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it hath my added praise beside!

O! blame me not, if I no more can write!

Look in your glass, and there appears a face

That over-goes my blunt invention quite,

Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?

For to no other pass my verses tend

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;

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

Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

 

CIV

 

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

For as you were when first your eye I eyā€™d,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,

Have from the forests shook three summersā€™ pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turnā€™d,

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burnā€™d,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceivā€™d;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceivā€™d:

For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:

Ere you were born was beautyā€™s summer dead.

 

CV

 

Let not my love be callā€™d idolatry,

Nor my beloved as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

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

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

Therefore my verse to constancy confinā€™d,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

ā€˜Fair, kind, and true,ā€™ is all my argument,

ā€˜Fair, kind, and true,ā€™ 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 livā€™d alone,

Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

 

CVI

 

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rime,

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

Then, in the blazon of sweet beautyā€™s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressā€™d

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And for they looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

 

CVII

 

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confinā€™d doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endurā€™d,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assurā€™d,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time,

My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,

Since, spite of him, Iā€™ll live in this poor rime,

While he insults oā€™er dull and speechless tribes:

And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrantsā€™ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

 

CVIII

 

Whatā€™s in the brain, that ink may character,

Which hath not figurā€™d to thee my true spirit?

Whatā€™s new to speak, what now to register,

That may express my love, or thy dear merit?

Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,

I must each day say oā€™er the very same;

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

Even as when first I hallowā€™d thy fair name.

So that eternal love in loveā€™s fresh case,

Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

But makes antiquity for aye his page;

Finding the first conceit of love there bred,

Where time and outward form would show it dead.

 

CIX

 

O! never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemā€™d my flame to qualify,

As easy might I from my self depart

As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:

That is my home of love: if I have rangā€™d,

Like him that travels, I return again;

Just to the time, not with the time exchangā€™d,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe though in my nature reignā€™d,

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stainā€™d,

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;

For nothing this wide universe I call,

Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

 

CX

 

Alas! ā€˜tis true, I have gone here and there,

And made my self a motley to the view,

Gorā€™d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new;

Most true it is, that I have lookā€™d on truth

Askance and strangely; but, by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays provā€™d thee my best of love.

Now all is done, save what shall have no end:

Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confinā€™d.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

 

CXI

 

O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subduā€™d

To what it works in, like the dyerā€™s hand:

Pity me, then, and wish I were renewā€™d;

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,

Potions of eisel ā€˜gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance, to correct correction.

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,

Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

 

CXII

 

Your love and pity doth the impression fill,

Which vulgar scandal stampā€™d upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill,

So you oā€™er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue;

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steelā€™d sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of othersā€™ voices, that my adderā€™s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

That all the world besides methinks are dead.

 

CXIII

 

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;

And that which governs me to go about

Doth part his function and is partly blind,

Seems seeing, but effectually is out;

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:

Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;

For if it see the rudā€™st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet favour or deformedā€™st creature,

The mountain or the sea, the day or night:

The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.

Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.

 

CXIV

 

Or whether doth my mind, being crownā€™d with you,

Drink up the monarchā€™s plague, this flattery?

Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,

And that your love taught it this alchemy,

To make of monsters and things indigest

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,

Creating every bad a perfect best,

As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

O! ā€˜tis the first, ā€˜tis flattery in my seeing,

And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ā€˜greeing,

And to his palate doth prepare the cup:

If it be poisonā€™d, ā€˜tis the lesser sin

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

 

CXV

 

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer:

Yet then my judgment knew no reason why

My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning Time, whose millionā€™d accidents

Creep in ā€˜twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpā€™st intents,

Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;

Alas! why fearing of Timeā€™s tyranny,

Might I not then say, ā€˜Now I love you best,ā€™

When I was certain oā€™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?

 

CXVI

 

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 wandering bark,

Whose worthā€™s unknown, although his height be taken.

Loveā€™s not Timeā€™s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickleā€™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 provā€™d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lovā€™d.

 

CXVII

 

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-purchasā€™d 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 wakenā€™d hate;

Since my appeal says I did strive to prove

The constancy and virtue of your love.

 

CXVIII

 

Like as, to make our appetite 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 neā€™er-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness

To be diseasā€™d, ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, to anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assurā€™d,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be curā€™d;

But thence I learn and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

 

CXIX

 

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,

Distillā€™d from limbecks foul as hell within,

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,

Still losing when I saw myself to win!

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,

Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,

In the distraction of this madding fever!

O benefit of ill! now I find true

That better is, by evil still made better;

And ruinā€™d love, when it is built anew,

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

So I return rebukā€™d to my content,

And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

 

CXX

 

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 hammerā€™d steel.

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