莎士比亚商籁体十四行诗集

●屠 岸《莎士比亚十四行诗集》 上 海 译 文 出版社

●梁 宗 岱 《莎士比亚全集{11卷}》人 民 文 学 出版社《莎士比亚十四行诗集》纯文学出版1992年妻陈 瑛 授权纪念出版，余 光 中 作序)

●杨 熙 龄 《莎士比亚十四行诗集》 内 蒙 古 人 民 出版社 1980

●梁 实 秋 《莎士比亚全集：十四行诗》中 国 广 播 电 视 出版社《莎士比亚全集：十四行诗》 远 东 图 书 公 司 197X

●曹 明 伦 《莎士比亚十四行诗全集》 漓 江 出版社 1995年

●辜 正 坤《莎士比亚十四行诗集》 北 京 大 学 出版社 1998

●金 发 燊《莎士比亚十四行诗集》 广 西 师 范 大 学 出版社 2004

●卞 之 琳《英国诗选》湖 南 人 民 出版社

●孙 大 雨 《英诗选译集》上 海 外 语 教 育 出版社 1999

●朱 湘 《朱湘译诗集》湖 南 人 民 出版社

1

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  .

2

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 couldst answer  , 'This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count  and make my old excuse  ',

Proving his beauty by succession  thine  .

3

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.

4

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 largesse 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, usèd, lives th'executor  to be.

5

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'ersnowed  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,

Lose but their show  , their substance still  lives sweet.

6

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.

7

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:

8

Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy  ?

If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,

By unions  married, do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide  thee, who confounds 

In singleness  the parts that thou shouldst 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.' 

9

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.

10

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  .

11

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.

12

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.

13

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.

14

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   .

15

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,

Cheerèd and checked  ev'n 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  .

16

But wherefore  do not you a mightier way

Make war upon this bloody  tyrant, Time?

And fortify  yourself in your decay

With means more blessèd 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  .

17

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 number  s 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 stretchèd  metre of an antique  song.

But were some child of yours alive that time,

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

18

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 wand'rest 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.

19

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.

20 

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   .

21

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.

22

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.

23

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 burden 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  .

24

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled 

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 glazèd 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, wherethrough 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.

25

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 burièd  ,

For at a frown they in their glory  die.

The painful  warrior famousèd  for might  ,

After a thousand victories once foiled  ,

Is from the book of honour razèd  quite

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.

26

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  .

27

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.

28

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 further 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 the even  .

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,

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

29

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.

30

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  time's 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-bemoanèd 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.

31

Thy bosom  is endearèd with  all hearts,

Which I by lacking  have supposèd dead  ,

And there reigns love and all love's loving parts 

And all those friends which I thought burièd.

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 there  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  .

32

If thou survive my well-contented day  ,

When that churl  death my bones with dust shall cover,

And shalt by fortune  once more resurvey

These poor rude  lines of thy deceasèd 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.

O, 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.'

33

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.

34

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.

35

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.

36

Let me confess that we two must be twain  ,

Although our undivided loves are one:

So shall those blots  that do with me remain,

Without thy help by me be borne alone.

In our two loves there is but one respect  ,

Though in our lives a separable spite  ,

Which though it alter not love's sole  effect,

Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.

I may not evermore acknowledge thee  ,

Lest my bewailèd guilt  should do thee shame,

Nor thou with public kindness honour me,

Unless thou take that honour from thy name  .

But do not so: I love thee in such sort 

As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report  .

37

As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite  ,

Take all my comfort of  thy worth and truth.

For whether beauty, birth or wealth or wit  ,

Or any of these all or all or more,

Entitled in thy parts do crownèd sit  ,

I make my love engrafted to this store  :

So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,

Whilst that this shadow  doth such substance give

That I in thy abundance am sufficed 

And by a part of all thy glory live.

Look what  is best, that best I wish in thee.

This wish I have: then ten times happy me.

38

How can my Muse  want subject to invent  ,

While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse

Thine own sweet argument  , too excellent

For every vulgar paper to rehearse  ?

O, give 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.

39

O, how thy worth  with manners  may I sing,

When thou art all the better part of me?

What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?

And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?

Even for  this let us divided live,

And our dear  love lose name of single one,

That  by this separation I may give

That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone.

O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove,

Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave

To entertain  the time with thoughts of love,

Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive  ,

And that thou teachest how to make one twain 

By praising him here  who doth hence  remain.

40

Take  all my loves  , my love, yea, take them all:

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call:

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

Then if for my love  thou my love receivest  ,

I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest  .

But yet be blamed, if thou this self  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.

41

Those pretty wrongs that liberty  commits

When I am sometime absent from thy heart,

Thy beauty and thy years full well befits  ,

For still  temptation follows where thou art.

Gentle  thou art and therefore to be won,

Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed  .

And when a woman woos, what woman's son

Will sourly  leave her till he have prevailed  ?

Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat  forbear 

And chide  thy beauty and thy straying  youth,

Who lead thee in their riot  even there 

Where thou art forced to break a two-fold truth  :

Hers  by thy beauty tempting her to thee,

Thine  by thy beauty being false  to me.

42

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 knowst 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 flatt'ry  ! Then she loves but me alone.

43

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 blessèd 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.

44

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 naught by elements so slow

But heavy  tears, badges of either's woe  .

45

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.

46

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 empannellèd 

A quest  of thoughts, all tenants  to the heart,

And by their verdict is determinèd 

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.

47

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 are present still  with me,

For thou not further 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.

48

How careful was I, when I took my way  ,

Each trifle under truest bars  to thrust,

That to my use  it might unusèd 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  .

49

Against  that time, if ever that time come,

When I shall see thee frown on my defects,

When as  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 desert  ,

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   .

50

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, tirèd 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.

51

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 wingèd speed no motion shall I know  .

Then can no horse with my desire keep pace:

Therefore desire, of perfects  love being made,

Shall neigh — no dull flesh  — in his fiery race,

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

Since from thee go  ing he went wilful-slow,

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

52

So am I as the rich  , whose blessèd key

Can bring him to his sweet up-lockèd 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 placèd  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  .

Blessèd are you, whose worthiness gives scope,

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

53

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 blessèd shape we know  .

In all external grace  you have some part,

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

54

O, 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 perfumèd tincture  of the roses,

Hang on such thorns and play  as wantonly 

When summer's breath their maskèd 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.

55

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 love  rs' eyes.

56

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 fullness,

Tomorrow see again and do not kill

The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness  .

Let this sad int'rim  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:

Or call it  winter, which being full of care 

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

57

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 anything, he thinks no ill.

58

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  .

O, 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.

59

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 burden of a former child  .

O, that record  could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun  ,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done  ,

That I might see what the old world could say

To this composèd wonder of your frame  :

Whether we are mended  , or whe'er  better they,

Or whether revolution be the same  .

O, sure I am the wits  of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

60

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.

61

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.

62

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.

63

Against  my love shall be as I am now

With Time's injurious  hand crushed and o'er-worn  ,

When hours have drained his blood  and filed  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  .

64

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-razed 

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.

65

Since  brass nor stone nor earth nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'er-sways  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.

66

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  disablèd,

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.

67

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.

68

Thus  is his cheek the map  of days outworn  ,

When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,

Before these bastard signs of fair  were born 

Or durst inhabit  on a living brow,

Before the golden tresses of the dead  ,

The right of sepulchres  , were shorn away,

To live a second life on second head,

Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay  :

In him those holy antique hours  are seen,

Without all ornament, itself and true,

Making no summer of another's green,

Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,

And him as for a map doth Nature store,

To show false Art what beauty was of yore  .

69

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,

Utt'ring bare truth, even so as foes commend  .

Thy 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.

70

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 oft-time:

For canker  vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present'st a pure unstainèd  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  .

71

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.

72

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 deceasèd 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.

73

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 see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self  , that seals up all in rest  .

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

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.

74

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 rememberèd.

The worth of that  is that which it contains,

And that is this  , and this with thee remains.

75

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  starvèd 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  .

76

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.

77

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 mouthèd 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.

78

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 learnèd'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 gracèd be  :

But thou art  all my art and dost advance 

As high as learning my rude  ignorance.

79

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.

80

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  .

81

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 entombèd in men's eyes shall lie.

Your monument  shall be my gentle  verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,

And tongues to be  your being shall rehearse 

When all the breathers of this world  are dead.

You still  shall live — such virtue  hath my pen —

Where breath most breathes, ev'n in the  mouths of men.

82

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-bett'ring days  .

And do so, love, yet when they have devised

What strainèd  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  .

83

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.

84

Who is it that says most, which  can say more

Than this rich praise, that you alone are you  ,

In whose confine immurèd  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 admirèd everywhere.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse  .

85

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-refinèd 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  .

86

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 astonishèd  .

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.

87

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  .

88

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  .

89 

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 desirèd 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 belovèd 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.

90

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.

91

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.

92

But  do thy worst to steal thyself away,

For term of life  thou art assurèd 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 blessèd-fair  that fears no blot  ?

Thou mayst be false  , and yet I know it not.

93

So  shall I live, supposing thou art true,

Like a deceivèd 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  .

94

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,

Unmovèd, 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  .

95

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame

Which, like a canker  in the fragrant rose,

Doth spot  the beauty of thy budding name  .

O, in what sweets  dost thou thy sins enclose!

That tongue that tells the story of thy days,

Making lascivious comments on thy sport  ,

Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise:

Naming thy name blesses an ill report.

O, what a mansion  have those vices got

Which for their habitation chose out thee,

Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,

And all things turns to fair that eyes can see.

Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege  :

The hardest knife  ill-used  doth lose his edge  .

96

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 thronèd 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 stem 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  .

97

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year.

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,

What old December's bareness everywhere.

And yet this time removed  was summer's time,

The teeming  autumn, big  with rich increase  ,

Bearing  the wanton burden of the prime  ,

Like 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.

98

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 lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose.

They were but  sweet, but figures  of delight,

Drawn after  you, you pattern  of all those.

Yet seemed it winter still and, you away,

As  with your shadow  I with these did play.

99 

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 condemnèd for thy hand  ,

And buds of marjoram  had stol'n thy hair:

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand  ,

One blushing shame, another white  despair,

A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both

And to his 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 stol'n from thee  .

100

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

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend'st thou thy fury  on some worthless song,

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  despisèd 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 his 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 burdens  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.

O, 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 belovèd 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 now to register  ,

That may express my love or thy dear merit?

Nothing, sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine

I must each day say o'er the very same,

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

Even as when first I 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'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 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 stoppèd are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense  :

You are so strongly in my purpose bred 

That all the world besides me thinks you're 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 makes mine eye 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?

O, 'tis the first, 'tis flatt'ry 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 grow  th 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 remove  r to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd 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 blessèd 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, you've 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 razed  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 thrallèd 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 minutes 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.

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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 blessèd 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 blest 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 despisèd 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 proved  a 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 torment 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 the 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  ,

Whoe'er keeps  me, let my heart be his  guard:

Thou canst not then use rigour  in my jail.

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 put'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 store's 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 lovest 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 be  st is take the worst to be.

If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks 

Be anchored in the bay  where all men ride  ,

Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forgèd 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,

Unlearnèd 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 suppressed.

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 believèd 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, yet 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,

[　　] 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 madmen'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 lour'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

O, 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 warrantize  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 further 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 eye  ,

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,

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