woes, what womans sonne,

Will sourely leaue her till he haue preuailed.

Aye me, but yet thou mighst my seate forbeare,

And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,

Who lead thee in their ryot euen there

Where thou art forst to breake a two-fold truth:

Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,

Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me.

THat thou hast her it is not all my griefe,

And yet it may be said I lou'd her deerely,

That she hath thee is of my wayling cheefe,

A losse in loue that touches me more neerely.

Louing offendors thus I will excuse yee,

Thou doost loue her, because thou knowst I loue her,

And for my sake euen so doth she abuse me,

Suffring my friend for my sake to approoue her,

If I loose thee, my losse is my loues gaine,

And loosing her, my friend hath found that losse,

Both finde each other, and I loose both twaine,

And both for my sake lay on me this crosse,

But here's the ioy, my friend and I are one,

Sweete flattery, then she loues but me alone.

WHen most I winke then doe mine eyes best see.

For all the day they view things vnrespected,

But when I sleepe, in dreames they looke on thee,

And darkely bright, are bright in darke directed.

Then thou whose shaddow shaddowes doth make bright,

How would thy shadowes forme, forme happy show,

To the cleere day with thy much cleerer light,

When to vn-seeing eyes thy shade shines so?

How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,

By looking on thee in the liuing day?

When in dead night their faire imperfect shade,

Through heauy sleepe on sightlesse eyes doth stay?

All dayes are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright daies when dreams do shew thee me.

IF the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

Iniurious distance should not stop my way,

For then dispight of space I would be brought,

From limits farre remote, where thou doost stay,

No matter then although my foote did stand

Vpon the farthest earth remoou'd from thee,

For nimble thought can iumpe both sea and land,

As soone as thinke the place where he would be.

But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought

To leape large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

But that so much of earth and water wrought,

I must attend, times leasure with my mone.

Receiuing naughts by elements so sloe,

But heauie teares, badges of eithers woe.

THe other two, slight ayre, and purging fire,

Are both with thee, where euer I abide,

The first my thought, the other my desire,

These present absent with swift motion slide.

For when these quicker Elements are gone

In tender Embassie of loue to thee,

My life being made of foure, with two alone,

Sinkes downe to death, opprest with melancholie,

Vntill liues composition be recured,

By those swift messengers return'd from thee,

Who euen but now come back againe assured,

Of their faire health, recounting it to me.

This told, I ioy, but then no longer glad,

I send them back againe and straight grow sad.

MIne eye and heart are at a mortall warre,

How to deuide the conquest of thy sight,

Mine eye, my heart their pictures sight would barre,

My heart, mine eye the freeedome of that right,

My heart doth plead that thou in him doost lye,

(A closet neuer pearst with christall eyes)

But the defendant doth that plea deny,

And sayes in him their faire appearance lyes.

To side this title is impannelled

A quest of thoughts, all tennants to the heart,

And by their verdict is determined

The cleere eyes moyitie, and the deare hearts part.

As thus, mine eyes due is their outward part,

And my hearts right, their inward loue of heart.

BEtwixt mine eye and heart a league is tooke,

And each doth good turnes now vnto the other,

When that mine eye is famisht for a looke,

Or heart in loue with sighes himselfe doth smother;

With my loues picture then my eye doth feast,

And to the painted banquet bids my heart:

An other time mine eye is my hearts guest,

And in his thoughts of loue doth share a part.

So either by thy picture or my loue,

Thy seife away, are present still with me,

For thou nor farther then my thoughts canst moue,

And I am still with them, and they with thee.

Or if they sleepe, thy picture in my sight

Awakes my heart, to hearts and eyes delight.

HOw carefull was I when I tooke my way,

Each trifle vnder truest barres to thrust,

That to my vse it might vn-vsed stay

From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust?

But thou, to whom my iewels trifles are,

Most worthy comfort, now my greatest griefe,

Thou best of deerest, and mine onely care,

Art left the prey of euery vulgar theefe.

Thee haue I not lockt vp in any chest,

Saue where thou art not, though I feele thou art,

Within the gentle closure of my brest,

From whence at pleasure thou maist come and part,

And euen thence thou wilt be stolne I feare,

For truth prooues theeuish for a prize so deare.

AGainst that time (if cuer that time come)

When I shall see thee frowne on my defects,

When as thy loue hath cast his vtmost summe,

Cauld to that audite by aduis'd respects,

Against that time when thou shalt strangely passe,

And scarcely greete me with that sunne thine eye,

When loue conuerted from the thing it was

Shall reasons finde of setled grauitie.

Against that time do I insconce me here

Within the knowledge of mine owne desart,

And this my hand, against my selfe vpreare,

To guard the lawfull reasons on thy part,

To leaue poore me, thou hast the strength of lawes,

Since why to loue, I can alledge no cause.

HOw heauie doe I iourney on the way,

When what I seeke (my wearie trauels end)

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say

Thus farre the miles are measurde from thy friend.

The beast that beares me, tired with my woe,

Plods duly on, to beare that waight in me,

As if by some instinct the wretch did know

His rider lou'd not speed being made from thee:

The bloody spurre cannot prouoke him on,

That some-times anger thrusts into his hide,

Which heauily he answers with a grone,

More sharpe to me then spurring to his side,

For that same grone doth put this in my mind,

My greefe lies onward and my ioy behind.

THus can my loue excuse the slow offence,

Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,

From where thou art, why shoulld I hast me thence,

Till I returne of posting is noe need.

O what excuse will my poore beast then find,

When swift extremity can seeme but slow,

Then should I spurre though mounted on the wind,

In winged speed no motion shall I know,

Then can no horse with my desire keepe pace,

Therefore desire (of perfects loue being made)

Shall naigh noe dull flesh in his fiery race,

But loue, for loue, thus shall excuse my iade,

Since from thee going, he went wilfull slow,

Towards thee ile run, and giue him leaue to goe.

SO am I as the rich whose blessed key,

Can bring him to his sweet vp-locked treasure,

The which he will not eu'ry hower suruay,

For blunting the fine point of seldome pleasure.

Therefore are feasts so sollemne and so rare,

Since sildom comming in the long yeare set,

Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,

Or captaine Iewells in the carconet.

So is the time that keepes you as my chest,

Or as the ward-robe which the robe doth hide,

To make some speciall instant speciall blest,

By new vnfoulding his imprison'd pride.

Blessed are you whose worthinesse giues skope,

Being had to tryumph, being lackt to hope.

WHat is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shaddowes on you tend?

Since euery one, hath euery one, one shade,

And you but one, can euery shaddow lend :

Describe Adonis and the counterfet,

Is poorely immitated after you,

On Hellens cheeke all art of beautie set,

And you in Grecian tires are painted new:

Speake of the spring, and foyzon of the yeare,

The one doth shaddow of your beautie show,

The other as your bountie doth appeare,

And you in euery blessed shape we know.

In all externall grace you haue some part,

But you like none, none you for constant heart.

OH how much more doth beautie beautious seeme,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth giue,

The Rose lookes faire, but fairer we it deeme

For that sweet odor, which doth in it liue:

The Canker bloomes haue full as deepe a die,

As the perfumed tincture of the Roses,

Hang on such thornes, and play as wantonly,

When sommers breath their masked buds discloses:

But for their virtue only is their show,

They liue vnwoo'd, and vnrespected fade,

Die to themselues. Sweet Roses doe not so,

Of their sweet deathes, are sweetest odors made :

And so of you, beautious and louely youth,

When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.

NOt marble, nor the guilded monument,

Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Then vnswept stone, besmeer'd with sluttish time.

When wastefull warre shall Statues ouer-turne,

And broiles roote out the worke of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne:

The liuing record of your memory.

Gainst death, and all obliuious emnity

Shall you pace forth, your praise shall stil finde roome,

Euen in the eyes of all posterity

That weare this world out to the ending doome.

So til the iudgement that your selfe arise,

You liue in this, and dwell in louers eies.

Sweet loue renew thy force, be it not said

Thy edge should blunter be then apetite,

Which but too daie by feeding is alaied,

To morrow sharpned in his former might.

So loue be thou, although too daie thou fill

Thy hungrie eies, euen till they winck with fulnesse,

Too morrow see againe, and doe not kill

The spirit of Loue, with a perpetual dulnesse:

Let this sad Intrim like the Ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,

Come daily to the banckes, that when they see:

Returne of loue, more blest may be the view.

As cal it Winter, which being ful of care,

Makes Sõmers welcome, thrice more wish'd, more rare.

BEing your slaue what should I doe but tend,

Vpon the houres, and times of your desire?

I haue no precious time at al to spend;

Nor seruices to doe til you require.

Nor dare I chide the world without end houre,

Whilst I (my soueraine) watch the clock for you,

Nor thinke the bitternesse of absence sowre,

When you haue bid your seruant once adieue.

Nor dare I question with my iealious thought,

Where you may be, or your affaires suppose,

But like a sad slaue stay and thinke of nought

Saue where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a foole is loue, that in your Will,

(Though you doe any thing) he thinkes no ill.

THat God forbid, that made me first your slaue,

I should in thought controule your times of pleasure,

Or at your hand th' account of houres to craue,

Being your vassail bound to staie your leisure.

Oh let me suffer (being at your beck)

Th' imprison'd absence of your libertie,

And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check,

Without accusing you of iniury.

Be where you list, your charter is so strong,

That you your selfe may priuiledge your time

To what you will, to you it doth belong,

Your selfe to pardon of selfe-doing crime.

I am to waite, though waiting so be hell,

Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

IF their bee nothing new, but that which is,

Hath beene before, how are our braines beguild,

Which laboring for inuention beare amisse

The second burthen of a former child?

Oh that record could with a back-ward looke,

Euen of hue hundreth courses of the Sunne,

Show me your image in some antique booke,

Since minde at first in carrecter was done.

That I might see what the old world could say,

To this composed wonder of your frame,

Whether we are mended, or where better they,

Or whether reuolution be the same.

Oh sure I am the wits of former daies,

To subiects worse haue giuen admiring praise.

LIke as the waues make towards the pibled shore,

So do our minuites hasten to their end,

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toile all forwards do contend.

Natiuity once in the maine of light.

Crawles to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,

Crooked eclipses gainst his glory fight,

And time that gaue, doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfixe the florish set on youth,

And delues the paralels in beauties brow,

Feedes on the rarities of natures truth,

And nothing stands but for his sieth to mow.

And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand

Praising thy worth, dispight his cruell hand.

IS it thy wil, thy Image should keepe open

My heauy eielids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadowes like to thee do mocke my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee

So farre from home into my deeds to prye,

To find out shames and idle houres in me,

The skope and tenure of thy Ielousie?

O no, thy loue though much, is not so great,

It is my loue that keepes mine eie awake,

Mine owne true loue that doth my rest defeat,

To plaie the watch-man euer for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me farre of, with others all to neere.

SInne of selfe-loue possesseth al mine eie,

And all my soule, and al my euery part;

And for this sinne there is no remedie,

It is so grounded inward in my heart.

Me thinkes no face so gratious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,

And for my selfe mine owne worth do define,

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed

Beated and chopt with tand antiquitie,

Mine owne selfe loue quite contrary I read

Selfe, so selfe louing were iniquity,

T'is thee (my selfe) that for my selfe I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy daies,

AGainst my loue shall be as I am now

With times iniurious hand chrusht and ore-worne,

When houres haue dreind his blood and fild his brow

With lines and wrincles, when his youthfull morne

Hath trauaild on to Ages steepie night,

And all those beauties whereof now he's King

Are vanishing, or vanisht out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his Spring.

For such a time do I now fortifie

Against confounding Ages cruell knife,

That he shall neuer cut from memory

My sweet loues beauty, though my louers life.

His beautie shall in these blacke lines be seene,

And they shall liue, and he in them still greene.

WHen I haue seene by times fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworne buried age,

When sometime loftie towers I see downe rased,

And brasse eternall slaue to mortall rage.

When I haue seene the hungry Ocean gaine

Aduantage on the Kingdome of the shoare,

And the firme soile win of the watry maine,

Increasing store with losse, and losse with store.

When I haue seene such interchange of state,

Or state it selfe confounded, to decay,

Ruine hath taught me thus to ruminate

That Time will come and take my loue away.

This thought is as a death which cannot choose

But weepe to haue, that which it feares to loose.

SInce brasse, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundlesse sea,

But sad mortallity ore-swaies their power,

How with this rage shall beautie hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger then a flower?

O how shall summers hunny breath hold out,

Against the wrackfull siedge of battring dayes,

When rocks impregnable are not so stoute,

Nor gates of steele so strong but time decayes?

O fearefull meditation, where alack,

Shall times best Iewell from times chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foote back,

Or who his spoile or beautie can forbid?

O none, vnlesse this miracle haue might,

That in black inck my loue may still shine bright.

TYr'd with all these for restfull death I cry,

As to behold desert a begger borne,

And needie Nothing trimd in iollitie,

And purest faith vnhappily forsworne,

And gilded honor shamefully misplast,

And maiden vertue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And arte made tung-tide by authoritie,

And Folly (Doctor-like) controuling skill,

And simple-Truth miscalde Simplicitie,

And captiue-good attending Captaine ill.

Tyr'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Saue that to dye, I leaue my loue alone.

AH wherefore with infection should he liue,

And with his presence grace impietie,

That sinne by him aduantage should atchiue,

And lace it selfe with his societie?

Why should false painting immitate his cheeke,

And steale dead seeing of his liuing hew?

Why should poore beautie indirectly seeke,

Roses of shaddow, since his Rose is true?

Why should he liue, now nature banckrout is,

Beggerd of blood to blush through liuely vaines,

For she hath no exchecker now but his,

And proud of many, liues vpon his gaines?

O him she stores, to show what welth she had,

In daies long since, before these last so bad.

THus is his cheeke the map of daies out-worne,

When beauty liu'd and dy'ed as flowers do now,

Before these bastard signes of faire were borne,

Or durst inhabit on a liuing brow:

Before the goulden tresses of the dead,

The right of sepulchers, were shorne away,

To liue a scond life on second head,

Ere beauties dead fleece made another gay:

In him those holy antique howers are seene,

Without all ornament, it selfe and true,

Making no summer of an others greene,

Robbing no ould to dresse his beauty new,

And him as for a map doth Nature store,

To shew faulse Art what beauty was of yore.

THose parts of thee that the worlds eye doth view,

Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:

All toungs (the voice of soules) giue thee that end,

Vttring bare truth, euen so as foes Commend.

Their outward thus with outward praise is crownd,

But those same toungs that giue thee so thine owne,

In other accents doe this praise confound

By seeing farther then the eye hath showne.

They looke into the beauty of thy mind,

And that in guesse they measure by thy deeds,

Then churls their thoughts (although their eies were kind)

To thy faire flower ad the rancke smell of weeds,

But why thy odor matcheth not thy show,

The solye is this, that thou doest common grow.

THat thou are blam'd shall not be thy defect,

For slanders marke was euer yet the faire,

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A Crow that flies in heauens sweetest ayre.

So thou be good, slander doth but approue,

Their worth the greater beeing woo'd of time,

For Canker vice the sweetest buds doth loue,

And thou present'st a pure vnstayined prime.

Thou hast past by the ambush of young daies,

Either not assayld, or victor beeing charg'd,

Yet this thy praise cannot be soe thy praise,

To tye vp enuy, euermore inlarged,

If some suspect of ill maskt not thy show,

Then thou alone kingdomes of hearts shouldst owe.

NOe Longer mourne for me when I am dead,

Then you shall heare the surly sullen bell

Giue warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vildest wormes to dwell:

Nay if you read this line, remember not,

The hand that writ it, for I loue 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 looke vpon this verse,

When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poore name reherse;

But let your loue euen with my life decay.

Least the wise world should looke into your mone,

And mocke you with me after I am gon.

O Least the world should taske you to recite,

What merit liu'd in me that you should loue

After my death (deare loue) for get me quite,

For you in me can nothing worthy proue.

Vnlesse you would deuise some vertuous lye,

To doe more for me then mine owne desert,

And hang more praise vpon deceased I,

Then nigard truth would willingly impart:

O least your true loue may seeme falce in this,

That you for loue speake well of me vntrue,

My name be buried where my body is,

And liue no more to shame nor me, nor you.

For I am shamd by that which I bring forth,

And so should you, to loue things nothing worth.

THat time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,

When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange

Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,

Bare rn'wd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twi-light of such day,

As after Sun-set fadeth in the West,

Which by and by blacke night doth take away,

Deaths second selfe that seals vp all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lye,

As the death bed, whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nurrisht by.

This thou perceu'st, which makes thy loue more strong,

To loue that well, which thou must leaue ere long.

BVt be contented when that fell arest,

With out all bayle shall carry me away,

My life hath in this line some interest,

Which for memoriall still with thee shall stay.

When thou reuewest this, thou doest reuew,

The very part was consecrate to thee,

The earth can haue 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 pray of wormes, my body being dead,

The coward conquest of a wretches knife,

To base of thee to be remembred,

The worth of that, is that which it containes,

And that is this, and this with thee remaines.

SO are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet season'd shewers 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 inioyer, and anon

Doubting the filching age will steale his treasure,

Now counting best to be with you alone,

Then betterd that the world may see my pleasure.

Some-time all ful with feasting on your sight,

And by and by cleane starued for a looke,

Possessing or pursuing no delight

Saue what is had, or must from you be tooke.

Thus do I pine and surfet day by day,

Or gluttoning on all, or all away,

WHy is my verse so barren of new pride?

So far from variation or quicke change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new found methods, and to compounds strange?

Why write I still all one, euer the same,

And keepe inuention in a noted weed,

That euery word doth almost fel my name,

Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed?

O know sweet loue I alwaies write of you,

And you and loue are still my argument:

So all my best is dressing old words new,

Spending againe what is already spent:

For as the Sun is daily new and old,

So is my loue still telling what is told,

THy glasse will shew thee how thy beauties were,

Thy dyall how thy pretious mynuits waste,

The vacant leaues thy mindes imprint will beare,

And of this booke, this learning maist thou taste.

The wrinckles which thy glasse will truly show,

Of mouthed graues will giue thee memorie,

Thou by thy dyals shady stealth maist know,

Times theeuish progresse to eternitie.

Looke what thy memorie cannot containe,

Commit to these waste blacks, and thou shalt finde

Those children nurst, deliuerd from thy braine,

To take a new acquaintance of thy minde.

These offices, so oft as thou wilt looke,

Shall profit thee, and much inrich thy booke.

SO oft haue I inuok'd thee for my Muse,

And found such faire assistance in my verse,

As euery Alien pen hath got my vse,

And vnder thee their poesie disperse.

Thine eyes, that taught the dumbe on high to sing,

And heauie ignorance aloft to flee,

Haue added fethers to the learneds wing,

And giuen grace a double Maiestie.

Yet be most proud of that which I compile,

Whose influence is thine, and borne of thee,

In others workes thou doost but mend the stile,

And Arts with thy sweete graces graced be.

But thou art all my art, and doost aduance

As high as learning, my rude ignorance.

WHilst I alone did call vpon thy ayde,

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,

But now my gracious numbers are decayde,

And my sick Muse doth giue an other place.

I grant (sweet loue) thy louely argument

Deserues the trauaile of a worthier pen,

Yet what of thee thy Poet doth inuent,

He robs thee of, and payes it thee againe,

He lends thee vertue, and he stole that word,

From thy behauiour, beautie doth he giue

And found it in thy cheeke: he can affoord

No praise to thee, but what in thee doth liue.

Then thanke him not for that which he doth say,

Since what he owes thee, thou thy selfe doost pay,

O How I faint when I of you do write,

Knowing a better spirit doth vse your name,

And in the praise thereof spends all his might,

To make me toung-tide speaking of your fame.

But since your worth (wide as the Ocean is)

The humble as the proudest saile doth beare,

My sawsie barke (inferior farre to his)

On your broad maine doth wilfully appeare.

Your shallowest helpe will hold me vp a floate,

Whilst he vpon your soundlesse deepe doth ride,

Or (being wrackt) I am a worthlesse bote,

He of tall building, and of goodly pride.

Then If he thriue and I be cast away,

The worst was this, my loue was my decay.

OR I shall liue your Epitaph to make,

Or you suruiue 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 immortall life shall haue,

Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye,

The earth can yeeld me but a common graue,

When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye,

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read,

And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead,

You still shall liue (such vertue hath my Pen)

Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men.

I Grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore maiest without attaint ore-looke

The dedicated words which writers vse

Of their faire subiect, blessing euery booke.

Thou art as faire in knowledge as in hew,

Finding thy worth a limmit past my praise,

And therefore art inforc'd to seeke anew,

Some fresher stampe of the time bettering dayes.

And do so loue, yet when they haue deuisde,

What strained touches Rhethorick can lend,

Thou truly faire, wert truly simpathizde,

In true plaine words, by thy true telling friend.

And their grosse painting might be better vs'd,

Where cheekes need blood, in thee it is abus'd.

I Never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your faire no painting set,

I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,

The barren tender of a Poets debt:

And therefore haue I slept in your report,

That you your selfe being extant well might show,

How farre a moderne quill doth come to short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow,

This silence for my sinne you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory being dombe,

For I impaire not beautie being mute,

When others would giue life, and bring a tombe.

There liues more life in one of your faire eyes,

Then both your Poets can in praise deuise.

WHo is it that sayes most, which can say more,

Then this rich praise, that you alone, are you,

In whose confine immured is the store,

Which should example where your equall grew,

Leane penurie within that Pen doth dwell,

That to his subiect 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 coppy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so cleere,

And such a counter-part shall fame his wit,

Making his stile admired euery where.

You to your beautious blessings adde a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

MY toung-tide Muse in manners holds her still,

While comments of your praise richly compil'd,

Reserue their Character with goulden quill,

And precious phrase by all the Muses fil'd.

I thinke good thoughts, whilst other write good wordes,

And like vnlettered clarke still crie Amen,

To euery Himne that able spirit affords,

In polisht forme of well refined pen.

Hearing you praisd, I say 'tis so, 'tis true,

And to the most of praise adde some-thing more,

But that is in my thought, whose loue to you

(Though words come hind-most) holds his ranke before,

Then others, for the breath of words respect,

Me for my dombe thoughts, speaking in effect.

WAs it the proud full saile of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of (all to precious) you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my braine inhearce,

Making their tombe the wombe wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

Aboue a mortall pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compiers by night

Giuing him ayde, 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 feare from thence.

But when your countinance fild vp his line,

Then lackt I matter, that infeebled mine.

FArewell thou art too deare for my possessing,

And like enough thou knowst thy estimate,

The Cha ter of thy worth giues thee releasing:

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,

And for that ritches where is my deseruing?

The cause of this faire guift in me is wanting,

And so my pattent back againe is sweruing.

Thy selfe thou gau'st, thy owne worth then not knowing,

Or mee to whom thou gau'st it, else mistaking,

So thy great guift vpon misprision growing,

Comes home againe, on better iudgement making.

Thus haue I had thee as a dreame doth flatter,

In sleepe a King, but waking no such matter.

WHen thou shalt be dispode to set me light,

And place my merrit in the eie of skorne,

Vpon thy side, against my selfe ile fight,

And proue thee virtuous, though thou art forsworne:

With mine owne weakenesse being best acquainted,

Vpon thy part I can set downe a story

Of faults conceald, wherein I am attainted:

That thou in loosing me, shall win much glory:

And I by this wil be a gainer too,

For bending all my louing thoughts on thee,

The iniuries that to my selfe I doe,

Doing thee vantage, duble vantage me.

Such is my loue, to thee I so belong,

That for thy right, my selfe will beare all wrong.

SAy that thou didst forsake mee for some falt,

And I will comment vpon that offence,

Speake of my lamenesse, and I straight will halt:

Against thy reasons making no defence.

Thou canst not (loue) disgrace me halfe so ill,

To set a forme vpon desired change,

As ile my selfe disgrace, knowing thy wil,

I will acquaintance strangle and looke strange:

Be absent from thy walkes and in my tongue,

Thy sweet beloued name no more shall dwell,

Least I (too much prophane) should do it wronge:

And haplie of our old acquaintance tell.

For thee, against my selfe ile vow debate,

For I must nere loue him whom thou dost hate.

THen hate me when thou wilt, if euer, now,

Now while the world is bent my deeds to crosse,

Ioyne with the spight of fortune, make me bow.

And doe not drop in for an after losse:

Ah doe not, when my heart hath scapte this sorrow,

Come in the rereward of a conquerd woe,

Giue not a windy night a rainie morrow,

To linger out a purposd ouer-throw.

If thou wilt leaue me, do not leaue me last,

When other pettie griefes haue done their spight,

But in the onset come, so stall I taste

At first the very worst of fortunes might.

And other straines of woe, which now seeme woe,

Compar'd with losse of thee, will not seeme so.

SOme glory in their birth, some in their skill,

Some in their wealth, some in their bodies force,

Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:

Some in their Hawkes and Hounds, some in their Horse.

And euery humor hath his adiunct pleasure,

Wherein it findes a ioy aboue the rest,

But these perticulers are not my measure,

All these I better in one generall best.

Thy loue is bitter then high birth to me,

Richer then wealth, prouder then garments cost,

Of more delight then Hawkes or Horses bee:

And hauing thee, of all mens pride I boast.

Wretched in this alone, that thou maist take,

All this away, and me most wretched make.

BVt doe thy worst to steale thy selfe away,

For tearme of life thou art assured mine,

And life no longer then thy loue will stay,

For it depends vpon that loue of thine.

Then need I not to feare the worst of wrongs,

When in the least of them my life hath end,

I see, a better state to me belongs

Then that, which on thy humor doth depend.

Thou canst not vex me with inconstant minde,

Since that my life on thy reuolt doth lie,

Oh what a happy title do I finde,

Happy to haue thy loue, happy to die!

But whats so blessed faire that feares no blot,

Thou maist be falce, and yet I know it not.

SO shall I liue, supposing thou art true,

Like a deceiued husband, so loues face,

May still seeme loue to me, though alter'd new:

Thy lookes with me, thy heart in other place.

For their can liue no hatred in thine eye,

Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,

In manies lookes, the falce hearts history

Is writ in moods and frounes and wrinckles strange.

But heauen in thy creation did decree,

That in thy face sweet loue should euer dwell,

What ere thy thoughts, or thy hearts workings be,

Thy lookes should nothing thence, but sweetnesse tell.

How like Eaues apple doth thy beauty grow,

If thy sweet vertue answere not thy show.

THey that haue powre to hurt, and will doe none,

That doe not do the thing, they most do showe,

Who mouing others, are themselues as stone,

Vnmooued, could, and to temptation slow:

They rightly do inherrit heauens graces,

And husband natures ritches from expence,

They are the Lords and owners of their faces,

Others, but stewards of their excellence:

The sommers flowre is to the sommer sweet,

Though to it selfe, it onely liue and die,

But if that flowre with base infection meete,

The basest weed out-braues his dignity:

For sweetest things turne sowrest by their deedes,

Lillies that fester, smell far worse then weeds.

HOw sweet and louely dost thou make the shame,

Which like a canker in the fragrant Rose,

Doth spot the beautie of thy budding name?

Oh in what sweets doest thou thy sinnes inclose!

That tongue that tells the story of thy daies,

(Making lasciuious comments on thy sport)

Cannot dispraise, but in a kinde of praise,

Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.

Oh what a mansion haue those vices got,

Which for their habitation chose out thee,

Where beauties vaile doth couer euery blot,

And all things turnes to faire, that eies can see!

Take heed (deare heart) of this large priuiledge,

The hardest knife ill vs'd doth loose his edge.

SOme say thy fault is youth, some wantonesse,

Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,

Both grace and faults are lou'd of more and lesse:

Thou makst faults graces, that to thee resort:

As on the finger of a throned Queene,

The basest Iewell wil be well esteem'd:

So are those errors that in thee are seene,

To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.

How many Lambs might the sterne Wolfe betray,

If like a Lambe he could his lookes translate.

How many gazers mighst thou lead away,

If thou wouldst vse the strength of all thy state?

But doe not so, I loue thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

HOw like a Winter hath my absence beene

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare?

What freezings haue I felt, what darke daies seene?

What old Decembers barenesse euery where?

And yet this time remou'd was sommers time,

The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase,

Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,

Like widdowed wombes after their Lords decease:

Yet this aboundant issue seem'd to me,

But hope of Orphans, and vn-fathered fruite,

For Sommer and his pleasures waite on thee,

And thou away, the very birds are mute.

Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere,

That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters neere.

FRom you haue I beene absent in the spring,

When proud pide Aprill (drest in all his trim)

Hath put a spirit of youth in euery thing:

That heauie Saturne laught and leapt with him.

Yet nor the laies of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odor and in hew,

Could make me any summers story tell:

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:

Nor did I wonder at the Lillies white,

Nor praise the deepe vermillion in the Rose,

They weare but sweet, but figures of delight:

Drawne after you, you patterne of all those.

Yet seem'd it Winter still, and you away,

As with your shaddow I with these did play.

THe forward violet thus did I chide,

Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that smels

If not from my loues breath, the purple pride,

Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells?

In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died;

The Lillie I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marierom had stolne thy haire,

The Roses fearefully on thornes did stand,

Our blushing shame, an other white dispaire:

A third nor red, nor white, had stolne of both,

And to his robbry had annext thy breath,

But for his theft in pride of all his growth

A vengfull canker eate him vp to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,

But sweet, or culler it had stolne from thee.

100

WHere art thou Muse that thou forgetst so long,

To speake of that which giues thee all thy might?

Spendst thou thy furie on some worthlesse songe,

Darkning thy powre to lend base subiects light.

Returne forgetfull Muse, and straight redeeme,

In gentle numbers time so idely spent,

Sing to the eare that doth thy laies esteeme,

And giues thy pen both skill and argument.

Rise resty Muse, my loues sweet face suruay,

If time haue any wrincle grauen there,

If any, be a Satire to decay,

And make times spoiles dispised euery where.

Giue my loue fame faster then time wasts life,

So thou preuenst his sieth, and crooked knife.

101

OH truant Muse what shalbe thy amends,

For thy neglect of truth in beauty di'd?

Both truth and beauty on my loue depends:

So dost thou too, and therein dignifi'd:

Make answere Muse, wilt thou not haply saie,

Truth needs no collour with his collour fixt,

Beautie no pensell, beauties truth to lay:

But best is best, if neuer intermixt.

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,

To make him much out-liue a gilded tombe:

And to be praisd of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,

To make him seeme long hence, as he showes now.

102

MY loue is strengthned though more weake in seeming

I loue not lesse, thogh lesse the show appeare,

That loue is marchandiz'd, whose ritch esteeming,

The owners tongue doth publish euery where.

Our loue was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my laies,

As Philomell in summers front doth singe,

And stops his pipe in growth of riper daies:

Not that the summer is lesse pleasant now

Then when her mournefull himns did hush the night,

But that wild musick burthens euery bow,

And sweets growne common loose their deare delight.

Therefore like her, I some-time hold my tongue:

Because I would not dull you with my songe.

103

ALack what pouerty my Muse brings forth,

That hauing such a skope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Then when it hath my added praise beside.

Oh blame me not if I no more can write!

Looke in your glasse and there appeares a face,

That ouer-goes my blunt inuention quite,

Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinfull then striuing to mend,

To marre the subiect that before was well,

For to no other passe my verses tend,

Then of your graces and your gifts to tell.

And more, much more then in my verse can sit,

Your owne glasse showes you, when you looke in it.

104

TO me faire friend you neuer can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyde,

Such seemes your beautie still: Three Winters colde,

Haue from the forrests shooke three summers pride,

Three beautious springs to yellow Autumne turn'd,

In processe of the seasons haue I seene,

Three Aprill perfumes in three hot Iunes burn'd,

Since first I saw you fresh which yet are greene.

Ah yet doth beauty like a Dyall hand,

Steale from his figure, and no pace perceiu'd,

So your sweete hew, which me thinkes still doth stand

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceaued.

For feare of which, heare this thou age vnbred,

Ere you were borne was beauties summer dead.

105

LEt not my loue be cal'd Idolatrie,

Nor my beloued as an Idoll show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

To one, of one, still such, and euer so.

Kinde is my loue to day, to morrow kinde,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence,

Therefore my verse to constancie confin'de,

One thing expressing, leaues out difference.

Faire, kinde, and true, is all my argument,

Faire, kinde and true, varrying to other words,

And in this change is my inuention spent,

Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords.

Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu'd alone.

Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one.

106

WHen in the Chronicle of wasted time,

I see discriptions of the fairest wights,

And beautie making beautifull old rime,

In praise of Ladies dead, and louely Knights,

Then in the blazon of sweet beauties best,

Of hand, of foote, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique Pen would haue exprest,

Euen such a beauty as you maister now.

So all their praises are but prophesies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And for they look'd but with deuining eyes,

They had not still enough your worth to sing:

For we which now behold these present dayes,

Haue eyes to wonder, but lack toungs to praise.

107

NOt mine owne feares, nor the prophetick soule,

Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true loue controule,

Supposde as forfeit to a confin'd doome.

The mortall Moone hath her eclipse indur'de,

And the sad Augurs mock their owne presage,

Incertenties now crowne them-selues assur'de,

And peace proclaimes Oliues of endlesse age,

Now with the drops of this most balmie time,

My loue lookes fresh, and death to me subscribes,

Since spight of him Ile liue in this poore rime,

While he insults ore dull and speachlesse tribes.

And thou in this shalt finde thy monument,

When tyrants crests and tombs of brasse are spent.

108

WHat's in the braine that Inck may character,

Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit,

What 's new to speake, what now to register,

That may expresse my loue, or thy deare merit?

Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers diuine,

I must each day say ore the very same,

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,

Euen as when first I hallowed thy faire name.

So that eternall loue in loues fresh case,

Waighes not the dust and iniury of age,

Nor giues to necessary wrinckles place,

But makes antiquitie for aye his page,

Finding the first conceit of loue there bred,

Where time and outward forme would shew it dead,

109

O Never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seem'd my flame to quallifie,

As easie might I from my selfe depart,

As from my soule which in thy brest doth lye:

That is my home of loue, if I haue rang'd,

Like him that trauels I returne againe,

lust to the time, not with the time exchang'd,

So that my selfe bring water for my staine,

Neuer beleeue though in my nature raign'd,

All frailties that besiege all kindes of blood,

That it could so preposterouslie be stain'd,

To leaue for nothing all thy summe of good:

For nothing this wide Vniuerse I call,

Saue thou my Rose, in it thou art my all.

110

ALas 'tis true, I haue gone here and there,

And made my selfe a motley to the view,

Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most deare,

Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is, that I haue lookt on truth

Asconce and strangely: But by all aboue,

These blenches gaue my heart an other youth,

And worse essaies prou'd thee my best of loue,

Now all is done, haue what shall haue no end,

Mine appetite I neuer more will grin'de

On newer proofe, to trie an older friend,

A God in loue, to whom I am confin'd.

Then giue me welcome, next my heauen the best,

Euen to thy pure and most most louing brest.

111

O For my sake doe you wish fortune chide,

The guiltie goddesse of my harmfull deeds,

That did not better for my life prouide,

Then publick meanes which publick manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receiues a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdu'd

To what it workes in, like the Dyers hand,

Pitty me then, and wish I were renu'de,

Whilst like a willing pacient I will drinke,

Potions of Eysell gainst my strong infection,

No bitternesse that I will bitter thinke,

Nor double pennance to correct correction.

Pittie me then deare friend, and I assure yee,

Euen that your pittie is enough to cure mee.

112

YOur loue and pittie doth th'impression fill,

Which vulgar scandall stampt vpon my brow,

For what care I who calles me well or ill,

So you ore-greene my bad, my good alow?

You are my All the world, and I must striue,

To know my shames and praises from your tounge,

None else to me, nor I to none aliue,

That my steel'd sence or changes right or wrong,

In so profound Abisme I throw all care

Of others voyces, that my Adders sence,

To cryttick and to flatterer stopped are:

Marke how with my neglect I doe dispence.

You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

That all the world besides me thinkes y'are dead.

113

SInce I left you, mine eye is in my minde,

And that which gouernes me to goe about,

Doth part his function, and is partly blind,

Seemes seeing, but effectually is out:

For it no forme deliuers to the heart

Of bird, of flowre, or shape which it doth lack,

Of his quick obiects hath the minde no part,

Nor his owne vision houlds what it doth catch:

For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet-fauor or deformedst creature,

The mountaine, or the sea, the day, or night:

The Croe, or Doue, it shapes them to your feature.

Incapable of more repleat, with you,

My most true minde thus maketh mine vntrue.

114

Or whether doth my minde being crown 'd with you

Drinke vp the monarks plague this flattery?

Or whether shall I say mine eie saith true,

And that your loue taught it this Alcumie?

To make of monsters, and things indigest,

Such cherubines as your sweet selfe resemble,

Creating euery bad a perfect best

As fast as obiects to his beames assemble:

Oh tis the first, tis flatry in my seeing,

And my great minde most kingly drinkes it vp,

Mine eie well knowes what with his gust is greeing,

And to his pallat doth prepare the cup.

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

That mine eye loues it and doth first beginne.

115

THose lines that I before haue writ doe lie,

Euen those that said I could not loue you deerer,

Yet then my iudgement knew no reason why,

My most full flame should afterwards burne cleerer.

But reckening time, whose milliond accidents

Creepe in twixt vowes, and change decrees of Kings,

Tan sacred beautie, blunt the sharp'st intents,

Diuert strong mindes to th' course of altring things:

Alas why fearing of times tiranie,

Might I not then say now I loue you best,

When I was certaine ore in-certainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest:

Loue is a Babe, then might I not say so

To giue full growth to that which still doth grow.

119

LEt me not to the marriage of true mindes

Admit impediments, loue is not loue

Which alters when it alteration findes,

Or bends with the remouer to remoue.

O no, it is an euer fixed marke

That lookes on tempests and is neuer shaken;

It is the star to euery wandring barke,

Whose worths vnknowne, although his higth be taken.

Lou's not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickles compasse come,

Loue alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,

But beares it out euen to the edge of doome:

If this be error and vpon me proued,

I neuer writ, nor no man euer loued.

117

Accuse me thus, that I haue scanted all,

Wherein I should your great deserts repay,

Forgot vpon your dearest loue to call,

Whereto al bonds do tie me day by day,

That I haue frequent binne with vnknown mindes,

And giuen to time your owne deare purchas'd right,

That I haue hoysted saile to al the windes

Which should transport me farthest from your sight.

Booke both my wilfulnesse and errors downe,

And on iust proofe surmise, accumilate,

Bring me within the leuel of your frowne,

But shoote not at me in your wakened hate:

Since my appeale saies I did striue to prooue

The constancy and virtue of your loue

118

LIke as to make our appetites more keene

With eager compounds we our pallat vrge,

As to preuent our malladies vnseene,

We sicken to shun sicknesse when we purge.

Euen so being full of your nere cloying sweetnesse,

To bitter sawces did I frame my feeding;

And sicke of wel-fare found a kind of meetnesse,

To be diseas'd ere that there was true needing.

Thus pollicie in loue t'anticipate

The ills that were, not grew to faults assured,

And brought to medicine a healthfull state

Which rancke of goodnesse would by ill be cured.

But thence I learne and find the lesson true,

Drugs poyson him that so fell sicke of you.

119

WHat potions haue I drunke of Syren teares

Distil'd from Lymbecks foule as hell within,

Applying feares to hopes, and hopes to feares,

Still loosing when I saw my selfe to win?

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,

Whilst it hath thought it selfe so blessed neuer?

How haue mine eies out of their Spheares bene fitted

In the distraction of this madding feuer?

O benefit of ill, now I find true

That better is, by euil still made better.

And ruin'd loue when it is built anew

Growes fairer then at first, more strong, far greater.

So I returne rebukt to my content,

And gaine by ills thrise more then I haue spent.

120

THat you were once vnkind be-friends mee now,

And for that sorrow, which I then didde feele,

Needes must I vnder my transgression bow,

Vnlesse my Nerues were brasse or hammered steele.

For if you were by my vnkindnesse shaken

As I by yours, y 'haue past a hell of Time,

And I a tyrant haue no leasure taken

To waigh how once I suffered in your crime.

O that our night of wo might haue remembred

My deepest sence, how hard true sorrow hits,

And soone to you, as you to me then tendred

The humble salue, which wounded bosomes fits!

But that your trespasse now becomes a fee,

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransome mee.

121

TIs better to be vile then vile esteemed,

When not to be, receiues reproach of being,

And the iust pleasure lost, which is so deemed,

Not by our feeling, but by others seeing.

For why should others false adulterat eyes

Giue salutation to my sportiue blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies;

Which in their wils count bad what I think good?

Noe, I am that I am, and they that leuell

At my abuses, reckon vp their owne,

I may be straight though they them-selues be beuel

By their rancke thoughtes, my deedes must not be shown

Vnlesse this generall euill they maintaine,

All men are bad and in their badnesse raigne.

122

TThy guift,, thy tables, are within my braine

Full characterd with lasting memory,

Which shall aboue that idle rancke remaine

Beyond all date euen to eternity.

Or at the least, so long as braine and heart

Haue facultie by nature to subsist,

Til each to raz'd obliuion yeeld his part

Of thee, thy record neuer can be mist:

That poore retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy deare loue to skore,

Therefore to giue them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receaue thee more,

To keepe an adiunckt to remember thee,

Were to import forgetfulnesse in mee.

123

NO! Time, thou shalt not bost that I doe change.

Thy pyramyds buylt vp with newer might

To me are nothing nouell, nothing strange,

They are but dressings of a former sight:

Our dates are breefe, and therefor we admire,

What thou dost foyst vpon vs that is ould,

And rather make them borne to our desire,

Then thinke that we before haue heard them tould:

Thy registers and thee I both defie,

Not wondring at the present, nor the past,

For thy records, and what we see doth lye,

Made more or les by thy continuall hast:

This I doe vow and this shall euer be,

I will be true dispight thy syeth and thee.

124

YF my deare loue were but the childe of state,

It might for fortunes basterd be vnfathered,

As subiect to times loue, or to times hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gatherd.

No it was buylded far from accident,

It suffers not in smilinge pomp, nor falls

Vnder the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th'inuiting time our fashion calls:

It feares not policy that Heriticke,

Which workes on leases of short numbred howers,

But all alone stands hugely pollitick,

That it nor growes with heat, nor drownes with showres.

To this I witnes call the foles of time,

Which die for goodnes, who haue liu'd for crime.

125

WEr't ought to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honoring,

Or layd great bases for eternity,

Which proues more short then wast or ruining?

Haue I not seene dwellers on forme and fauor

Lose all, and more by paying too much rent

For compound sweet; Forgoing simple sauor,

Pittifull thriuors in their gazing spent.

Noe, let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblacion, poore but free,

Which is not mixt with seconds, knows no art,

But mutuall render, onely me for thee.

Hence, thou subbornd Informer, a trew soule

When most impeacht, stands least in thy controule.

126

O Thou my louely Boy who in thy power,

Doest hould times fickle glasse, his sickle, hower:

Who hast by wayning growne, and therein shou'st,

Thy louers withering, as thy sweet selfe grow'st.

If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack)

As thou goest onwards still will plucke thee backe,

She keepes thee to this purpose, that her skill.

May time disgrace, and wretched mynuit kill.

Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure,

She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure!

Her Audite (though delayd) answer'd must be,

And her Quietus is to render thee.

127

IN the ould age blacke was not counted faire,

Or if it weare it bore not beauties name:

But now is blacke beauties successiue heire,

And Beautie slanderd with a bastard shame,

For since each hand hath put on Natures power,

Fairing the foule with Arts faulse borrow'd face,

Sweet beauty hath no name no holy boure,

But is prophan'd, if not liues in disgrace.

Therefore my Mistersse eyes are Rauen blacke,

Her eyes so suted, and they mourners seeme,

At such who not borne faire no beauty lack,

Slandring Creation with a false esteeme,

Yet so they mourne becomming of their woe,

That euery toung saies beauty should looke so.

128

HOw oft when thou my musike musike playst,

Vpon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently swayst,

The wiry concord that mine eare confounds,

Do I enuie those Iackes that nimble leape,

To kisse the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poore lips which should that haruest reape,

At the woods bouldnes by thee blushing stand.

To be so tikled they would change their state,

And situation with those dancing chips,

Ore whome their fingers walke with gentle gate,

Making dead wood more blest then liuing lips,

Since sausie Iackes so happy are in this,

Giue them their fingers, me thy lips to kisse.

129

TH'expence of Spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action, and till action, lust

Is periurd, murdrous, blouddy full of blame,

Sauage, extreame, rude, cruell, not to trust,

Inioyd no sooner but dispised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had

Past reason hated as a swollowed bayt,

On purpose layd to make the taker mad.

Made In pursut and in possession so,

Had, hauing, and in quest, to haue extreame,

A blisse in proofe and proud and very wo,

Before a ioy proposd behind a dreame,

All this the world well knowes yet none knowes well,

To shun the heauen that leads men to this hell.

130

MY Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,

Currall is farre more red, then her lips red,

If snow be white, why then her brests are dun:

If haires be wiers, black wiers grow on her head:

I haue seene Roses damaskt, red and white,

But no such Roses see I in her cheekes,

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes.

I loue to heare her speake, yet well I know,

That Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:

I graunt I neuer saw a goddesse goe,

My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground.

And yet by heauen I thinke my loue as rare,

As any she beli'd with false compare.

131

THou art as tiranous, so as thou art,

As those whose beauties proudly make them cruell;

For well thou know'st to my deare doting hart

Thou art the fairest and most precious Iewell.

Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,

Thy face hath not the power to make loue grone;

To say they erre, I dare not be so bold,

Although I sweare it to my selfe alone.

And to be sure that is not false I sweare

A thousand grones but thinking on thy face,

One on anothers necke do witnesse beare

Thy blacke is fairest in my iudgements place.

In nothing art thou blacke saue in thy deeds,

And thence this slaunder as I thinke proceeds.

132

THine eies I loue, and they as pittying me,

Knowing thy heart torment me with disdaine,

Haue put on black, and louing mourners bee,

Looking with pretty ruth vpon my paine.

And truly not the morning Sun of Heauen

Better becomes the gray cheeks of th'East,

Nor that full Starre that vshers in the Eauen

Doth halfe that glory to the sober West

As those two morning eyes become thy face:

O let it then as well beseeme thy heart

To mourne for me since mourning doth thee grace,

And sute thy pitty like in euery part.

Then will I sweare beauty her selfe is blacke,

And all they foule that thy complexion lacke.

133

BEshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane

For that deepe wound it giues my friend and me;

I'st not ynough to torture me alone,

But slaue to slauery my sweet'st friend must be.

Me from my selfe thy cruell eye hath taken,

And my next selfe thou harder hast ingrossed,

Of him, my selfe, and thee I am forsaken,

A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:

Prison my heart in thy Steele bosomes warde,

But then my friends heart let my poore heart bale,

Who ere keepes me, let my heart be his garde,

Thou canst not then vse rigor in my Iaile.

And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,

Perforce am thine and all that is in me.

134

SO now I haue confest that he is thine,

And I my selfe am morgag'd to thy will,

My selfe Ile forfeit, so that other mine,

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art couetous, and he is kinde,

He learnd but suretie-like to write for me,

Vnder that bond that him as fast doth binde.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou vsurer that put'st forth all to vse,

And sue a friend, came debter for my sake,

So him I loose through my vnkinde abuse.

Him haue I lost, thou hast both him and me,

He paies the whole, and yet am I not free.

135

WHo euer hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will too boote, and Will in ouer-plus,

More then enough am I that vexe thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou whose will is large and spatious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine,

Shall will in others seeme right gracious,

And in my will no faire acceptance shine:

The sea all water, yet receiues raine still,

And in aboundance addeth to his store,

So thou beeing rich in Will adde to thy Will,

One will of mine to make thy large Will more.

Let no vnkinde, no faire beseechers kill,

Thinke all but one, and me in that one Will.

136

IF thy soule check thee that I come so neere,

Sweare to thy blind soule that I was thy Will,

And will thy soule knowes is admitted there,

Thus farre for loue, my loue-sute sweet fullfill.

Will, will fulfill the treasure of thy loue,

I fill it full with wils, and my will one,

In things of great receit with ease we prooue,

Among a number one is reckon'd none.

Then in the number let me passe vntold,

Though in thy stores account I one must be,

For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,

That nothing me, a some-thing sweet to thee.

Make but my name thy loue, and loue that still,

And then thou louest me for my name is Will.

137

THou blinde foole loue, what doost thou to mine eyes,

That they behold and see not what they see:

They know what beautie is, see where it lyes,

Yet what the best is, take the worst to be:

If eyes corrupt by ouer-partiall lookes,

Be anchord in the baye where all men ride,

Why of eyes falsehood hast thou forged hookes,

Whereto the iudgement of my heart is tide?

Why should my heart thinke that a seuerall plot,

Which my heart knowes the wide worlds common place?

Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not

To put faire truth vpon so foule a face,

In things right true my heart and eyes haue erred,

And to this false plague are they now transferred.

138

WHen my loue sweares that she is made of truth,

I do beleeue her though I know she lyes,

That she might thinke me some vntuterd youth,

Vnlearned in the worlds false subtilties.

Thus vainely thinking that she thinkes me young,

Although she knowes my dayes are past the best,

Simply I credit her false speaking tongue,

On both sides thus is simple truth supprest:

But wherefore sayes she not she is vniust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O loues best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in loue, loues not t'haue yeares told.

Therefore I lye with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lyes we flattered be.

139

O Call not me to iustifie the wrong,

That thy vnkindnesse layes vpon my heart,

Wound me not with thine eye but with thy toung,

Vse power with power, and slay me not by Art,

Tell me thou lou'st else-where; but in my sight,

Deare heart forbeare to glance thine eye aside,

What needst thou wound with cunning when thy might

Is more then my ore-prest defence can bide?

Let me excuse thee, ah my loue well knowes,

Her prettie lookes haue beene mine enemies,

And therefore from my face she turnes my foes,

That they else-where might dart their iniuries:

Yet do not so, but since I am neere slaine,

Kill me out-right with lookes, and rid my paine.

140

BE wise as thou art cruell, do not presse

My toung-tide patience with too much disdaine:

Least sorrow lend me words and words expresse,

The manner of my pittie wanting paine.

If I might teach thee witte better it weare,

Though not to loue, yet loue to tell me so,

As testie sick-men when their deaths be neere,

No newes but health from their Phisitions know.

For if I should dispaire I should grow madde,

And in my madnesse might speake ill of thee,

Now this ill wresting world is growne so bad,

Madde slanderers by madde eares beleeued be.

That I may not be so, nor thou be lyde,

Beare thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart goe wide.

141

IN faith I doe not loue thee with mine eyes,

For they in thee a thousand errors note,

But 'tis my heart that loues what they dispise,

Who in dispight of view is pleasd to dote.

Nor are mine eares with thy toungs tune delighted,

Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be inuited

To any sensuall feast with thee alone:

But my fiue wits, nor my fiue sences can

Diswade one foolish heart from seruing thee,

Who leaues vnswai'd the likenesse of a man,

Thy proud hearts slaue and vassall wretch to be:

Onely my plague thus farre I count my gaine,

That she that makes me sinne, awards me paine.

142

LOue is my sinne, and thy deare vertue hate,

Hate of my sinne, grounded on sinfull louing,

O but with mine, compare thou thine owne state,

And thou shalt finde it merrits not reproouing,

Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,

That haue prophan'd their scarlet ornaments,

And seald false bonds of loue as oft as mine,

Robd others beds reuenues of their rents.

Be it lawfull I loue thee as thou lou'st those,

Whome thine eyes wooe as mine importune thee,

Roote pittie in thy heart that when it growes,

Thy pitty may deserue to pittied bee.

If thou doost seeke to haue what thou doost hide,

By selfe example mai'st thou be denide.

143

LOe as a carefull huswife runnes to catch,

One of her fethered creatures broake away,

Sets downe her babe and makes all swift dispatch

In pursuit of the thing she would haue stay:

Whilst her neglected child holds her in chace,

Cries to catch her whose busie care is bent,

To follow that which flies before her face:

Not prizing her poore infants discontent;

So runst thou after that which flies from thee,

Whilst I thy babe chace thee a farre behind,

But if thou catch thy hope turne back to me:

And play the mothers part kisse me, be kind.

So will I pray that thou maist haue thy Will,

If thou turne back and my loude crying still.

144

TWo loues I haue of comfort and dispaire,

Which like two spirits do sugiest me still,

The better angell is a man right faire :

The worser spirit a woman collour'd il.

To win me soone to hell my femail euill,

Tempteth my better angel from my sight,

And would corrupt my saint to be a diuel:

Wooing his purity with her fowle pride.

And whether that my angel be turn'd finde,

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,

But being both from me both to each friend,

I gesse one angel in an others hel.

Yet this shal I nere know but liue in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

145

THose lips that Loues owne hand did make,

Breath'd forth the sound that said I hate,

To me that languisht for her sake:

But when she saw my wofull state,

Straight in her heart did mercie come,

Chiding that tongue that euer sweet,

Was vsde in giuing gentle dome:

And tought it thus a new to greete:

I hate she alterd with an end,

That follow'd it as gentle day,

Doth follow night who like a fiend

From heauen to hell is flowne away.

I hate, from hate away she threw,

And sau'd my life saying not you.

146

POore soule the center of my sinfull earth,

My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth

Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay?

Why so large cost hauing so short a lease,

Dost thou vpon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse

Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end?

Then soule liue thou vpon thy seruants losse,

And let that pine to aggrauat thy store;

Buy tearmes diuine in selling houres of drosse:

Within be fed, without be rich no more,

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And death once dead, ther's no more dying then,

147

MY loue is as a feauer longing still,

For that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserue the ill,

Th'vncertaine sicklie appetite to please:

My reason the Phisition to my loue,

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept

Hath left me, and I desperate now approoue,

Desire is death, which Phisick did except.

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,

And frantick madde with euer-more vnrest,

My thoughts and my discourse as mad mens are,

At randon from the truth vainely exprest.

For I haue sworne thee faire, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as darke as night.

148

O Me! what eyes hath loue put in my head,

Which haue no correspondence with true sight,

Or if they haue, where is my iudgment fled,

That censures falsely what they see aright?

If that be faire whereon my false eyes dote,

What meanes the world to say it is not so?

If it be not, then loue doth well denote,

Loues eye is not so true as all mens: no,

How can it? O how can loues eye be true,

That is so vext with watching and with teares?

No maruaile then though I mistake my view,

The sunne it selfe sees not, till heauen cleeres.

O cunning loue, with teares thou keepst me blinde,

Least eyes well seeing thy foule faults should finde.

149

CAnst thou O cruell, say I loue thee not,

When I against my selfe with thee pertake:

Doe I not thinke on thee when I forgot

Am of my selfe, all tirant for thy sake?

Who hateth thee that I doe call my friend,

On whom froun'st thou that I doe faune vpon,

Nay if thou lowrst on me doe I not spend

Reuenge vpon my selfe with present mone?

What merrit do I in my selfe respect,

That is so proude thy seruice to dispise,

When all my best doth worship thy defect,

Commanded by the motion of thine eyes.

But loue hate on for now I know thy minde,

Those that can see thou lou'st, and I am blind.

150

OH from what powre hast thou this powrefull might,

With insufficiency my heart to sway,

To make me giue the lie to my true sight,

And swere that brightnesse doth not grace the day?

Whence hast thou this becomming of things il,

That in the very refuse of thy deeds,

There is such strength and warrantise of skill,

That in my minde thy worst all best exceeds?

Who taught thee how to make me loue thee more,

The more I heare and see iust cause of hate,

Oh though I loue what others doe abhor,

With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.

If thy vnworthinesse raisd loue in me,

More worthy I to be belou'd of thee.

151

LOue is too young to know what conscience is,

Yet who knowes not conscience is borne of loue,

Then gentle cheater vrge not my amisse,

Least guilty of my faults thy sweet selfe proue.

For thou betraying me, I doe betray

My nobler part to my grose bodies treason,

My soule doth tell my body that he may,

Triumph in loue, flesh staies no farther reason,

But rysing at thy name doth point out thee,

As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,

He is contented thy poore drudge to be

To stand in thy affaires, fall by thy side.

No want of conscience hold it that I call,

Her loue, for whose deare loue I rise and fall.

152

IN louing thee thou know'st I am forsworne,

But thou art twice forsworne to me loue swearing,

In act thy bed-vow broake and new faith torne,

In vowing new hate after new loue bearing:

But why of two othes breach doe I accuse thee,

When I breake twenty: I am periur'd most,

For all my vowes are othes but to misuse thee:

And all my honest faith in thee is lost.

For I haue sworne deepe othes of thy deepe kindnesse:

Othes of thy loue, thy truth, thy constancie,

And to inlighten thee gaue eyes to blindnesse,

Or made them swere against the thing they see.

For I haue sworne thee faire: more periurde eye,

To swere against the truth so foule a lie.

153

CVpid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe,

A maide of Dyans this aduantage found,

And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe

In a could vallie-fountaine of that ground:

Which borrowd from this holie fire of loue,

A datelesse liuely heat still to indure,

And grew a seething bath which yet men proue,

Against strang malladies a soueraigne cure:

But at my mistres eie loues brand new fired,

The boy for triall needes would touch my brest,

I sick withall the helpe of bath desired,

And thether hied a sad distemperd guest.

But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,

Where Cupid got new fire; my mistres eye.

154

THe little Loue-God lying once a sleepe,

Laid by his side his heart inflaming brand,

Whilst many Nymphes that vou'd chast life to keep,

Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,

The fayrest votary tooke vp that fire,

Which many Legions of true hearts had warm'd,

And so the Generall of hot desire,

Was sleeping by a Virgin hand disarm'd.

This brand she quenched in a coole Well by,

Which from loues fire tooke heat perpetuall,

Growing a bath and healthfull remedy,

For men diseasd, but I my Mistrisse thrall,

Came there for cure and this by that I proue,

Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue.

Modern text

TO THE ONLY BEGETTER OF

THESE INSUING SONNETS

MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESS

AND THAT ETERNITY

PROMISED

OUR EVER-LIVING POET

WISHETH

THE WELL-WISHING

ADVENTURER IN

SETTING FORTH

T.T.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,

If thou could'st answer: this fair child of mine

Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,

Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art old,

And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see

Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.

But if thou live remembered not to be,

Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

And being frank she lends to those are free.

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Then how, when Nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

Which used lives th' executor to be.

Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel:

For never resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there;

Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness everywhere

Then were not summer's distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.

But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place

With beauty's treasure ere it be self killed.

That use is not forbidden usury,

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

That's for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:

Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair

To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage:

But when from highmost pitch with weary car

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes ('fore duteous) now converted are

From his low tract and look another way:

So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,

Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:

Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tuned sounds

By unions married do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou should'st bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,

Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee: thou single wilt prove none.

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye

That thou consum'st thyself in single life?

Ah; if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

The world will be thy widow and still weep

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep,

By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it:

But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,

And kept unused the user so destroys it.

No love toward others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

For shame, deny that thou bear'st love to any

Who for thyself art so unprovident:

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

But that thou none lov'st is most evident:

For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate

That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

Which to repair should be thy chief desire:

O change thy thought, that I may change my mind!

Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?

Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:

Make thee another self, for love of me,

That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st,

In one of thine, from that which thou departest,

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st

Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest.

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;

Without this, folly, age, and cold decay:

If all were minded so, the times should cease,

And threescore year would make the world away:

Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:

Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more,

Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby

Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls all silvered o'er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

And Summer's green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:

Then of thy beauty do I question make

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,

And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence

Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.

O that you were yourself, but, love, you are

No longer yours than you yourself here live:

Against this coming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other give.

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination, then you were

Yourself again after yourself's decease,

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honour might uphold

Against the stormy gusts of winter's day

And barren rage of death's eternal cold?

O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know

You had a Father, let your Son say so.

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,

And yet methinks I have astronomy,

But not to tell of good, or evil luck,

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,

Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,

Or say with Princes if it shall go well,

By oft predict that I in heaven find.

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,

And constant stars; in them I read such art

As truth and beauty shall together thrive,

If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert:

Or else of thee this I prognosticate,

Thy end is Truth's and Beauty's doom and date.

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and checked even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful time debateth with decay,

To change your day of youth to sullied night;

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

But wherefore do not you a mightier way

Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?

And fortify yourself in your decay

With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?

Now stand you on the top of happy hours,

And many maiden gardens yet unset

With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,

Much liker than your painted counterfeit:

So should the lines of life that life repair,

Which this (Time's pencil or my pupil pen)

Neither in inward worth nor outward fair

Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.

To give away yourself keeps yourself still,

And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were filled with your most high deserts?

Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say this poet lies:

Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.

So should my papers (yellowed with their age)

Be scorned like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be termed a poet's rage

And stretched metre of an antique song.

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,

And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,

And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets;

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:

O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created,

Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,

Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

So is it not with me as with that Muse,

Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,

Who heaven itself for ornament doth use,

And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

Making a couplement of proud compare

With Sun and Moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,

With April's first-born flowers and all things rare

That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.

O let me, true in love, but truly write,

And then believe me, my love is as fair

As any mother's child, though not so bright

As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:

Let them say more that like of hearsay well;

I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

So long as youth and thou are of one date,

But when in thee time's furrows I behold,

Then look I death my days should expiate.

For all that beauty that doth cover thee

Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:

How can I then be elder than thou art?

O therefore, love, be of thyself so wary

As I, not for myself, but for thee will,

Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary

As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;

Thou gav'st me thine, not to give back again.

As an unperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put besides his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,

O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might:

O let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.

O learn to read what silent love hath writ:

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit .

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,

And perspective it is best painter's art.

For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictured lies,

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,

That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:

Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me

Are windows to my breast, where-through the Sun

Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;

They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Let those who are in favour with their stars

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,

Unlooked-for joy in that I honour most.

Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun's eye,

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famoused for worth,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honour razed forth,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:

Then happy I that love and am beloved

Where I may not remove, nor be removed.

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,

To thee I send this written ambassage

To witness duty, not to show my wit:

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;

But that I hope some good conceit of thine

In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it:

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving

Points on me graciously with fair aspect,

And puts apparel on my tattered loving,

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,

Till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body's work's expired.

For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see,

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.

Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

How can I then return in happy plight

That am debarred the benefit of rest?

When day's oppression is not eased by night,

But day by night and night by day oppressed?

And each (though enemies to either's reign)

Do in consent shake hands to torture me,

The one by toil, the other to complain

How far I toil, still farther off from thee.

I tell the day to please him thou art bright,

And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:

So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,

When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st th' even.

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,

And night doth nightly make grief's length seem stronger.

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state

(Like to the lark at break of day arising)

From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste:

Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe,

And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay, as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,

Which I by lacking have supposed dead,

And there reigns Love and all Love's loving parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,

As interest of the dead, which now appear,

But things removed that hidden in thee lie.

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give;

That due of many now is thine alone.

Their images I loved, I view in thee,

And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

If thou survive my well-contented day,

When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,

Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,

And though they be outstripped by every pen,

Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,

Exceeded by the height of happier men.

Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,

A dearer birth than this his love had brought

To march in ranks of better equipage:

But since he died and poets better prove,

Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

Even so my Sun one early morn did shine

With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

But out, alack, he was but one hour mine;

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,

And make me travel forth without my cloak,

To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,

Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,

To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face

For no man well of such a salve can speak

That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:

Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief

To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,

And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both Moon and Sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and even I in this,

Authorizing thy trespass with compare,

Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,

Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,

Thy adverse party is thy advocate,

And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:

Such civil war is in my love and hate

That I an accessory needs must be

To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

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.

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!

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?

Oh give thyself the thanks if aught in me

Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;

For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,

When thou thyself 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.

Oh 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.

Oh 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.

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 thyself deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty:

And yet love knows it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

Those petty 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:

Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,

Thine by thy beauty being false to me.

That thou hast her it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;

That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,

A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,

And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suff'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;

Both find each other, and I lose both twain,

And both for my sake lay on me this cross:

But here's the joy: my friend and I are one;

Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.

When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,

For all the day they view things unrespected;

But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,

And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.

Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright,

How would thy shadow's form form happy show

To the clear day with thy much clearer light,

When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?

How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made

By looking on thee in the living day,

When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade

Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

Injurious distance should not stop my way,

For then despite of space I would be brought

From limits far remote where thou dost stay.

No matter then although my foot did stand

Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,

As soon as think the place where he would be.

But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought

To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

But that so much of earth and water wrought

I must attend time's leisure with my moan,

Receiving nought by elements so slow,

But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

The other two, slight air and purging fire,

Are both with thee, wherever I abide;

The first my thought, the other my desire,

These present absent with swift motion slide.

For when these quicker elements are gone

In tender embassy of love to thee,

My life, being made of four, with two alone

Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy,

Until life's composition be recured

By those swift messengers returned from thee,

Who even but now come back again, assured

Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.

This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,

I send them back again and straight grow sad.

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,

How to divide the conquest of thy sight;

Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,

My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.

My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie

(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)

But the defendant doth that plea deny,

And says in him thy fair appearance lies.

To 'cide this title is impannelled

A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,

And by their verdict is determined

The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part:

As thus: mine eye's due is thy outward part,

And my heart's right thy inward love of heart.

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,

And each doth good turns now unto the other:

When that mine eye is famished for a look,

Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,

With my love's picture then my eye doth feast

And to the painted banquet bids my heart:

Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,

And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.

So either by thy picture or my love,

Thyself away art present still with me,

For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,

And I am still with them, and they with thee;

Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight

Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.

How careful was I when I took my way,

Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,

That to my use it might unused stay

From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!

But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,

Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,

Thou best of dearest and mine only care,

Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.

Thee have I not locked up in any chest,

Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,

Within the gentle closure of my breast,

From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;

And even thence thou wilt be stol'n, I fear,

For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

Against that time (if ever that time come)

When I shall see thee frown on my defects,

Whenas thy love hath cast his utmost sum,

Called to that audit by advised respects;

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,

And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,

When love converted from the thing it was

Shall reasons find of settled gravity;

Against that time do I ensconce me here

Within the knowledge of mine own desart,

And this my hand against myself uprear

To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:

To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,

Since why to love I can allege no cause.

How heavy do I journey on the way,

When what I seek (my weary travel's end)

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say

Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.

The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,

Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,

As if by some instinct the wretch did know

His rider loved not speed being made from thee:

The bloody spur cannot provoke him on

That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,

Which heavily he answers with a groan,

More sharp to me than spurring to his side;

For that same groan doth put this in my mind:

My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

Thus can my love excuse the slow offence

Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed:

From where thou art why should I haste me thence?

Till I return, of posting is no need.

O, what excuse will my poor beast then find,

When swift extremity can seem but slow?

Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;

In winged speed no motion shall I know:

Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;

Therefore desire (of perfect'st love being made)

Shall neigh, no dull flesh in his fiery race,

But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade;

Since from thee going he went wilful slow,

Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet uplocked treasure,

The which he will not ev'ry hour survey,

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.

Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,

Since, seldom coming in the long year set,

Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,

Or captain jewels in the carcanet.

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,

To make some special instant special blest,

By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.

Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,

Being had, to triumph, being lacked, to hope.

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

Since every one hath, every one, one shade,

And you but one, can every shadow lend.

Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit

Is poorly imitated after you;

On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,

And you in Grecian tires are painted new:

Speak of the spring and foison of the year,

The one doth shadow of your beauty show,

The other as your bounty doth appear,

And you in every blessed shape we know.

In all external grace you have some part,

But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

Oh how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it live.

The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,

When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:

But, for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgement that yourself arise,

You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said

Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,

Which but today by feeding is allayed,

Tomorrow sharpened in his former might.

So, love, be thou; although today thou fill

Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,

Tomorrow see again, and do not kill

The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.

Let this sad interim like the ocean be

Which parts the shore, where two contracted new

Come daily to the banks, that when they see

Return of love, more blest may be the view.

Else call it winter, which being full of care,

Makes summer's welcome thrice more wished, more rare.

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

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 any thing, he thinks no ill.

That god forbid that made me first your slave,

I should in thought control your times of pleasure,

Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave,

Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure.

Oh let me suffer (being at your beck)

Th' imprisoned 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 privilege 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.

If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which labouring for invention bear amiss

The second burthen of a former child?

Oh 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,

Whether we are mended, or where better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

Oh sure I am, the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

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 crowned,

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.

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.

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 chopped with tanned antiquity,

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;

Self so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (my self) that for myself I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Against my love shall be as I am now

With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,

When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow

With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn

Hath travelled 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.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down rased,

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 wat'ry 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.

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 batt'ring 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.

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,

And simple truth miscalled simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

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 steal dead seeing 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,

Beggared 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.

Thus in 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.

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.

Thine outward thus with outward praise is crowned,

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.

That thou art blamed 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 wooed 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 assailed, or victor being charged;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,

To tie up envy evermore enlarged:

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,

Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

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.

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.

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 ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest 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 seest the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the deathbed, whereon it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

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.

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet-seasoned 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 bettered 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.

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.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;

The 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, delivered 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.

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.

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,

But now my gracious numbers are decayed,

And my sick Muse doth give another 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.

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 wrecked) 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.

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'erread,

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.

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 devised

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair wert truly sympathized,

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.

And their gross painting might be better used

Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

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

The 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.

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 everywhere.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,

While comments of your praise, richly compiled,

Reserve their character with golden quill,

And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.

I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,

And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen

To every hymn that able spirit affords,

In polished 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.

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 filled up his line,

Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

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.

Thyself 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.

When thou shalt be disposed 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 concealed, 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.

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 myself I'll vow debate,

For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.

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 'scaped this sorrow,

Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,

To linger out a purposed 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,

Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

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' cost,

Of more delight than hawks or 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 wretched make.

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.

So shall I live, supposing thou art true,

Like a deceived husband; so love's face

May still seem love to me, though altered 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.

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.

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!

Oh 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.

Oh 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 turn to fair that eyes can see!

Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege;

The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,

Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;

Both grace and faults are loved 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 esteemed,

So are those errors, that in thee are seen,

To truths translated, and for true things deemed.

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.

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 burthen of the prime,

Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease:

Yet this abundant issue seemed to me

But hope of orphans, and unfathered 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.

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud pied April (dressed in all his trim)

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything;

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped 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 lilies 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 seemed it winter still, and you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

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 dyed.

The lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair,

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both

And to his robb'ry had annexed 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 stolen from thee.

100

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forgett'st so long

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,

Dark'ning 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 everywhere.

Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;

So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.

101

O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?

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 fixed;

Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;

But best is best, if never intermixed?

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 praised of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how,

To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.

102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear;

That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming

The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.

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.

103

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.

Oh blame me not if I no more can write!

Look in your glass, and there appears a face

That overgoes 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.

104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers' pride;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen;

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

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 perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived;

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,

Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

105

Let not my love be called 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 today, tomorrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

Therefore my verse to constancy confined,

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 lived alone,

Which three till now never kept seat in one.

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

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 expressed

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.

107

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 confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

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 rhyme,

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.

108

What's in the brain that ink may character

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

What's new to speak, what new 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 hallowed 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.

109

O never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie.

That is my home of love: if I have ranged,

Like him that travels I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe, though in my nature reigned

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stained,

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.

110

Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely: but by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays proved thee my best of love.

Now all is done, have 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 confined.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

111

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 subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:

Pity me then and wish I were renewed;

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.

112

Your love and pity doth th' impression fill,

Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,

For what care I who calls me well or ill,

So you o'ergreen 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 steeled 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 me thinks y' are dead.

113

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.

114

Or whether doth my mind being crowned 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?

Oh '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 poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin,

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer,

Yet then my judgement knew no reason why

My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents

Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,

Divert strong minds to th' course of alt'ring things;

Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny,

Might I not then say now I love you best,

When I was certain o'er incertainty,

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?

116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

117

Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all

Wherein I should your great deserts repay,

Forgot upon your dearest love to call,

Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;

That I have frequent been with unknown minds,

And given to time your own dear-purchased right,

That I have hoisted sail to all the winds

Which should transport me farthest from your sight.

Book both my wilfulness and errors down,

And on just proof surmise accumulate;

Bring me within the level of your frown,

But shoot not at me in your wakened hate;

Since my appeal says I did strive to prove

The constancy and virtue of your love.

118

Like as to make our appetites more keen

With eager compounds we our palate urge,

As to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge,

Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding,

And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,

To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, t' anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.

But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

119

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,

Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,

Still losing when I saw myself to win!

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,

Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted

In the distraction of this madding fever!

O benefit of ill, now I find true

That better is, by evil still made better.

And ruined love when it is built anew

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

So I return rebuked to my content,

And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

120

That you were once unkind befriends me now,

And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,

Needs must I under my transgression bow,

Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken

As I by yours, y' have passed a hell of time,

And I a tyrant have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.

O, that our night of woe might have remembered

My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you, as you to me, then tendered

The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee,

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

121

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,

When not to be receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed

Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.

For why should others' false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

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

At my abuses reckon up their own;

I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown.

Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad and in their badness reign.

122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full charactered with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain

Beyond all date even to eternity;

Or at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist,

Till each to rased oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more.

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

123

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond'ring at the present nor the past,

For thy records, and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow and this shall ever be:

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

124

If my dear love were but the child of state,

It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,

As subject to Time's love, or to Time's hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls;

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of Time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

125

Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honouring,

Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent

For compound sweet, forgoing simple savour,

Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?

No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,

But mutual render only me for thee.

Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul

When most impeached stands least in thy control.

126

O thou my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st

Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st;

If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)

As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill

May Time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!

She may detain, but not still keep her treasure.

Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

127

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were it bore not beauty's name;

But now is black beauty's successive heir,

And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:

For since each hand hath put on nature's power,

Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,

But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.

Therefore my mistress' brows are raven black,

Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,

At such who not born fair no beauty lack,

Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.

Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says beauty should look so.

128

How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand.

To be so tickled, they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.

Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

129

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof and proud and very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet by heaven I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

131

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,

As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;

For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart

Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.

Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,

Thy face hath not the power to make love groan:

To say they err I dare not be so bold,

Although I swear it to myself alone.

And to be sure that is not false I swear,

A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,

One on another's neck do witness bear

Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place.

In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,

And thence this slander as I think proceeds.

132

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,

Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,

Have put on black, and loving mourners be,

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.

And truly not the morning sun of heaven

Better becomes the grey cheeks of th' East,

Nor that full star that ushers in the even

Doth half that glory to the sober West

As those two mourning eyes become thy face.

O let it then as well beseem thy heart

To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace,

And suit thy pity like in every part.

Then will I swear beauty herself is black,

And all they foul that thy complexion lack.

133

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan

For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!

Is't not enough to torture me alone,

But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?

Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,

And my next self thou harder hast engrossed:

Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken;

A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed.

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,

But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail;

Who e'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;

Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.

And yet thou wilt, for I, being pent in thee,

Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.

134

So now I have confessed that he is thine,

And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,

Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine

Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still.

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous, and he is kind;

He learned but surety-like to write for me,

Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use,

And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,

So him I lose through my unkind abuse.

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will,

One will of mine to make thy large Will more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

136

If thy soul check thee that I come so near,

Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will,

And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;

Thus far for love my love-suit sweet fulfil.

Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love,

Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.

In things of great receipt with ease we prove

Among a number one is reckoned none.

Then in the number let me pass untold,

Though in thy stores' account I one must be,

For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold

That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.

Make but my name thy love, and love that still,

And then thou lov'st me for my name is Will.

137

Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,

That they behold and see not what they see?

They know what beauty is, see where it lies,

Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.

If eyes corrupt by overpartial looks,

Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,

Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,

Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied?

Why should my heart think that a several plot,

Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?

Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not

To put fair truth upon so foul a face?

In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,

And to this false plague are they now transferred.

138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;

On both sides thus is simple truth supprest.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O love's best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

139

O call not me to justify the wrong

That thy unkindness lays upon my heart.

Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;

Use power with power and slay me not by art.

Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight,

Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside.

What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might

Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide?

Let me excuse thee: ah, my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,

And therefore from my face she turns my foes,

That they elsewhere might dart their injuries.

Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,

Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

140

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,

Lest sorrow lend me words and words express

The manner of my pity wanting pain.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,

No news but health from their physicians know.

For if I should despair, I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee:

Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,

Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.

That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

141

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,

For they in thee a thousand errors note,

But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,

Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.

Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,

Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited

To any sensual feast with thee alone.

But my five wits, nor my five senses can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,

Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be.

Only my plague thus far I count my gain,

That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

142

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,

Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving.

O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,

And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;

Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,

That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,

And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,

Robbed others' beds' revenues of their rents.

Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those

Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee.

Root pity in thy heart that, when it grows,

Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.

If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,

By self-example mayst thou be denied.

143

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch

One of her feathered creatures broke away,

Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch

In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;

Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,

Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent

To follow that which flies before her face,

Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;

So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,

Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;

But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,

And play the mother's part; kiss me; be kind.

So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,

If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

144

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

To win me soon to hell, my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, but not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another's hell.

Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

145

Those lips that Love's own hand did make

Breathed forth the sound that said I hate

To me that languished for her sake;

But when she saw my woeful state,

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that ever sweet

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet:

I hate she altered with an end,

That followed it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heaven to hell is flown away;

I hate, from hate away she threw,

And saved my life saying, not you.

146

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

My sinful earth these rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?

Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

147

My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease,

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

Th' uncertain sickly appetite to please.

My reason, the physician to my love,

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

Hath left me, and I desperate now approve

Desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now reason is past care,

And frantic mad with evermore unrest;

My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,

At random from the truth vainly expressed;

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

148

O me, what eyes hath love put in my head,

Which have no correspondence with true sight!

Or if they have, where is my judgement fled,

That censures falsely what they see aright?

If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,

What means the world to say it is not so?

If it be not, then love doth well denote

Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,

How can it? O how can love's eye be true,

That is so vexed with watching and with tears?

No marvel then though I mistake my view;

The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.

O cunning love, with tears thou keep'st me blind,

Lest eyes well seeing thy foul faults should find.

149

Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not,

When I against myself with thee partake?

Do I not think on thee when I forgot

Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake?

Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?

On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon?

Nay, if thou lower'st on me, do I not spend

Revenge upon myself with present moan?

What merit do I in myself respect,

That is so proud thy service to despise,

When all my best doth worship thy defect,

Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?

But love hate on, for now I know thy mind:

Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind.

150

Oh from what power hast thou this powerful might,

With insufficiency my heart to sway,

To make me give the lie to my true sight,

And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?

Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,

That in the very refuse of thy deeds

There is such strength and warrantise of skill

That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?

Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,

The more I hear and see just cause of hate?

O, though I love what others do abhor,

With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.

If thy unworthiness raised love in me,

More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

151

Love is too young to know what conscience is;

Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?

Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,

Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:

For, thou betraying me, I do betray

My nobler part to my gross body's treason.

My soul doth tell my body that he may

Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason.

But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee

As his triumphant prize; proud of this pride,

He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.

No want of conscience hold it that I call

Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.

152

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,

But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,

In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,

In vowing new hate after new love bearing.

But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,

When I break twenty? I am perjured most;

For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,

And all my honest faith in thee is lost;

For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,

Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,

And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,

Or made them swear against the thing they see;

For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,

To swear against the truth so foul a lie.

153

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep;

A maid of Dian's this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

Which borrowed from this holy fire of love

A dateless lively heat still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

But at my mistress' eye love's brand new-fired,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

And thither hied, a sad distempered guest,

But found no cure. The bath for my help lies

Where Cupid got new fire: my mistress' eyes.

154

The little love-god lying once asleep

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep

Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand

The fairest votary took up that fire,

Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,

And so the general of hot desire

Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.

This brand she quenched in a cool well by,

Which from love's fire took heat perpetual,

Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

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