sonnetshake_mod.json

[[["From fairest creatures we desire increase,","As our wicks burn our candles do decrease;"],["That thereby beauty's rose might never die,","Each has his mortal hour, by and by,"],["But as the riper should by time decease,","But clever ones can cheat such a decease:"],["His tender heir might bear his memory:","The fruitful do trick Time and Death defy;"],["But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,","Thou rakest thyself til the last ember dies,"],["Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,","Concealest this most rare and precious jewel,"],["Making a famine where abundance lies,","You starve yourself, your wants and needs despise"],["Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.","This stoicism plays thee for a fool"],["Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament","So durable are the graces Nature lent"],["And only herald to the gaudy spring,","That time and age have not begun disfiguring"],["Within thine own bud buriest thy content","Demise of thee the whole world shall lament"],["And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.","And succumb to doubts and fears still lingering"],["Pity the world, or else this glutton be,","Death and Time both do hunger for Beauty"],["To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.","But then their feeding leaves nothing to see."]],[["When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,","Like mighty oak, with neither bend nor bow,"],["And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,","You find yourself full weathered but unfell'd:"],["Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,","Your age will still a dignity endow;"],["Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:","Your beauty is a stock wisely long-held"],["Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,","When thy still body in a dark crypt lies"],["Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,","With soul unbound, unlit by the sun's rays,"],["To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,","Which fades from us and no more multiplies"],["Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.","As all things must, to food for worms decays;"],["How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,","And to this litany of foul abuse"],["If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine","I stand opposed and hope that the Divine"],["Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'","Will still seek to put me to His best use"],["Proving his beauty by succession thine!","And history judge kind these lines of mine."],["This were to be new made when thou art old,","My words will stay warm even when you're cold,"],["And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.","And thus goes forth thy beauty, young and bold."]],[["Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest","Squat not upon thy branch and idly roost;"],["Now is the time that face should form another;","Tis now the time for you to make another"],["Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,","Your bloodline, if this call should go refused,"],["Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.","Shall be refreshed by neither son nor brother."],["For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb","Who would deny thee kisses, whose fit womb"],["Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?","Would spurn thy printing to eternity?"],["Or who is he so fond will be the tomb","Who'd let thee go uncopied into tomb"],["Of his self-love, to stop posterity?","And would not bear a fair copy of thee?"],["Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee","When I have fears that you may cease to be"],["Calls back the lovely April of her prime:","As I thy virtues cast in feeble rhyme"],["So thou through windows of thine age shall see","Thy beauty still shines forth for all to see"],["Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.","Until the ending of recorded time"],["But if thou live, remember'd not to be,","Go forth, be fertile, fill thy family tree;"],["Die single, and thine image dies with thee.","Thy line should be fruitful and further thee"]],[["Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend","Why is it thou dost rush to lend and spend"],["Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?","Thy trifles, but hold back the best of thee?"],["Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,","She has no thought her honor to defend,"],["And being frank she lends to those are free.","But parcels out charms to the unworthy"],["Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse","Why not then embrace charity and choose"],["The bounteous largess given thee to give?","To pass the best of you on while you live"],["Profitless usurer, why dost thou use","Thou strivest hard thy trinkets not to lose"],["So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?","And waste the treasures others to thee give?"],["For having traffic with thyself alone,","How can you, dearest friend, be truly shown,"],["Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.","When you yourself and others would deceive?"],["Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,","Trying to hold it dear, unshared alone,"],["What acceptable audit canst thou leave?","You withhold from those worthy to receive"],["Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,","So take a bride and claim thy destiny"],["Which, used, lives th' executor to be.","The world should teem with all thy progeny!"]],[["Those hours, that with gentle work did frame","When I think on my friend and bless his name"],["The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,","I should make heaven of this lonely hell"],["Will play the tyrants to the very same","Which I through verse call heaven still the same"],["And that unfair which fairly doth excel:","And craft with words a fair but hollow shell"],["For never-resting time leads summer on","The springs that rouged his cheek now cruelly flown"],["To hideous winter and confounds him there;","The lines that age his eyes, once free of care"],["Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,","The chill and winds do dull his healthy tone,"],["Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:","The color that did once tint him quite fair."],["Then, were not summer's distillation left,","Like fine wine corked and in the cellar left,"],["A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,","And souring slow to vinegar in this pause"],["Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,","Barred wrongly from good memory as from theft"],["Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:","Is spoiled then by inaction, not ill cause;"],["But flowers distill'd though they with winter meet,","Those who would through their offspring death defeat"],["Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.","Leave to the world a spirit ever sweet"]],[["Then let not winter's ragged hand deface","As Time doth crease his lines into thy face,"],["In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:","Let not thy time on earth be unfulfill'd"],["Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place","Thy aging virtue shouldst thou full embrace"],["With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.","And deck thyself as wise Nature hath willed"],["That use is not forbidden usury,","Do freely borrow, 'tis not usury"],["Which happies those that pay the willing loan;","To take from Nature this, a generous loan:"],["That's for thyself to breed another thee,","This act should decimate thy misery"],["Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;","And know that in this debt you're not alone"],["Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,","A hundred times increased within my heart"],["If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:","Thus borrow freely, fear not usury;"],["Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,","'Tis better to borrow than to waste thy art"],["Leaving thee living in posterity?","And leave the world stripped of thy treasury"],["Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair","Extinction for the good in thee I fear;"],["To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.","Pass on your virtue with the young you bear"]],[["Lo! in the orient when the gracious light","Majestic sun, bright-blazing in his might"],["Lifts up his burning head, each under eye","Starts day in chariot charging across the sky"],["Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,","A blaze across the heavens in full flight"],["Serving with looks his sacred majesty;","A glory to behold for every eye"],["And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,","With light and heat he doth the midday fill,"],["Resembling strong youth in his middle age,","His youth and strength apparent on world's stage"],["yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,","And showing wisdom of the aged still"],["Attending on his golden pilgrimage;","Doth through the noon and afternoon hours rage."],["But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,","The sun in dotage, towed in ragged car,"],["Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,","Declines in azimuth in the late day"],["The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are","Makes way for slivered moon, rising afar,"],["From his low tract and look another way:","Which mirrors his dim light 'til morn's first ray"],["So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,","Thy dimmed visage, which still makes me swoon,"],["Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.","Shall shine in beauty even lit by moon."]],[["Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?","Why shouldst thou then regard the world so sadly?"],["Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.","What doth thee harm which others still enjoy?"],["Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not gladly,","Deny those who choose of thee to speak badly;"],["Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?","Reject it bluntly, thou need not be coy."],["If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,","The throng of poets who flatter thee abounds,"],["By unions married, do offend thine ear,","Who sing thy praises to all those who hear"],["They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds","The floorboards creak where this shallow praise sounds"],["In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.","The full weight of that harmony to bear."],["Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,","As two strings plucked are, one next to another,"],["Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,","Vibrate in concert, and in shared voice ring,"],["Resembling sire and child and happy mother","They sing as one in harmony with each other,"],["Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:","As birds fly in formation on the wing"],["Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,","These many thrums do resonate as one"],["Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.'","Combine to make a pleasing, ringing tone"]],[["Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye","Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye"],["That thou consumest thyself in single life?","That thou continuest on in single life?"],["Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die.","If one so fair should prematurely die"],["The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;","Unmourned by children or a loving wife"],["The world will be thy widow and still weep","The world will be thy widow, all will weep,"],["That thou no form of thee hast left behind,","Your sacrifice shall seem a waste, unkind,"],["When every private widow well may keep","Resentment will grow as the world doth keep"],["By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.","The memory of thy loss within her mind"],["Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend","This earth itself to spendthrift's aims doth bend;"],["Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;","Each bearer of his wasted wealth enjoys it"],["But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,","The miser's wealth is hated in the end"],["And kept unused, the user so destroys it.","And is thus squandered when no one enjoys it"],["No love toward others in that bosom sits","'Tis wrong when one hoards good and idly sits:"],["That on himself such murderous shame commits.","Invest it wisely; this thee well befits."]],[["For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any,","Shouldst thou deny thy virtue to so many?"],["Who for thyself art so unprovident.","Thou art so spare with whom thy time is spent."],["Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,","Thou overlookst some flaws but disdain any"],["But that thou none lovest is most evident;","Who spurn thy kiss but still thy loss lament;"],["For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate","Thy moods have been most vile of moments late,"],["That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire.","Fouling your fair face like soot from fire"],["Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate","Thy social fractures in a sorry state"],["Which to repair should be thy chief desire.","Alliances thrown on a blazing pyre"],["O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!","Thou drawest foes, but seek not friends to find:"],["Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?","Find not thyself trapped friendless without love."],["Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,","Seek out embraces from some woman kind"],["Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:","A temporary boon from heav'n above"],["Make thee another self, for love of me,","The brainless or the heartless may yet see"],["That beauty still may live in thine or thee.","The beauty that would then shine forth from thee"]],[["As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest","Our time is short on earth, this fact thou knowest:"],["In one of thine, from that which thou departest;","Pass on new life--thy waning thou avertest"],["And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest","The world would be glad to reap seeds thou sowest"],["Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.","'Twould be fit, thou to other streams divertest;"],["Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase:","Passed forth, thy graces fair will never cease"],["Without this, folly, age and cold decay:","And so I urge thee, find a bride I pray"],["If all were minded so, the times should cease","If thou allow, uncopied, thy release,"],["And threescore year would make the world away.","All then would rot, all creatures would dismay"],["Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,","Nature abandons what she doth deplore,"],["Harsh featureless and rude, barrenly perish:","And deems it fit that all things living perish"],["Look, whom she best endow'd she gave the more;","Quite merciless, nought mortal doth she store;"],["Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:","She must in time reap that which we now cherish"],["She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby","Nature would see thee fruitful, don't deny"],["Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.","Her gifts to flow through thee and multiply"]],[["When I do count the clock that tells the time,","When strength and wits I find sapped by cruel Time"],["And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;","When I do scry the world in failing light,"],["When I behold the violet past prime,","When darkness makes illegible my rhyme,"],["And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;","And petals drop and shrivel at my sight"],["When lofty trees I see barren of leaves","When autumn colors and then drops the leaves"],["Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,","And calls of fleeing geese in skies are heard"],["And summer's green all girded up in sheaves","When singing starling retreats in the eaves"],["Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,","And heard is the last song of lingering bird"],["Then of thy beauty do I question make,","I stir myself from sleep and urge thee wake"],["That thou among the wastes of time must go,","To face the day at morning's first red glow"],["Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake","As cruel Time sweeps his scythe and stoops to take"],["And die as fast as they see others grow;","Vitality from even the healthiest flow"],["And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence","The loss of thee on earth shall be immense"],["Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.","But passing on your line gives recompense."]],[["O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are","Do not allow the fading of thy star,"],["No longer yours than you yourself here live:","Print copies of yourself while you do live"],["Against this coming end you should prepare,","Seeds of yourself you should plant near and far"],["And your sweet semblance to some other give.","And generations hence thyself still give;"],["So should that beauty which you hold in lease","Thou hast within the world such a short lease,"],["Find no determination: then you were","Thou shoulds't increase, so that the world may bear"],["Yourself again after yourself's decease,","So let your progeny bear, without cease,"],["When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.","The scion of a heritage most dear"],["Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,","Treat not this fact of Nature with dismay"],["Which husbandry in honour might uphold","When 'tis well known all mortal things grow old"],["Against the stormy gusts of winter's day","So to preserve it please do not delay"],["And barren rage of death's eternal cold?","A marvel for the ages to behold"],["O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know","Do not without replacing this good go,"],["You had a father: let your son say so.","Ascend not being unreplaced below."]],[["Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;","I've no will from the stars meaning to pluck"],["And yet methinks I have astronomy,","Since no mind have I for astronomy"],["But not to tell of good or evil luck,","By need to read my fortune I'm not struck"],["Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;","Or to perform great acts of prophecy"],["Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,","I'd not with signs from heaven fortunes tell"],["Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,","I'd scry not flights of birds upon the wind"],["Or say with princes if it shall go well,","Nor think thou I would not seek out in hell"],["By oft predict that I in heaven find:","That which merciful heaven would not send"],["But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,","So plant thy seeds while thou art still alive"],["And, constant stars, in them I read such art","Thy permanence on earth thou must assert"],["As truth and beauty shall together thrive,","Without thee, beauty here may cease to thrive;"],["If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;","Thou shouldst thy cruel extinction then avert"],["Or else of thee this I prognosticate:","If beauty and truth should suffer mortal fate,"],["Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.","All good shall fade from earth on thy death's date"]],[["When I consider every thing that grows","Past winter's thaw when spring comes to a close"],["Holds in perfection but a little moment,","Crops burst from soil and yeast doth ale ferment"],["That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows","So many unclaimed gifts fair Nature knows"],["Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;","Ungleaned groats and spilled spirits we lament"],["When I perceive that men as plants increase,","With bated breath I dream of your increase:"],["Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,","The young ones sprout and quickly multiply,"],["Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,","Insurance against when thou dost decease"],["And wear their brave state out of memory;","But endless height mortality doth deny"],["Then the conceit of this inconstant stay","The final light of pleasant well-spent day"],["Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,","Doth come to us, quite an unwelcome sight;"],["Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,","Cruel Time drains all of life, to my dismay,"],["To change your day of youth to sullied night;","And with each passing second saps thy might"],["And all in war with Time for love of you,","For fear the world may be bereft of you"],["As he takes from you, I engraft you new.","I set down rhymes and hope they ring out true."]],[["But wherefore do not you a mightier way","Can one, with weary bones and hair of gray,"],["Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?","Deny the ravages of cruel Time?"],["And fortify yourself in your decay","Go forth, forewarned and armed, and seize this day"],["With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?","Lest all that's left lives in my modest rhyme;"],["Now stand you on the top of happy hours,","With barren flatterers you waste your hours,"],["And many maiden gardens yet unset","And beautiful maidens, it seems you forget,"],["With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,","Would vie to shade themselves beneath thy bowers"],["Much liker than your painted counterfeit:","Wouldst thou but with thy beauty cast a net."],["So should the lines of life that life repair,","Let not distract thee every earthly care"],["Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,","Which even mars the greatest now and then"],["Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,","Enough abounds within thee that is fair:"],["Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.","Fear not that you should spread yourself too thin."],["To give away yourself keeps yourself still,","Fear not you will this thirsty cup o'erfill"],["And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.","Pass on yourself and thus preserve your will."]],[["Who will believe my verse in time to come,","When thou hast passed from earth a day will come"],["If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?","When no one living has known of thy arts"],["Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb","My words of praise form an incomplete sum"],["Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.","So I find I must sing of thee by parts"],["If I could write the beauty of your eyes","When I compare thee to the sun and skies"],["And in fresh numbers number all your graces,","Or paint with verse the warmth of your embraces"],["The age to come would say 'This poet lies:","I'd sing not of thy kisses or thy thighs;"],["Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'","Such beauties are not meant for other faces"],["So should my papers yellow'd with their age","I praise thee, your supposed peers to engage,"],["Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,","Though equals are scarce thin to walk among"],["And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage","Thou art not served by verse on dusty page"],["And stretched metre of an antique song:","You need lines turned to song by living tongue"],["But were some child of yours alive that time,","If thou dost take a bride, thou cheatest Time:"],["You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.","Your beauty would survive in more than rhyme."]],[["Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?","Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?"],["Thou art more lovely and more temperate:","Thou art more beautiful and temperate"],["Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,","For days do wax then wane and slip away,"],["And summer's lease hath all too short a date:","But thou art ever constant, this thy fate."],["Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,","The sun fades when He dips below the pines"],["And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;","And all the world is by the twilight dimm'd"],["And every fair from fair sometime declines,","The finest garden may be choked by vines"],["By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;","If not by careful gardener well-trimm'd"],["But thy eternal summer shall not fade","Let not from lack of polish your jewels fade"],["Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;","Nor hide away that which you treasure most"],["Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,","Not even Death can claim thee full unmade"],["When in eternal lines to time thou growest:","Nor call thee fully conquered may He boast"],["So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,","My verse goes forth to sing thy pedigree:"],["So long lives this and this gives life to thee.","To sing thy song now and eternally."]],[["Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,","Time dares to tame this beast and dull her claws,"],["And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;","It wears her down as no quick mortal could"],["Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,","It dulls her teeth and softens heavy paws"],["And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;","So that they rend no flesh and draw no blood"],["Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,","Wear down my heart until it no more beats,"],["And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,","If sprouts from seeds I've planted fail to climb"],["To the wide world and all her fading sweets;","And dull words fall where pen with paper meets"],["But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:","Touch not his beauty, heav'n sent and sublime."],["O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,","Let Time not bleed what Nature did endow,"],["Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;","Before I can record it with my pen"],["Him in thy course untainted do allow","His ravages abide not nor allow"],["For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.","Don't let him grey like other mortal men."],["Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,","If others read my verse through ages long"],["My love shall in my verse ever live young.","His youth shall live forever through my song."]],[["A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted","As a fair face seen true and never painted,"],["Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;","That stirs true feelings rather than false passion"],["A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted","Your graces exceed courtly ladies, tainted,"],["With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;","With all their trickery and their false fashion;"],["An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,","My verse lies silent when not thee extolling,"],["Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;","Still glowing pale when sun no longer blazeth"],["A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,","A bell which shines much e'en when not tolling."],["Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.","A song unsung which sung aloud amazeth;"],["And for a woman wert thou first created;","The world's perfection had not been completed"],["Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,","And Nature stood aside, completing nothing,"],["And by addition me of thee defeated,","Assuring your fair graces weren't depleted"],["By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.","And standing to the side, thy graces noting;"],["But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,","I bow and give everything to thy pleasure"],["Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.","And add these lines to all thy gathered treasure."]],[["So is it not with me as with that Muse","Like lecher poet with a saucy muse,"],["Stirr'd by a painted beauty to his verse,","I lustfully my bawdy lines rehearse"],["Who heaven itself for ornament doth use","I'll not my sordid mistress rhymes refuse"],["And every fair with his fair doth rehearse","And cause the jealous to turn green and curse"],["Making a couplement of proud compare,","And e'en when thou art laid by Nature bare"],["With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,","Thy beauties shine and one compares those gems"],["With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare","With treasures locked by miser.  One may dare"],["That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.","See danger in the darkness when sun dims"],["O' let me, true in love, but truly write,","And all is lit with an eerie twilight;"],["And then believe me, my love is as fair","Of thy soft tresses and thy eyes so fair"],["As any mother's child, though not so bright","I praise thy timeless beauty in the light"],["As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air:","Distracted though I be by bosom bare"],["Let them say more than like of hearsay well;","When of thy virtues all I seek to tell"],["I will not praise that purpose not to sell.","I find a full and o'erbrimming well"]],[["My glass shall not persuade me I am old,","I think not that you ever shall grow old"],["So long as youth and thou are of one date;","As long as you appear so fair of late"],["But when in thee time's furrows I behold,","To think you unpreserv'd I feel then bold;"],["Then look I death my days should expiate.","'Tis only then that I should fear my fate"],["For all that beauty that doth cover thee","The ravaging of time thou seest in me"],["Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,","Extends not to the workings of my heart;"],["Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:","I am not old when I see youth in thee:"],["How can I then be elder than thou art?","I shall stay young til youth from thee should part;"],["O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary","I should the burden to preserve thee carry"],["As I, not for myself, but for thee will;","As long as I am well and thou art ill"],["Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary","I seek to save, not eulogize and bury"],["As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.","My goal is preservation, not to thrill."],["Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;","Trust not false verse thy beauty to contain;"],["Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.","We live yet while these wan forgeries remain"]],[["As an unperfect actor on the stage","Like actor struggling to bring life from page,"],["Who with his fear is put besides his part,","Uncertain of the lines to play his part"],["Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,","Whose youthly vigors dulled now by his age,"],["Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart.","And memory dims rhymes once learned true by heart"],["So I, for fear of trust, forget to say","Imperfect player who doth strive to play"],["The perfect ceremony of love's rite,","Who struggles reading lines by fading light."],["And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,","At this impediment his nerves do fray"],["O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.","And inspiration withers and takes flight;"],["O, let my books be then the eloquence","My struggle to find words is quite intense"],["And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,","Since my dear love deserves only the best"],["Who plead for love and look for recompense","Spring forth past my brief life in thy defense"],["More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.","The muses prod, they bid me little rest,"],["O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:","Enflame the braziers that did idle sit"],["To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.","And light the tapers my tongue left unlit"]],[["Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd","Like metalworkers do I seek to weld"],["Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;","The vision of my eye with love in heart;"],["My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,","My feelings for thee are sincerely held"],["And perspective it is the painter's art.","And through my pen I paint thee with my art."],["For through the painter must you see his skill,","You pose for portraits that will galleries fill"],["To find where your true image pictured lies;","On canvas tinted true and drawing sighs,"],["Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,","So is it with the poet with words still,"],["That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.","Inspired by pure heart or by less-pure thighs"],["Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:","My soul's inspired by the deeds you've done"],["Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me","Thy nobleness, thy grace and charity"],["Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun","Thy beauty so pure, even the proud sun"],["Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;","Doth in his arc brief pause to gaze on thee."],["Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;","Thy lesser suitors love thee not for art:"],["They draw but what they see, know not the heart.","Their jealous gaze no match for verse in heart."]],[["Let those who are in favour with their stars","Those heroes, rich in birth and blessed in stars,"],["Of public honour and proud titles boast,","In glory of their recognition boast,"],["Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,","While I, whom life's cruel battles marks and mars,"],["Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.","Find myself unarmed when I need them most"],["Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread","Amidst their glorious ignorance I tread"],["But as the marigold at the sun's eye,","Their borrowed greatness is a misery"],["And in themselves their pride lies buried,","Their mockery of virtue is misled"],["For at a frown they in their glory die.","Their feigned virtue is but treachery"],["The painful warrior famoused for fight,","Your visage and your posture, stern and tight,"],["After a thousand victories once foil'd,","Like serpent set for battle, tense and coiled,"],["Is from the book of honour razed quite,","Ready to strike provok'd, being checked in might"],["And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:","But never seeing reputation soiled"],["Then happy I, that love and am beloved","So long as my pen flows and I am moved"],["Where I may not remove nor be removed.","Find I am by thy presence great improved."]],[["Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage","Blessed finding myself in thy vassalage"],["Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,","I've found my path in life so clearly lit"],["To thee I send this written embassage,","Upon this earth I have been given passage"],["To witness duty, not to show my wit:","And in thy service I do proudly sit"],["Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine","My poor verse fail describing raiments fine,"],["May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,","The Sun so fair arrayed and all below it,"],["But that I hope some good conceit of thine","If thy good flows inspired in verses mine,"],["In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it;","I gift them to thee so that thou mayst know it"],["Till whatsoever star that guides my moving","My very soul, deficient yet improving"],["Points on me graciously with fair aspect","It doth on thee imperfectly reflect"],["And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving,","At times the Muse's song through me is moving"],["To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:","And burnishes my honor and respect"],["Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;","If you are false, wait til I cease to be:"],["Till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me.","If you are true, my heart belongs to thee"]],[["Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,","With thoughts of you my aching mind is fed,"],["The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;","When I shed clothes and lie in bed, retired,"],["But then begins a journey in my head,","And I in weariness am to dreams led"],["To work my mind, when body's work's expired:","To touch the flesh that I've from far admired"],["For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,","When sun's last rays in western skies have died"],["Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,","As I seek solace where I've oft retired"],["And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,","Imagining thee warm here by my side"],["Looking on darkness which the blind do see","Awake far past the hour I'd have expired"],["Save that my soul's imaginary sight","The moon, so pale and silent in its flight,"],["Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,","Doth dip below window sill, out of view;"],["Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,","Its pale glow still illuminates the night"],["Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.","Reflects pale moonlight into gorgeous hue"],["Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,","Though seek I solace, ahead and then behind,"],["For thee and for myself no quiet find.","I close my eyes but dark strikes me not blind."]],[["How can I then return in happy plight,","When I do toss and turn in mournful night"],["That am debarr'd the benefit of rest?","And suffer all the day, my mood depress'd,"],["When day's oppression is not eased by night,","When mirror shows me lonely by daylight"],["But day by night, and night by day, oppress'd?","And in the night my skin goes uncaress'd"],["And each, though enemies to either's reign,","My aching back and racing, fevered brain"],["Do in consent shake hands to torture me;","Conspire with each other to torture me"],["The one by toil, the other to complain","The void in my bed bids my heat to drain"],["How far I toil, still farther off from thee.","Which makes me shiver nightly without thee"],["I tell the day, to please them thou art bright","Thus welcome I the lark in morning flight"],["And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:","And bid the moon shine bright so thou art seen"],["So flatter I the swart-complexion'd night,","The owl may sing thy song by dark of night"],["When sparkling stars twire not thou gild'st the even.","And also praise the day, my praises even."],["But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer","Thy absence makes the day seem dark and longer."],["And night doth nightly make grief's strength seem stronger.","By night it only makes my passions stronger."]],[["When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,","When in disgrace of Fortune and men's eyes"],["I all alone beweep my outcast state","Pathetically I curse my outcast state"],["And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries","And all alone my wretched state despise"],["And look upon myself and curse my fate,","And fall to earth and rue my mournful fate"],["Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,","I feel then like one starved of love and hope,"],["Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,","One feeling quite like chastened, beaten beast;"],["Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,","Yet seeing noose when contemplating rope"],["With what I most enjoy contented least;","And feeling famine at another's feast"],["Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,","I find myself my wretched life despising"],["Haply I think on thee, and then my state,","And cursing bitterly my lonely fate"],["Like to the lark at break of day arising","As like the raven, from the ground arising,"],["From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;","That scolds and preens while perching on my gate."],["For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings","When I think on thee though my heart so sings"],["That then I scorn to change my state with kings.","That I'd not switch place with the greatest kings"]],[["When to the sessions of sweet silent thought","When to the weakened power of my dim thought"],["I summon up remembrance of things past,","I seek some solace in a brighter past"],["I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,","I find myself in easy comforts caught:"],["And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:","Nostalgia's limpid pool finds my line cast"],["Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,","The times I'm trapped besieged by hated foe;"],["For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,","And struggle hard just to survive the night"],["And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,","I force myself in darkness still to go"],["And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:","And struggle to remember sweet delight."],["Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,","I'll curse my fate that day when you're gone"],["And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er","And pine for comforts locked behind heaven's door"],["The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,","I'll rue the sting of every loveless dawn"],["Which I new pay as if not paid before.","And hate that I will suffer many more."],["But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,","A blessing and a curse is my dear friend:"],["All losses are restored and sorrows end.","I treasure thee but I do fear thy end."]],[["Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,","There is an innocence in untried hearts"],["Which I by lacking have supposed dead,","Which in their innocence no woes have fed;"],["And there reigns love and all love's loving parts,","My inspiration comes in fits and starts"],["And all those friends which I thought buried.","Which have in me, despairing, long since fled;"],["How many a holy and obsequious tear","Your cynical, deceptive crafted tear"],["Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye","Deceives us in false o'er-brimming eye;"],["As interest of the dead, which now appear","You've shown me virtues that I hold most dear"],["But things removed that hidden in thee lie!","And yet in beauty's face I give a sigh;"],["Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,","In my sparse-decorated room then I still live"],["Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,","By winter's chill now cut through to the bone"],["Who all their parts of me to thee did give;","To only thee I now my heart do give"],["That due of many now is thine alone:","Now that in nakedness my shame is shown"],["Their images I loved I view in thee,","My flaws and failures are all plain to see"],["And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.","I show myself plain, hidden not from thee"]],[["If thou survive my well-contented day,","While thou dost live and in the grass still play"],["When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,","And mold not in the grave but graze in clover"],["And shalt by fortune once more re-survey","And in my absence deignest to assay"],["These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,","These modest lines of your poor absent lover;"],["Compare them with the bettering of the time,","Conspires to fade them with accomplice Time,"],["And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,","Regard you then these lines, however thin;"],["Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,","I hope you treasure this, my heartfelt rhyme,"],["Exceeded by the height of happier men.","So as you read the rhymes of other men"],["O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:","I hope you'll say e'en as I start to rot:"],["'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,","'This poet loves me far beyond his age:"],["A dearer birth than this his love had brought,","But for his dotage it would be his lot"],["To march in ranks of better equipage:","To print my virtues upon virgin page"],["But since he died and poets better prove,","Though other poets' lines rank far above,"],["Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'","Each line of his was written with true love.'"]],[["Full many a glorious morning have I seen","Ablaze in daylight, proudly felt and seen,"],["Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,","The glorious sun his majesties decree"],["Kissing with golden face the meadows green,","From dawn to dusk and moments in-between"],["Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;","But then he'll slip away, for none to see,"],["Anon permit the basest clouds to ride","Behind a dreary mournful grey cloud slide"],["With ugly rack on his celestial face,","A gauzy film obscuring his fair face"],["And from the forlorn world his visage hide,","Coy and shy, scurrying now to hide,"],["Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:","His beauty vanishing without a trace."],["Even so my sun one early morn did shine","The sun emerges briefly then to shine"],["With all triumphant splendor on my brow;","And to the world a fleeting warmth endow"],["But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;","Though he did once blaze forth in raiments fine"],["The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.","A dim shadow of himself shows he now."],["Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;","My friend's love shines through even when it raineth;"],["Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.","Sunlit or not, his care for me remaineth."]],[["Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,","Oh fickle sun, you heat me ere storm's way"],["And make me travel forth without my cloak,","And sweat me into taking off my cloak"],["To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,","I misplace my warm coat by heat of day"],["Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?","And in my folly 'gainst the cold winds choke"],["'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,","Your rays, though absent soon, do broil and bake"],["To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,","To slow my courser to a sluggish pace,"],["For no man well of such a salve can speak","Thou wouldst me urge a weak palliative to take"],["That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:","Instead of heal my disease and disgrace"],["Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;","You heretic, you question my belief"],["Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:","You rob me, then call careless my grave loss,"],["The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief","You mock me and compare me in my grief"],["To him that bears the strong offence's cross.","To one who sits and idly gathers moss"],["Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,","But then my eyes catch thine and quench my needs,"],["And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.","Til then the lack of you my passion feeds."]],[["No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:","Some beauty thrives in darkness; yours is one:"],["Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;","As even silver fountains do hide mud,"],["Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,","Foul deeds are oft concealed, in darkness done,"],["And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.","Madness is hid in brain, sickness in blood;"],["All men make faults, and even I in this,","I find myself, confronted by thy kiss,"],["Authorizing thy trespass with compare,","A smile alone from thee would lay me bare"],["Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,","When blinded am I by my love and bliss"],["Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;","I find myself to stumble and to err."],["For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense--","Thus summoned to court I do find me hence:"],["Thy adverse party is thy advocate--","Resigning myself to my guilty fate,"],["And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:","I prosecute myself and give a weak defense"],["Such civil war is in my love and hate","A mere kiss from thee would desires sate."],["That I an accessary needs must be","Thy fickleness I compare bitterly"],["To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.","To winds that blow forth sudden on the sea."]],[["Let me confess that we two must be twain,","The world wills that we two should be split twain"],["Although our undivided loves are one:","Though in a single spirit we stay one;"],["So shall those blots that do with me remain","I bleed with loss of thee and feel the pain"],["Without thy help by me be borne alone.","Long after from my presence thou art gone"],["In our two loves there is but one respect,","Thy absence from me sharpens my respect"],["Though in our lives a separable spite,","And drags long hours from my sleepless night"],["Which though it alter not love's sole effect,","It hones my pen as I miss your aspect,"],["Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.","When I should sleep I'm at my desk upright"],["I may not evermore acknowledge thee,","I beg thee not to sing my misery"],["Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,","Nor praise my lesser verses, to my shame,"],["Nor thou with public kindness honour me,","But trust thee to keep me in memory"],["Unless thou take that honour from thy name:","I only ask my verses bear my name."],["But do not so; I love thee in such sort","Our memories will each other long support"],["As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.","E'en if our time upon this earth is short"]],[["As a decrepit father takes delight","As feels a feeble panther stripped of might"],["To see his active child do deeds of youth,","So sapped of strength and dulled of claw and tooth,"],["So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite,","This poet, with his weakened, blunted bite,"],["Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.","Doth struggle to describe thy grace and truth."],["For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,","I strike then to enlighten, candle lit,"],["Or any of these all, or all, or more,","And feeling less a poet than a boor,"],["Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,","Though 'gainst thy beauty I feel quite unfit"],["I make my love engrafted to this store:","But my weak wine still in fine goblets pour"],["So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,","My days now grow more short so be advised"],["Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give","Long as I have to thee words left to give"],["That I in thy abundance am sufficed","Read these immortal lines I have devised"],["And by a part of all thy glory live.","And joy in thee increased while I still live"],["Look, what is best, that best I wish in thee:","Long as my words inked black are, all in thee"],["This wish I have; then ten times happy me!","Surviveth in my verse for all to see."]],[["How can my Muse want subject to invent,","Sometimes it seems that thou art heaven sent"],["While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse","A mortal muse brought forth to spur great verse"],["Thine own sweet argument, too excellent","Though others falsely praise thee, art thou meant"],["For every vulgar paper to rehearse?","To buy false praises with a corrupt purse?"],["O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me","The inspiration that you spark in me"],["Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;","Should feel my dim flame amplified so bright"],["For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,","'Tis trivial to aptly describe thee:"],["When thou thyself dost give invention light?","Put out a candle--thou describest night!"],["Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth","Be thus crown'd as a tenth muse on this earth,"],["Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;","And I would be thy devoted oblate"],["And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth","All poetry paid tribute on thy birth,"],["Eternal numbers to outlive long date.","Oblations rich upon Olympus' gate."],["If my slight Muse do please these curious days,","I bear thy burden now and all my days:"],["The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.","Each star be poet that lights thee with its rays"]],[["O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,","The best in thee I do attempt to sing,"],["When thou art all the better part of me?","For singing of thee shows the best in me;"],["What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?","My virtues show only when I let thine ring"],["And what is 't but mine own when I praise thee?","The best in me can shine only through thee"],["Even for this let us divided live,","I would that we could in each other live"],["And our dear love lose name of single one,","But in absentia claim thee my heart's throne"],["That by this separation I may give","My soul then as thy fiefdom would I give"],["That due to thee which thou deservest alone.","To rule my heart e'en when I am alone"],["O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove,","My pen against my paper would I prove"],["Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave","And ere my work is done I will not leave"],["To entertain the time with thoughts of love,","I should not lack for time with my sweet love"],["Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive,","And fearing thoughts of when I may bereave."],["And that thou teachest how to make one twain,","This paradox which eases my poor brain:"],["By praising him here who doth hence remain!","From two subtract one, still two shall remain"]],[["Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;","Take everything, my love, my whole, my all:"],["What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?","Take everything and strip me to the core"],["No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;","Take all my loves, my love, I'm in thy thrall"],["All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.","Take all my love til you can take no more"],["Then if for my love thou my love receivest,","I hope my praise thou honestly receivest"],["I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;","And not for cruel sport with me amusest,"],["But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest","Enchanting eye whilst thou my heart deceivest,"],["By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.","And in thy cruelty thou thy friend abusest;"],["I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,","If thou hast done me wrong beyond belief"],["Although thou steal thee all my poverty;","Thou hast redeemed it in my ecstasy"],["And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief","I've vowed not, from fatigue nor bitter grief,"],["To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.","To shrink from action, fearing misery"],["Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,","If thou hast thorns, still be to me a rose:"],["Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.","Forewarned am I, they do few dangers pose."]],[["Those petty wrongs that liberty commits,","A hungry vulture squats on me and sits"],["When I am sometime absent from thy heart,","And waits to feed upon my dying heart;"],["Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,","Regret thee, but my mistress them admits,"],["For still temptation follows where thou art.","As she ignores my effort and my art"],["Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,","Those who pursue her, her respect unwon,"],["Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;","By so many unworthy still assailed"],["And when a woman woos, what woman's son","Could be false suitors, unfit every one"],["Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?","Their lusts and efforts shunned and unprevailed"],["Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,","If thou wouldst shun me for my verse too bare"],["And chide try beauty and thy straying youth,","In favor of your flatterers most uncouth"],["Who lead thee in their riot even there","You'll face a situation most unfair"],["Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,","As we confront a barren twofold truth:"],["Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,","Mine, by my faults being plain to see;"],["Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.","Thine, by what thou art, and art claimed to be."]],[["That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,","My lady and the one who does me grief"],["And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;","We three do form a sordid misery:"],["That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,","In thy remorse I should take no relief,"],["A loss in love that touches me more nearly.","There is no balm to sooth this jealousy."],["Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:","I cannot claim that you do foul abuse me"],["Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her;","No shame in easing passion with a lover"],["And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,","Thy disgrace doth provoke me and amuse me"],["Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.","I blush for shame, but from this shame seek cover"],["If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,","'Tis marvel this twin wound sees me not slain"],["And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;","And in that gain I still bear double loss"],["Both find each other, and I lose both twain,","But losing both would be unbearable pain"],["And both for my sake lay on me this cross:","And would a scar upon my soul emboss"],["But here's the joy; my friend and I are one;","Her promises stir me and make me moan;"],["Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.","But with me, she, and thee I'm still alone."]],[["When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,","I close my eyes each night and cease to see"],["For all the day they view things unrespected;","While life most vivid is in mind reflected"],["But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,","In sleep I have no shield to protect me:"],["And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.","Eyes shut, defenses down, no blows deflected"],["Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,","My Love, who stands pale, gleaming in the night,"],["How would thy shadow's form form happy show","Whose noble soul could not taint hell below"],["To the clear day with thy much clearer light,","Turn even darkness into sweet delight"],["When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!","And offer depths too rich to fully know"],["How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made","I love thee so, I fear I'd be unmade"],["By looking on thee in the living day,","Were I to live while you in grave should lay"],["When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade","The thought that thy fair light will never fade"],["Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!","Doth make the darkest darkness bright and gay"],["All days are nights to see till I see thee,","My day's so bright that I can scarcely see"],["And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.","And still in darkness shines thy form to me."]],[["If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,","If I could soar to thee as fast as thought"],["Injurious distance should not stop my way;","And more than just mind's eye could fly away"],["For then despite of space I would be brought,","Thy soul by my soul would be swiftly sought"],["From limits far remote where thou dost stay.","And I'd not lack thy company any day"],["No matter then although my foot did stand","I'm not alone even on foreign sand"],["Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;","With salty waters cleaving thee from me"],["For nimble thought can jump both sea and land","I wish I'd be near thee upon demand,"],["As soon as think the place where he would be.","If thoughts alone could bring thee close to me"],["But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,","I'd shed my flesh and gladly be but thought;"],["To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,","Could I be thought all carnal sins I'd shun,"],["But that so much of earth and water wrought","So trapped by flesh away from thee I'm caught"],["I must attend time's leisure with my moan,","Deprived of thee I find myself undone."],["Receiving nought by elements so slow","So long as Fate deems from thee I must go"],["But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.","I must reach in my heart our love to know."]],[["The other two, slight air and purging fire,","Twin spirits perch my shoulders and conspire,"],["Are both with thee, wherever I abide;","Nourish and feed each other, side by side,"],["The first my thought, the other my desire,","Opposing each the other, ice and fire,"],["These present-absent with swift motion slide.","They bicker, then they both my actions chide;"],["For when these quicker elements are gone","The one would scold that thou art still unwon"],["In tender embassy of love to thee,","The other calls this hopeless and would see"],["My life, being made of four, with two alone","My soul on high, through this absence undone,"],["Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy;","Doth thirst for word of what has come to be"],["Until life's composition be recured","As missive sent from envoy borne by bird,"],["By those swift messengers return'd from thee,","I am piecemeal fed news from far of thee"],["Who even but now come back again, assured","With news from fields abroad that they have heard"],["Of thy fair health, recounting it to me:","And tales of what I miss and lack bring me"],["This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,","They quarrel and I can't tell good from bad;"],["I send them back again and straight grow sad.","I dwell on what I lost and what I had."]],[["Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war","Two spirits in me for thy love do war,"],["How to divide the conquest of thy sight;","Both jealously do quarrel at thy sight;"],["Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,","My eye my heart's clear vision would then bar,"],["My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.","Mine heart my eye thy memory would blight."],["My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie--","My heart demands inside me thou shouldst lie,"],["A closet never pierced with crystal eyes--","Thy beauty it both credits and denies"],["But the defendant doth that plea deny","My eye insists thy beauty none deny"],["And says in him thy fair appearance lies.","And takes leave of my heart and heaves and sighs"],["To 'cide this title is impanneled","Their natures and their wants are intertwined,"],["A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,","A jury of sharp eye and softened heart"],["And by their verdict is determined","Eternal foes to this fate they're consigned;"],["The clear eye's moiety and the dear heart's part:","Twined shall they be, never to grow apart:"],["As thus; mine eye's due is thy outward part,","My eye makes feast upon your outer part"],["And my heart's right thy inward love of heart.","By deeper virtues sated is my heart."]],[["Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,","When I repay thy kindness in my book,"],["And each doth good turns now unto the other:","Seek not insincere lines from any other;"],["When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,","When lean eye starves for sights on which to look"],["Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,","I turn not to be indulged by another"],["With my love's picture then my eye doth feast","I choose one or the other to be blest:"],["And to the painted banquet bids my heart;","Indulging in its time my aching heart,"],["Another time mine eye is my heart's guest","When eye is closed and taking a short rest,"],["And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:","In sleep it doth not cease to play its part"],["So, either by thy picture or my love,","In absence I cannot escape my love,"],["Thyself away art resent still with me;","Regardless of my base instinct to flee"],["For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,","Thy vision haunts in dreams sent from above"],["And I am still with them and they with thee;","Even when my eyes are closed I can see thee"],["Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight","My heart thus holds thee nightly and daylight"],["Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.","Reveals thee to the eye to my delight"]],[["How careful was I, when I took my way,","Like miser who his treasures doth assay"],["Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,","And bears no will to share them or show trust,"],["That to my use it might unused stay","Each shiny bauble in a vault did lay"],["From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!","Locked safely away from envious eyes and lust"],["But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,","I would my beauties safe from others bar,"],["Most worthy of comfort, now my greatest grief,","To whom my rarest balms give slight relief"],["Thou, best of dearest and mine only care,","But thou, who art more valuable by far,"],["Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.","Dost cause me with thy absence so much grief"],["Thee have I not lock'd up in any chest,","Like miser storing jewels in tight-locked chest"],["Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,","Thus shielding eyes away from glorious art"],["Within the gentle closure of my breast,","I stash my love of thee within my breast,"],["From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;","Thus guarded by and guardian to my heart"],["And even thence thou wilt be stol'n, I fear,","Thy faults concealed therein, I hold them near,"],["For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.","And polish every jewel that I hold dear"]],[["Against that time, if ever that time come,","I fear a reckoning will someday come"],["When I shall see thee frown on my defects,","And cause my words to cease or thoughts to vex"],["When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,","When by death or cruel Fate I am struck dumb,"],["Call'd to that audit by advised respects;","Or merely stunned by what the mirror reflects"],["Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass","I fear you'll soon resent me, fickle lass,"],["And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,","When I should cease to please thy wand'ring eye"],["When love, converted from the thing it was,","And all resentments that thou dost amass"],["Shall reasons find of settled gravity,--","Shall form my reckoning after I die."],["Against that time do I ensconce me here","I shall then read my verse for all to hear;"],["Within the knowledge of mine own desert,","And my sincerity I strong assert:"],["And this my hand against myself uprear,","Rejection of my gifts I'd not well bear,"],["To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:","Leaving me a mess of woe and hurt"],["To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,","To shun this duty does not give me pause:"],["Since why to love I can allege no cause.","For me to leave I lack both will and cause"]],[["How heavy do I journey on the way,","My horse resents the trek but dares not stray."],["When what I seek, my weary travel's end,","That path 'pon which I strive to reach the end"],["Doth teach that ease and that repose to say","Each step of his brings me two steps away"],["'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'","'Tis worth a trip twice-long to see my friend."],["The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,","The path I tread, the road down which I go"],["Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,","Each step my beast takes draws me nearer thee"],["As if by some instinct the wretch did know","He limps along so burdened and so slow"],["His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:","That each step forward wounds him same as me\u001b[6~"],["The bloody spur cannot provoke him on","My blows and curses do not spur him on"],["That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide;","Nor bid him from thee any quicker stride"],["Which heavily he answers with a groan,","The thought each step from thee is two steps gone"],["More sharp to me than spurring to his side;","Scarce budges him as crop slaps into side"],["For that same groan doth put this in my mind;","Devoid of words, this dumb beast be not blind;"],["My grief lies onward and my joy behind.","My horse hath speech which I struggle to find"]],[["Thus can my love excuse the slow offence","I cannot claim to have the good horse sense"],["Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:","Of this dull creature who serves as my steed"],["From where thou art why should I haste me thence?","When I do stray beyond thy gate and fence,"],["Till I return, of posting is no need.","Why take these paths that far from thee do lead?"],["O, what excuse will my poor beast then find,","This beast, with his own mulish stubborn mind,"],["When swift extremity can seem but slow?","Who seems to me unvirtuously slow"],["Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;","He tiptoes through a fog as if near blind"],["In winged speed no motion shall I know:","He stubbornly resists my crop's dull blow."],["Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;","I plod forth then at grudging, spiteful pace;"],["Therefore desire of perfect'st love being made,","I fear my horse I did cruel overlade"],["Shall neigh--no dull flesh--in his fiery race;","Were I more sure of foot I'd ably race"],["But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade;","To thee ere thy affections fickle fade"],["Since from thee going he went wilful-slow,","Though this poor creature plods forth sad and slow"],["Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.","He'll hasten on return, this I do know."]],[["So am I as the rich, whose blessed key","Poor miser, round his neck he wears the key"],["Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,","Which unlocks all his fiercely hoarded treasure"],["The which he will not every hour survey,","His riches would be clear for all to see,"],["For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.","But only upon seeking out such pleasure."],["Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,","These riches hid, unlit by sun or star,"],["Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,","They rot away inside a dusty basket"],["Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,","A wretched jewel next to silver bar"],["Or captain jewels in the carcanet.","Arranged and locked up tight within a casket."],["So is the time that keeps you as my chest,","I'd have thee not a treasure, hid at rest,"],["Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,","A bijou I strive not to hoard and hide"],["To make some special instant special blest,","When unshared, then its worth is like, at best,"],["By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.","A momentary trinket cast aside"],["Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,","This hoarded treasure, locked with chain and rope,"],["Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope.","Should not shut off the world from love and hope."]],[["What is your substance, whereof are you made,","How is it in dim light thou dost not fade,"],["That millions of strange shadows on you tend?","E'en when the heavens no more light do send"],["Since every one hath, every one, one shade,","It seems thy essence is with sunlight made;"],["And you, but one, can every shadow lend.","I praise this soul so all may comprehend"],["Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit","An ode to thee inscribed for ages yet"],["Is poorly imitated after you;","That rings with song when read by voices true"],["On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,","Thy likeness is in marble busts well-set"],["And you in Grecian tires are painted new:","A treat for anyone with taste to view"],["Speak of the spring and foison of the year;","The beauty of a summer's day you bear,"],["The one doth shadow of your beauty show,","Blue skies above and green of grass below;"],["The other as your bounty doth appear;","In sunlight thou dost shine so true and fair"],["And you in every blessed shape we know.","And e'en to vulgar eyes thy grace do show."],["In all external grace you have some part,","We know false beauty both in verse and art,"],["But you like none, none you, for constant heart.","But can't detect it well with eye or heart"]],[["O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem","False rose, it paints itself to purer seem,"],["By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!","When its true fairness doth it beauty give"],["The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem","E'en a sick rose can one pleasing deem"],["For that sweet odour which doth in it live.","E'en as it rots inside as it doth live"],["The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye","It plays at purity and seems to be"],["As the perfumed tincture of the roses,","Much sweeter and more true than one supposes"],["Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly","It smells fair and is fine as eye doth see"],["When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:","And equally please as well the eyes and noses"],["But, for their virtue only is their show,","These false delights avoid we when we know;"],["They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,","Rejected, let their cheapened beauties fade,"],["Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;","When ripened healthy flowers cease to grow"],["Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:","And leave then barren this gay, joyous glade"],["And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,","Ere time depletes all life it erases youth;"],["When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.","Yet leaves the old and ill the pow'r to sooth."]],[["Not marble, nor the gilded monuments","I pledge that you for many ages hence"],["Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;","Shall exceed preservation in my rhyme"],["But you shall shine more bright in these contents","This praise of thee in my verse represents"],["Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.","A victory over chaos and of time;"],["When wasteful war shall statues overturn,","As time and strife do statues overturn"],["And broils root out the work of masonry,","And rot conspires to blot and dim their story"],["Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn","And careless fires spread to singe and burn"],["The living record of your memory.","Erasing monuments to man's glory"],["'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity","Despair not for the false austerity"],["Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room","That now pervades this never-ending gloom"],["Even in the eyes of all posterity","The wasted fruits of thy prosperity"],["That wear this world out to the ending doom.","Shall not be all that greets thee in thy tomb"],["So, till the judgment that yourself arise,","Do not despair though all around you dies;"],["You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.","That dies not which goes forth and multiplies."]],[["Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said","Within thy presence my love would not fade;"],["Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,","That absence saps its fervor and its might"],["Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd,","Whetted by thee is my dull weak blade"],["To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might:","Which gives it edge and makes it sharp and bright"],["So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill","The briefest sight of thee should make me thrill"],["Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,","Though leave me wanting even in my fullness"],["To-morrow see again, and do not kill","The idle hours drag and fail to fill"],["The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.","And starved my spirit is by their sheer dullness"],["Let this sad interim like the ocean be","The ocean too shall pause for you and me"],["Which parts the shore, where two contracted new","Until we reunite and vows renew"],["Come daily to the banks, that, when they see","In faithfulness declared to sweetly see"],["Return of love, more blest may be the view;","A seascape, brief becalmed, in sailor's view;"],["Else call it winter, which being full of care","The dull of spring and autumn and winter bare"],["Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.","Doth only whet the tongue for summer's fare"]],[["Being your slave, what should I do but tend","Wouldst thou reject me, when I freely bend"],["Upon the hours and times of your desire?","My will to please the one I so admire"],["I have no precious time at all to spend,","Unbidden, I shall idle hours spend,"],["Nor services to do, till you require.","And find myself spurred still by thy fierce fire"],["Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour","I cherish all my time under your power"],["Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,","And willingly do all you bid me to"],["Nor think the bitterness of absence sour","My time is yours to dictate, hour by hour;"],["When you have bid your servant once adieu;","Nor dare presume my thoughts alone speak true"],["Nor dare I question with my jealous thought","It should not then by anyone be thought"],["Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,","That I could any time this treasure lose"],["But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought","I ponder not the woes of pleasures sought,"],["Save, where you are how happy you make those.","But how to dodge the thorns of your cruel rose."],["So true a fool is love that in your will,","I must declare how faithful is your Will"],["Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.","And fear that you'll reject me ever still"]],[["That god forbid that made me first your slave,","Were I your consort, nay, your willing slave"],["I should in thought control your times of pleasure,","I'd be a servant to your glee and pleasure"],["Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,","I'd let you play the knight to my poor knave"],["Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!","Allied in war, servant in times of leisure;"],["O, let me suffer, being at your beck,","At times my lonely face does glass reflect"],["The imprison'd absence of your liberty;","And making feast of hungry misery,"],["And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheque,","Self pity doth my poetry infect."],["Without accusing you of injury.","If thou must borrow, curse not usury."],["Be where you list, your charter is so strong","I bid you listen to my praise in song"],["That you yourself may privilege your time","Be as it will, for you to pass the time"],["To what you will; to you it doth belong","On earth so short and yet pretend it long,"],["Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.","And so I offer up my love in rhyme"],["I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;","I urge thee, love, as I do ring thy bell,"],["Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.","Pass on thy blood before thy death bells knell"]],[["If there be nothing new, but that which is","If fools do profit where ignorance is bliss,"],["Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,","Then let the old be honored, not reviled"],["Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss","Indulge their dotage kindly with a kiss,"],["The second burden of a former child!","And let your scolding be not harsh but mild"],["O, that record could with a backward look,","Your eyes, with power to slay me with a look"],["Even of five hundred courses of the sun,","Reflect upon perfections thou hast won"],["Show me your image in some antique book,","My thoughts should live forever in some book,"],["Since mind at first in character was done!","Tales of your deeds and graces ably spun;"],["That I might see what the old world could say","All pens in unison should homage pay"],["To this composed wonder of your frame;","All readers should these heed and mourn the same"],["Whether we are mended, or whether better they,","When thou art in the soil and do decay"],["Or whether revolution be the same.","All words should knit a monument to thy name;"],["O, sure I am, the wits of former days","A mediocre muse can great verse raise:"],["To subjects worse have given admiring praise.","With thou to act as target for their praise."]],[["Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,","As wave doth follow wave upon the shore"],["So do our minutes hasten to their end;","Which old sand with the new doth grind and blend"],["Each changing place with that which goes before,","The sands seem not depleted from this store"],["In sequent toil all forwards do contend.","And sand and wave meet, never at an end"],["Nativity, once in the main of light,","The moon beshadowed by increasing night"],["Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,","Cast in earth's shadow and ill-lit by sun,"],["Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,","Doth wane then wax again, reborn in flight,"],["And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.","While Time still blazes like uncaring Sun"],["Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth","And proves Himself both fickle and uncouth"],["And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,","He snatches back what Nature did endow"],["Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,","Time reaps the old and withers will and youth"],["And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:","Into extinction when one doth allow"],["And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,","I urge, renew thyself as ocean's sand;"],["Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.","I sing thy praise, and thy faults reprimand."]],[["Is it thy will thy image should keep open","When dreams don't come, I'm in my chamber moping:"],["My heavy eyelids to the weary night?","Dost thou disrupt my sleep with all thy might?"],["Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,","Through sleep and drink, not words, I should be coping,"],["While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?","Must thou distract my day and rupture night?"],["Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee","Upon the road I'm in such agony"],["So far from home into my deeds to pry,","My nights without thee are such misery"],["To find out shames and idle hours in me,","In sleepless dreams, visions of thee to me,"],["The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?","Do spur me to bittersweet reverie;"],["O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:","When aching in my bed for thee I wait"],["It is my love that keeps mine eye awake;","My thirst to pay you homage thoughts won't slake;"],["Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,","My urge to praise thee drives my hours late"],["To play the watchman ever for thy sake:","And writer of me 'stead of sleeper make;"],["For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,","I pine here and I send my blessings dear"],["From me far off, with others all too near.","I offer words when we may not be near."]],[["Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye","All nature seems to sing thy melody"],["And all my soul and all my every part;","And generously praises all thou art:"],["And for this sin there is no remedy,","Thy grace and thy divine sweet harmony"],["It is so grounded inward in my heart.","In chorus blend to tremble my dear heart"],["Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,","The dreary world cannot thy wealth confine;"],["No shape so true, no truth of such account;","No audit could thy virtues many count"],["And for myself mine own worth do define,","With beauty am I blessed by the divine"],["As I all other in all worths surmount.","And such a blessing yields no small amount."],["But when my glass shows me myself indeed,","As vulture gather round and wait to feed"],["Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,","I then do ponder my mortality"],["Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;","Though from my face my youth doth quickly bleed,"],["Self so self-loving were iniquity.","As Time doth suck at my vitality"],["'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,","I strive to voice thy song and sing thee praise"],["Painting my age with beauty of thy days.","And to the heavens my thin voice I raise."]],[["Against my love shall be, as I am now,","When we do meekly to Time's cruel scythe bow"],["With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'er-worn;","As we are to old age unkindly borne,"],["When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow","Plagued with all the woes Time doth endow"],["With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn","Before from this brief life we're cruelly torn"],["Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night,","When twilight's broken and so fades the light"],["And all those beauties whereof now he's king","And the last vestiges of youth that cling"],["Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,","Succumb to this incessant siege of blight"],["Stealing away the treasure of his spring;","I rise and meekly do thy praises sing;"],["For such a time do I now fortify","I bow myself, a sacrifice to be,"],["Against confounding age's cruel knife,","And place myself twixt he and Time's cruel scythe"],["That he shall never cut from memory","Long after living saint may cease to be"],["My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:","I'll pilgrim to his church and pay his tithe"],["His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,","I'd have my words read after he's not seen"],["And they shall live, and he in them still green.","And with this verse no man shall think him mean."]],[["When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced","When upon tombs of emperors I've gazed"],["The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;","And set their records down upon my page"],["When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed","Stone monuments and mighty cities razed"],["And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;","The fate of all the world this doth presage"],["When I have seen the hungry ocean gain","When I've returned from sea and seek to gain"],["Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,","My footing on this treacherous sandy shore"],["And the firm soil win of the watery main,","Seen tides recede and then return again"],["Increasing store with loss and loss with store;","And leaving on sand new plain sand still more"],["When I have seen such interchange of state,","'Tis time to harvest, do not hesitate,"],["Or state itself confounded to decay;","November reaping crops that bloomed in May"],["Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,","From Nature's law we cannot deviate:"],["That Time will come and take my love away.","All that one borrows one must soon repay."],["This thought is as a death, which cannot choose","My absence thus I do not freely choose:"],["But weep to have that which it fears to lose.","Each moment spent away from thee I lose."]],[["Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,","We indulge hopes of immortality,"],["But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,","Survive the march of Time with his slow power"],["How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,","All riches in this life be gained, then flee,"],["Whose action is no stronger than a flower?","That shall be promised and broke in an hour"],["O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out","O futile war 'gainst Fate, we'll not hold out"],["Against the wreckful siege of battering days,","How is it we could shield our brief, rare days"],["When rocks impregnable are not so stout,","When Time, relentless, chips at all about?"],["Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?","The sea erodes, sun doth bleach as it blaze;"],["O fearful meditation! where, alack,","Shall finest wines be hidden behind sack?"],["Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?","Shall thy time cease with slam of coffin's lid?"],["Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?","Shall we define our lives by what they lack?"],["Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?","By these sad facts my fresh-inked pen is bid;"],["O, none, unless this miracle have might,","My empty page recalls her skin so white"],["That in black ink my love may still shine bright.","And my dark ink her hair, as black as night."]],[["Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,","When I regard the world's cruel treachery"],["As, to behold desert a beggar born,","And behold praises heaped on those I scorn"],["And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,","And bold truth swapped for mildly pleasing lie"],["And purest faith unhappily forsworn,","And innocence from youth is cruelly torn,"],["And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,","And virtue slow eroded and defaced,"],["And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,","And arrogance for confidence mislabeled"],["And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,","And acumen with rude cunning replaced"],["And strength by limping sway disabled,","And history true for what is merely fabled"],["And art made tongue-tied by authority,","And timidness mistook for loyalty"],["And folly doctor-like controlling skill,","And weak verse leaves no space on page to fill"],["And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,","And piety false formed from heresy"],["And captive good attending captain ill:","And mighty mountain made by myth from hill"],["Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,","Thou shouldst this regent falsehood cast from throne"],["Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.","And modest good of Truth let reign alone."]],[["Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,","What poet would thy patronage receive"],["And with his presence grace impiety,","With such pretensions toward propriety,"],["That sin by him advantage should achieve","Himself with this false peerage to deceive"],["And lace itself with his society?","To climb the ranks of high society"],["Why should false painting imitate his cheek","Why should he not to be immortal seek"],["And steal dead seeing of his living hue?","So that his light for ages should shine through?"],["Why should poor beauty indirectly seek","Who would, ungrateful, call unfit and weak"],["Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?","These gifts which one should give, willing and true?"],["Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,","Doth poet's face pale, sensing things amiss,"],["Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins?","Fear in his Muse's passing what remains?"],["For she hath no exchequer now but his,","Thus Nature makes a bank of virtues his,"],["And, proud of many, lives upon his gains.","E'en as thief Time your lifeblood slowly drains"],["O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had","He doth pay forward pleasures to be had"],["In days long since, before these last so bad.","And hoards great stores of worth against the bad."]],[["Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,","Thy brow, which wrinkles newly do adorn,"],["When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,","Which once was smooth as freshly fallen snow"],["Before the bastard signs of fair were born,","My own hair thins as if by shepherd shorn:"],["Or durst inhabit on a living brow;","Cruel time would strip what nature did endow"],["Before the golden tresses of the dead,","The graves stripped of the ribbons of the dead"],["The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,","Their garments stol'n, their locks then shorn away"],["To live a second life on second head;","My lady's beauty is not by these fed:"],["Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:","These ghastly spoils do not my love array."],["In him those holy antique hours are seen,","My love stands proud, all signs of weathering seen"],["Without all ornament, itself and true,","Her natural gifts displayed, seasoned but true."],["Making no summer of another's green,","Unpainted birth to death and in-between,"],["Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;","At every point displaying her pure hue;"],["And him as for a map doth Nature store,","I'd have this treasure seen from shore to shore"],["To show false Art what beauty was of yore.","Be seen by ages new forever more"]],[["Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view","Our time is short, all that you ever knew"],["Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;","One day from mortal eyes cruel Death will rend"],["All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,","Long as you live your graces shine quite true"],["Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.","And there's no need thy virtues to defend"],["Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;","You lack no power to enchant and astound;"],["But those same tongues that give thee so thine own","Thy inward only in the heart is known"],["In other accents do this praise confound","The foolish are by outward looks beclowned"],["By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.","And fail to see thy graces plainly shown"],["They look into the beauty of thy mind,","When rude and common folk seek thee to bind"],["And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds;","And bend thee to their base and vulgar needs,"],["Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,","The gardener neglects thy bed, tasteless and blind:"],["To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:","And overrun it is with common weeds"],["But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,","Why art thou choked by vines, however slow?"],["The solve is this, that thou dost common grow.","A question only for Nature to know"]],[["That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,","Thy dark eyes and pale skin mirror doth reflect:"],["For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;","Those who love not the night won't think thee fair;"],["The ornament of beauty is suspect,","These doubters have no power to deflect"],["A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.","Nor for their plain opinions do I care"],["So thou be good, slander doth but approve","The dark rich fertile soil doth suit my love,"],["Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time;","And also weeds grow well within this clime."],["For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,","Thou couldst with looks alone all Nature move,"],["And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.","Thou dark and lovely creature, so sublime!"],["Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days,","Unworthy so-called peers who their flags raise"],["Either not assail'd or victor being charged;","Claim that to hold thy honor they are charged"],["Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,","'Tis fruitless to brag that they sing thy praise"],["To tie up envy evermore enlarged:","So long as your virtues go unenlarged;"],["If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show,","If demon children through thy line should flow"],["Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.","Resentments of your perfections would grow."]],[["No longer mourn for me when I am dead","My spirit will be free when I am dead"],["Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell","And sent to claim reward in Heaven or Hell"],["Give warning to the world that I am fled","With soul flown forth, from anchor'd flesh fresh fled"],["From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:","So weep not when they ring my funeral bell"],["Nay, if you read this line, remember not","I love thee in verse, but let not ink blot"],["The hand that writ it; for I love you so","Nor let my page be singed by candle's glow"],["That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot","But I would rather you think on me not"],["If thinking on me then should make you woe.","Than to mourn me and let your tears flow"],["O, if, I say, you look upon this verse","Allow my corpse to rot but save my verse"],["When I perhaps compounded am with clay,","(At least these sonnets, if not every play...)"],["Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.","And mourn me not if mourning makes days worse"],["But let your love even with my life decay,","But let me be forgotten for that day"],["Lest the wise world should look into your moan","Smile that my verses are so thinly drawn"],["And mock you with me after I am gone.","And know that e'en without me day shall dawn"]],[["O, lest the world should task you to recite","When I succumb at last to cruel Time's bite,"],["What merit lived in me, that you should love","And my last heartbeats fade along with love"],["After my death, dear love, forget me quite,","Why do you stoop therefore my torch to light"],["For you in me can nothing worthy prove;","When you could leave me lit by moon above?"],["Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,","You do indulge me, and I know not why,"],["To do more for me than mine own desert,","You should your loyalties to me convert"],["And hang more praise upon deceased I","Before the hour that I should fail and die"],["Than niggard truth would willingly impart:","When back to dust my body shall revert"],["O, lest your true love may seem false in this,","When we have shared our sad and final kiss"],["That you for love speak well of me untrue,","My last thoughts on this earth shall be of you"],["My name be buried where my body is,","My faults in death I find you do dismiss"],["And live no more to shame nor me nor you.","Though of my virtues dim I beg sing true"],["For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,","I try to waste not time upon this earth,"],["And so should you, to love things nothing worth.","And justify thus my unworthy birth"]],[["That time of year thou mayst in me behold","In days of late when I am frail and old"],["When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang","As last leaves of sad autumn still do hang"],["Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,","On branches which grow brittle in the cold"],["Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.","And shiver as if bit by Winter's fang."],["In me thou seest the twilight of such day","Vitality is sapped from me each day"],["As after sunset fadeth in the west,","My foliage tinted and abus'd by pest"],["Which by and by black night doth take away,","Cruel Time then then strips the last green leaves of May,"],["Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.","And from me soon the last dry twigs will wrest"],["In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire","When my old bones enflamed are by the pyre"],["That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,","As all who knew me mourn and say goodbye"],["As the death-bed whereon it must expire","My dead flesh then shall burn upon the fire,"],["Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.","And to the heavens my soul and words will fly"],["This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,","As sun grows short my shadow does grow long"],["To love that well which thou must leave ere long.","And makes more sweet the passing of my song."]],[["But be contented: when that fell arrest","When Death doth topple me and my soul wrest"],["Without all bail shall carry me away,","When my bones in the cold earth do decay,"],["My life hath in this line some interest,","My soul departed, my empty corpse will rest,"],["Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.","Sent down to feed the worms without delay"],["When thou reviewest this, thou dost review","You must know that my heart was always true"],["The very part was consecrate to thee:","I'd never pledge to anyone but thee"],["The earth can have but earth, which is his due;","All that remains of me belongs to you"],["My spirit is thine, the better part of me:","And charged with thee my memory will be"],["So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,","If prematurely some rogue steals my life,"],["The prey of worms, my body being dead,","If I lay in a dark street, maimed and bled,"],["The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,","I should lie buried, unmourned by any wife,"],["Too base of thee to be remembered.","The body cold and still, the spirit fled."],["The worth of that is that which it contains,","Some record of me then the world retains"],["And that is this, and this with thee remains.","When bones in earth are all that still remains"]],[["So are you to my thoughts as food to life,","As breath from lungs coax pleasant song from fife"],["Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;","My mouth doth water at the joyous sound"],["And for the peace of you I hold such strife","The sight of thee makes hunger spring to life"],["As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;","I beg to lick thy plate like hungry hound"],["Now proud as an enjoyer and anon","When day doth break and I do greet the dawn"],["Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,","I look with discontent on all my treasure"],["Now counting best to be with you alone,","I've found myself belittled, spit upon,"],["Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure;","And at the mercy of another's pleasure;"],["Sometime all full with feasting on your sight","Like miserable cur living by night"],["And by and by clean starved for a look;","By dark emboldened but by daylight shook"],["Possessing or pursuing no delight,","I cower and seek nothing in the light"],["Save what is had or must from you be took.","And morsels from thy plate are meekly took"],["Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,","I've hungered for thee all the night and day"],["Or gluttoning on all, or all away.","Unsated by that which should make me gay."]],[["Why is my verse so barren of new pride,","How with thy constance thou dost mock the tide,"],["So far from variation or quick change?","Which doth, relentless, all the sands arrange"],["Why with the time do I not glance aside","Why hold I not your hand when by thy side"],["To new-found methods and to compounds strange?","Nor quick shy glimpses with thine eyes exchange?"],["Why write I still all one, ever the same,","I whip my stray impulses 'til they're tame"],["And keep invention in a noted weed,","Thus whipped I write until my hands do bleed"],["That every word doth almost tell my name,","Desire fills me to increase thy fame"],["Showing their birth and where they did proceed?","And thus weak Will is driven by such need"],["O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,","I do not leave my finances askew"],["And you and love are still my argument;","Resenting not to repay what is lent"],["So all my best is dressing old words new,","Borrowing dear to sing of thee anew"],["Spending again what is already spent:","Finding no cause the interest to resent"],["For as the sun is daily new and old,","To speak the obvious sometimes seems bold"],["So is my love still telling what is told.","Summers are warm, winters are sometimes cold."]],[["Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,","A time will come when years make thee less fair,"],["Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;","When cracks of aging crease across thy face"],["The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,","Your face the signs of aging soon will bear"],["And of this book this learning mayst thou taste.","This vandalism doth cruel Time disgrace;"],["The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show","Still words on stones, when thou art drawn below,"],["Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;","Till etched name shall fade, this all will see"],["Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know","Act now to save thyself, surely you know"],["Time's thievish progress to eternity.","Relentlessly how time doth suck at thee."],["Look, what thy memory can not contain","Here shall the good of thee be written plain."],["Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find","Within the fertile garden of verse find"],["Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain,","My words for those yet unform'd shall remain"],["To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.","For those to see who turn not an eye blind"],["These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,","Your beauty shall shine long as eyes may look,"],["Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.","Shall stay recorded in a dusty book"]],[["So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse","When I have found and pleased my gentle muse"],["And found such fair assistance in my verse","I beg not meager scraps from thy fat purse"],["As every alien pen hath got my use","My rhymes burst forth once thou hast lit their fuse,"],["And under thee their poesy disperse.","Once sparked they are, their course they can't reverse"],["Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing","Thy virtues cause these rusty pipes to sing"],["And heavy ignorance aloft to fly","E'en raven croaks his song in branches high--"],["Have added feathers to the learned's wing","And urge e'en dull chimes fully bright to ring--"],["And given grace a double majesty.","And sing thy praises high into the sky"],["Yet be most proud of that which I compile,","Inspired am I by thy kindly smile,"],["Whose influence is thine and born of thee:","It lures me in as flowers draw the bee"],["In others' works thou dost but mend the style,","Though flattering poems come from rank and file,"],["And arts with thy sweet graces graced be;","In mine alone is true love there to see."],["But thou art all my art and dost advance","More jester than knight, I'll face every lance"],["As high as learning my rude ignorance.","E'en when I, lonely, like a fool still dance"]],[["Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,","I am not yet to gaze on thee afraid,"],["My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,","If only to inspire me with thy face"],["But now my gracious numbers are decay'd","When time shall come that from this earth I fade"],["And my sick Muse doth give another place.","And all my talents dwindle to a trace"],["I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument","I'd urge thee thy extinction to prevent;"],["Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,","That with this borrowing thou should grow too thin"],["Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent","Ere Nature's forced to claim these things he's lent"],["He robs thee of and pays it thee again.","He sees they shine not forth in other men;"],["He lends thee virtue and he stole that word","Have pity on this poet, for that apt word"],["From thy behavior; beauty doth he give","That strayed from him when he thy praise did give"],["And found it in thy cheek; he can afford","His duty is, whether heard or unheard,"],["No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.","To shower on you verse while you do live"],["Then thank him not for that which he doth say,","This poet finds thus patience, not dismay,"],["Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.","But still urge thee to wed without delay."]],[["O, how I faint when I of you do write,","My rival's lines lack truth but have more bite;"],["Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,","Mine next to his seem witless, mild and tame."],["And in the praise thereof spends all his might,","He praises thee with lines skillful and light"],["To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!","I do endeavor to repay the same"],["But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,","The symbol of your greatness, as it is,"],["The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,","Shines forth on banners your galleon doth bear."],["My saucy bark inferior far to his","My ill-formed craft may sink or sail amiss"],["On your broad main doth wilfully appear.","Its chances on the ocean still will dare;"],["Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,","On choppy seas I find myself afloat"],["Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;","My thin white sail dwarfed by tall ships aside"],["Or being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat,","I with a hovel and a sad patched boat,"],["He of tall building and of goodly pride:","Both held together only with my pride."],["Then if he thrive and I be cast away,","I hope that on my passing you will say"],["The worst was this; my love was my decay.","'He truly tried.'  Thus honor me that day."]],[["Or I shall live your epitaph to make,","When thou shalt cease to live and daily wake"],["Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;","And I as well in cold earth do lie rotten"],["From hence your memory death cannot take,","Do not death for obscurity mistake"],["Although in me each part will be forgotten.","For from my verse thou shalt not be forgotten."],["Your name from hence immortal life shall have,","As I approach the end I must be brave."],["Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:","All poets scribe their lines, seek fame, then die."],["The earth can yield me but a common grave,","My destiny is soon a common grave,"],["When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.","And in this modest dirt my bones will lie"],["Your monument shall be my gentle verse,","I strive to trace thy shadow in my verse"],["Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,","And every action of mine fills this need"],["And tongues to be your being shall rehearse","A durable record of your deeds diverse"],["When all the breathers of this world are dead;","Recorded in these books for all to read."],["You still shall live--such virtue hath my pen--","For each dear breath I struggle and breathe out ten,"],["Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.","And when breath fails I still push forth my pen."]],[["I grant thou wert not married to my Muse","This common poet and I have our Muse,"],["And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook","Though both of us upon her kindly look"],["The dedicated words which writers use","Our verses simple, as one might accuse,"],["Of their fair subject, blessing every book","Would never be for plain true speech mistook"],["Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,","My love is great, yet words I find but few,"],["Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,","So in this drought of words I find malaise"],["And therefore art enforced to seek anew","And simple as it should be to speak true,"],["Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days","I struggle still to sing thee simple praise."],["And do so, love; yet when they have devised","For all the tortured grammar I've devised"],["What strained touches rhetoric can lend,","These wretched rhymes to recall, stitch, and mend,"],["Thou truly fair wert truly sympathized","I find myself now counseled and advised"],["In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;","And struggle yet my last few coins to spend"],["And their gross painting might be better used","Blush not when your few flaws are thus accused"],["Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.","Thy many virtues never are refused."]],[["I never saw that you did painting need","To falsely paint thy grace there is no need:"],["And therefore to your fair no painting set;","No gilding needs the lily, plainly set,"],["I found, or thought I found, you did exceed","In fertile thoughts of you I plant my seed"],["The barren tender of a poet's debt;","And in my verses true my goals are met"],["And therefore have I slept in your report,","My vivid dreams I suddenly abort"],["That you yourself being extant well might show","And stirring from this slumber I am slow"],["How far a modern quill doth come too short,","I strive thy reputation to support,"],["Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.","Inspir'd above, I brace myself below"],["This silence for my sin you did impute,","To sing of thee and increase thy repute"],["Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;","When others see thy worth yet remain dumb,"],["For I impair not beauty being mute,","When some, demented, would thy worth dispute"],["When others would give life and bring a tomb.","Their thoughts I would discount, worth lowly sum."],["There lives more life in one of your fair eyes","Seek thus to increase--better I'd advise"],["Than both your poets can in praise devise.","So that your beauty evermore shall rise."]],[["Who is it that says most? which can say more","Of all thy virtues, can I say any more,"],["Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?","Than that which in thy visage shineth true?"],["In whose confine immured is the store","All Nature should thee envy to the core,"],["Which should example where your equal grew.","E'en as it did these graces in thee imbue"],["Lean penury within that pen doth dwell","Old praise is like a faded inscribed bell"],["That to his subject lends not some small glory;","Which praiseful words about you once did bear."],["But he that writes of you, if he can tell","The poet's job, with verse to make it knell,"],["That you are you, so dignifies his story,","If his eyes blur, let his vision not blear"],["Let him but copy what in you is writ,","All who use thee as muse should see thee lit"],["Not making worse what nature made so clear,","Though it be more than mortal quill may bear"],["And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,","But finding inspiration that doth fit,"],["Making his style admired every where.","You should accept it and this praise well wear"],["You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,","To their dishonor I do leave this curse:"],["Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.","Fare they not well who wish me any worse!"]],[["My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,","My talent to describe you lags my will;"],["While comments of your praise, richly compiled,","While other poets, surer and less wild,"],["Reserve their character with golden quill","With words more fit and clever praise thee still"],["And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.","Yet sing of thee with words too weak and mild."],["I think good thoughts whilst other write good words,","My brain and tongue do tangle thoughts and words"],["And like unletter'd clerk still cry 'Amen'","And struggle hard to make verse flow from pen"],["To every hymn that able spirit affords","And from their flight scribe auguries of birds"],["In polish'd form of well-refined pen.","E'en when its meaning 'scapes my acumen."],["Hearing you praised, I say 'Tis so, 'tis true,'","There are those want of gold makes sing untrue"],["And to the most of praise add something more;","Who'd sing false praises like a common whore"],["But that is in my thought, whose love to you,","My muse, who now draws lines simple but true,"],["Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.","The last words in me can draw to the fore"],["Then others for the breath of words respect,","I pray the Muse flow through me and correct"],["Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.","The rhymes that fail to pay thee due respect"]],[["Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,","The urge to write of thee, blessing and curse,"],["Bound for the prize of all too precious you,","Oft imitated yet rivaled by so few"],["That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,","That drove the block within me to reverse"],["Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?","And bid me write to keep his best in view"],["Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write","Was it his wicked wit, its sting and bite"],["Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?","Which with its sting my dull ill sloth admonished,"],["No, neither he, nor his compeers by night","That whipped me forth, to versify and write,"],["Giving him aid, my verse astonished.","To urge who knew thee not to be astonished?"],["He, nor that affable familiar ghost","'Tis mortal man, not spirit, wight, or ghost"],["Which nightly gulls him with intelligence","That passes on thy soul for ages hence"],["As victors of my silence cannot boast;","I sit with quill and page thus at my post"],["I was not sick of any fear from thence:","My lines to praise thee fill my pages dense."],["But when your countenance fill'd up his line,","As I observe thy words and virtues fine"],["Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.","I felt compelled to match this still in mine."]],[["Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,","When liberty for thee thou findest ceasing"],["And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:","I watch you slip away beyond my gate."],["The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;","I hate to find our distance thus increasing"],["My bonds in thee are all determinate.","And losing thee should be my mournful fate."],["For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?","For luxuries to dull this ache I'm hunting"],["And for that riches where is my deserving?","Such trifles are a waste, but we're deserving;"],["The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,","I imitate not lark nor call of bunting:"],["And so my patent back again is swerving.","My only goal--thy memory preserving."],["Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,","I do despair to see thy foes false-crowing,"],["Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;","The worth of thee discounting and mistaking,"],["So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,","I pray that my kind muse, to see rhymes flowing,"],["Comes home again, on better judgment making.","Inspires my dreams until the dawn is breaking"],["Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,","When morning comes my sheets are in a tatter:"],["In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.","And daybreak's toils my pleasant dreams do scatter"]],[["When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,","When others curse thee I would bring thee light"],["And place my merit in the eye of scorn,","E'en should I find my loyalties cruel torn"],["Upon thy side against myself I'll fight,","Against my own self I would even fight,"],["And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.","Thy flag by me shall faithfully be borne;"],["With mine own weakness being best acquainted,","With all thy virtues I am well acquainted"],["Upon thy part I can set down a story","Well spent is my time--I'm not sad nor sorry--"],["Of faults conceal'd, wherein I am attainted,","In which I sing thy praise and thou art sainted"],["That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:","And future generations see thy glory."],["And I by this will be a gainer too;","I swear I am thy knight, valorous and true,"],["For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,","I bear thy banner for all foes to see"],["The injuries that to myself I do,","I hope to win a victory with you"],["Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.","And hope you see a champion in me"],["Such is my love, to thee I so belong,","Thy cross I'd bear, thy comfort to prolong,"],["That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.","I suffer not while I do sing thy song."]],[["Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,","Deny my eloquence, my spice and salt,"],["And I will comment upon that offence;","Accuse me of poor taste and lack of sense,"],["Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,","Claim my weak beer lacks both of hops and malt"],["Against thy reasons making no defence.","And argue nought of grace in my defense"],["Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,","Detract my worthiness, reject me still,"],["To set a form upon desired change,","Or twist me round so I'd myself derange"],["As I'll myself disgrace: knowing thy will,","If Babel's tower should topple from its hill"],["I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,","I'll praise thee in a tongue unclear and strange"],["Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue","I pray you know how faithful is my tongue"],["Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,","Which, rather than speak ill, I would have swell"],["Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong","And thus prevent a false song being sung"],["And haply of our old acquaintance tell.","And all thy sweetest graces fail to tell"],["For thee against myself I'll vow debate,","I hope these words in tardiness still sate;"],["For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.","I'll not deny my verse comes weak and late."]],[["Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;","If thou betrayst me, I pray do it now;"],["Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,","When life has given me a cruel toss"],["Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,","Do it as to my wounds I bend and bow,"],["And do not drop in for an after-loss:","Do not pause then swoop in for after-loss"],["Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scoped this sorrow,","If needs be thou must strike and cause great sorrow"],["Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;","As I lay gravely wounded by my foe"],["Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,","Nor strike soft one day, vicious on the morrow;"],["To linger out a purposed overthrow.","Chase not a petty sting with mortal blow."],["If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,","Save not for milder days this coup de grace"],["When other petty griefs have done their spite","But do so now, with my last loss in sight"],["But in the onset come; so shall I taste","Then strike me 'fore my woes begin to pass,"],["At first the very worst of fortune's might,","A greater harm that saps them of their might."],["And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,","A wound from you before I am struck low"],["Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.","Will dull the blows of the most fearsome foe."]],[["Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,","Some in their looks and beauty take a thrill,"],["Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force,","Some in their strength and raw power and force,"],["Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,","Some in the sport, to seek their prey to kill,"],["Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;","Some pride themselves in mercy and remorse;"],["And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,","Some in their spending, some in hoarded treasure,"],["Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:","Some in their gentleness, some in still peace;"],["But these particulars are not my measure;","Some in capacity to suck life's pleasure"],["All these I better in one general best.","No urge to write of them lies in my breast"],["Thy love is better than high birth to me,","When in mind's eye your visage do I see"],["Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,","Above all riches thou art treasured most;"],["Of more delight than hawks or horses be;","I'd not trade immortality for thee,"],["And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:","Nor of immortal love naively boast."],["Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take","And yet the death of thee would cruelly take"],["All this away and me most wretched make.","And cause a thirst in me no draught could slake"]],[["But do thy worst to steal thyself away,","That we are mortal, fear not nor dismay,"],["For term of life thou art assured mine,","Long on this earth thy fair deeds will still shine"],["And life no longer than thy love will stay,","My verse insures thy legacy shan't decay"],["For it depends upon that love of thine.","So long as I can sing of virtues thine"],["Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,","Our time on this cruel earth does not last long:"],["When in the least of them my life hath end.","In joy or void, all suffering must end."],["I see a better state to me belongs","Thy traits and deeds will live on in my song"],["Than that which on thy humour doth depend;","And to thy glory I my words do bend"],["Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,","I would my fortune to thy fortune bind"],["Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie.","Our causes just, we should join and ally"],["O, what a happy title do I find,","I could not be to thy good virtues blind;"],["Happy to have thy love, happy to die!","You seem perfection, this I can't deny."],["But what's so blessed-fair that fears no blot?","Upon my thoughts there is one darkened blot:"],["Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.","Thou couldst be false and I may know it not."]],[["So shall I live, supposing thou art true,","I can't deny what's obviously true,"],["Like a deceived husband; so love's face","To be deprived of sight of thy fair face"],["May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;","Torments me when I find it out of view."],["Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:","To be without thy love would be disgrace."],["For there can live no hatred in thine eye,","We marvel at mad Love's queer mystery"],["Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.","But we do strive to kindly rearrange"],["In many's looks the false heart's history","The visions we have in its reverie"],["Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,","Appears not endless but doth morph and change"],["But heaven in thy creation did decree","Those yet unborn should thy fair visage see"],["That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;","In paying yourself forward you'd do well;"],["Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,","As long as traces of you there shall be"],["Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.","Your fair face will thy virtues ever tell"],["How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,","No others in the future will thee know"],["if thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!","When lights in thy bright eyes do cease to glow"]],[["They that have power to hurt and will do none,","Those who collect abuse but return none"],["That do not do the thing they most do show,","Who suffer but through whom no evils flow;"],["Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,","Who quietly stir others to good deeds done"],["Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,","Who reap less good than they do freely sow"],["They rightly do inherit heaven's graces","They pay the world then generously with their graces"],["And husband nature's riches from expense;","Each kindness loaned they fairly recompense"],["They are the lords and owners of their faces,","Remembered ever shall be their kind faces"],["Others but stewards of their excellence.","And their good deeds will be known in years hence;"],["The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,","The noble rose bursts forth with blossoms sweet"],["Though to itself it only live and die,","And gifts the eye with beauteous symmetry"],["But if that flower with base infection meet,","But oft within a canker lies to greet"],["The basest weed outbraves his dignity:","No stench is greater than this treachery"],["For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;","No beauty hides the stench of evil deeds"],["Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.","And nothing good should grow from withered seeds"]],[["How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame","A fruit with conceal'd rot may smell the same"],["Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,","Mere knowledge of how sweet smells canker'd rose"],["Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!","A poisoned drink doth quench thirst still the same:"],["O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!","My mistress shines e'en when her faults she shows."],["That tongue that tells the story of thy days,","This cruel cat, with me her mouse, she plays;"],["Making lascivious comments on thy sport,","With casual barbs makes of me cruel sport,"],["Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;","Before she pins me, bites my neck and splays"],["Naming thy name blesses an ill report.","She bats me around before the gathered court."],["O, what a mansion have those vices got","Thy evil thoughts, ill-formed and misbegot"],["Which for their habitation chose out thee,","To rot inside thee and to deceive me,"],["Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,","I praise thy beauty but show thy flaws, not"],["And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!","Hiding thy rot where naive eyes can't see"],["Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;","I toil to clear the brush and cut the sedge;"],["The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.","Thy beauty's sharper when one sees its edge."]],[["Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;","Some would thy noble beauty solemn bless,"],["Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;","And sing thy praises in church and at court;"],["Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;","Others pay homage to each raven tress"],["Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort.","With bellowed sighs punctuating in support"],["As on the finger of a throned queen","When on the finger of a mighty queen"],["The basest jewel will be well esteem'd,","The cheapest stones are seemingly redeem'd;"],["So are those errors that in thee are seen","The precious scorned as glass, impure and mean,"],["To truths translated and for true things deem'd.","As ruinous by foes are falsely deem'd."],["How many lambs might the stem wolf betray,","How many sages paradise delay,"],["If like a lamb he could his looks translate!","How many pilgrims would go to damned fate"],["How many gazers mightst thou lead away,","How many martyrs cheat their fated day,"],["If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!","How many chasers led stray by thy bait?"],["But do not so; I love thee in such sort","I am exhausted by this tiring sport"],["As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.","But 'tis enough to feel thy love's comfort."]],[["How like a winter hath my absence been","In cold days loss of you has bit me keen"],["From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!","In chambers have I suffered, cold and bare;"],["What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!","Too early are the twilights daily seen,"],["What old December's bareness every where!","My windows drafty, frames cracked past repair;"],["And yet this time removed was summer's time,","Now do I ponder verdant summertime,"],["The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,","When unexpected cold days of Spring cease,"],["Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,","The seedlings planted in a grimmer time"],["Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:","Awaiting freedom of harvest's release"],["Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me","Thy absence wounds me, this is plain to see,"],["But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;","Impossible to gainsay or refute."],["For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,","My words unread, they strive to sing of thee"],["And, thou away, the very birds are mute;","E'en falling flat, they speak of thy repute"],["Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer","My eyes dim so and vision is unclear"],["That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.","That you seem faded even when you're near."]],[["From you have I been absent in the spring,","All in thou that delights was born in Spring"],["When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim","That time when Spring's sweet fruits my home did trim"],["Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,","Such gay and numerous delights did bring"],["That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.","Which even setting of sun would not dim"],["Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell","The gorgeous sight and ever-present smell"],["Of different flowers in odour and in hue","Inspires those who Nature's blessings knew"],["Could make me any summer's story tell,","To bend down and caress them doth compel"],["Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;","And wakens in them inspirations new"],["Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,","I sing not of the moon's pale, stolen light"],["Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;","Nor of the rose's scent and garish clothes;"],["They were but sweet, but figures of delight,","They are compared to your sweet, pure delight"],["Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.","Mere trifles to tide over eye and nose."],["Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,","Blinded by your grace, I sightless pray,"],["As with your shadow I with these did play:","And even sightless seek thee to repay"]],[["The forward violet thus did I chide:","The thieving rose I did viciously chide"],["Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,","For having copied my love's tints and smells"],["If not from my love's breath? The purple pride","This fail'd crime 'gainst my mistress it doth hide,"],["Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells","Holds only the dulled might of echoed bells"],["In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.","The last time I stood trembling by your side"],["The lily I condemned for thy hand,","The rarest blooms I did put in thy hand"],["And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair:","You held then set aside without a care;"],["The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,","Three thieving roses did I reprimand;"],["One blushing shame, another white despair;","The first two rogues their scent stole from thy hair."],["A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both","A third had in his vile crimes outdone both"],["And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;","And strove to snatch the sweet smell of thy breath."],["But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth","At this disgrace proud Nature curs'd him, wroth:"],["A vengeful canker eat him up to death.","He rotted then and suffered unmourn'd death."],["More flowers I noted, yet I none could see","He seemed to all a beauty plain to see"],["But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.","But all he proudly wore he stole from thee"]],[["Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long","Why does thou, Muse, forsake me for so long?"],["To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?","Waste thou thy time on trifles, out of sight?"],["Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,","Wouldst thou withhold thy vigor from my song,"],["Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?","Why dost thou not step forth into the light?"],["Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem","As wasteful hours with poets you may deem"],["In gentle numbers time so idly spent;","Thy time with me I swear is wisely spent"],["Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem","Though risky ill investment it may seem,"],["And gives thy pen both skill and argument.","I will repay with interest all that's lent"],["Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,","Let slack thy labors, goldbrick and delay,"],["If Time have any wrinkle graven there;","In efforts to despoil him take no care,"],["If any, be a satire to decay,","I beg thee, Nature, speed not his decay"],["And make Time's spoils despised every where.","But leave him forth untouched, aged but fair"],["Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;","Flow swift my pen to capture him in life"],["So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.","And hone my love as whetstone sharpens knife"]],[["O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends","What plans hast thou to make thy due amends"],["For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?","When pen runs dry and I'm by words defied?"],["Both truth and beauty on my love depends;","A desperate cry for help my poor soul sends"],["So dost thou too, and therein dignified.","Yet by my muse I'm cruelly denied."],["Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say","Why should these delights fade with end of day?"],["'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;","That beauty should be in this world firm fix'd"],["Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;","Beauty immortal sheared from mortal stay,"],["But best is best, if never intermix'd?'","Art thou so cruel that you'd not see them mix'd?"],["Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?","Why, muse, do you stand there before me dumb?"],["Excuse not silence so; for't lies in thee","His beauty shuns admirers, will thou not see?"],["To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,","Think on it and bid his due words to come"],["And to be praised of ages yet to be.","Stand not before me mute, inspire me!"],["Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how","In my last Spring, seeds I do plant and plow"],["To make him seem long hence as he shows now.","To feed a harvest that starts long from now."]],[["My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;","E'en should the distance dull my passion's gleaming"],["I love not less, though less the show appear:","Or starlings light and strip the harvest bare"],["That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming","Should jealous eye observe me at thee beaming,"],["The owner's tongue doth publish every where.","I would not for their scorn give any care"],["Our love was new and then but in the spring","The meadowlark did let they praises ring"],["When I was wont to greet it with my lays,","The mourning dove doth also greet sun's rays"],["As Philomel in summer's front doth sing","In sparer days in hunger she doth sing"],["And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:","And still her soft coos fill the brightest days"],["Not that the summer is less pleasant now","The quiet twilight sooths me no more now"],["Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,","This moment when day fadeth into night"],["But that wild music burthens every bough","Crepuscular creatures scurry 'neath each bough"],["And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.","Upon the hour when bat and owl take flight;"],["Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,","Yet I stay silent when my words feel wrong"],["Because I would not dull you with my song.","And stay content with nightingale's sad song."]],[["Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,","As Death steps forth to reap fruits of my birth"],["That having such a scope to show her pride,","And sweeps the flower of my verse aside;"],["The argument all bare is of more worth","In my rapt silence I do find more worth"],["Than when it hath my added praise beside!","Than all the rhymes my poor wit could provide"],["O, blame me not, if I no more can write!","At twilight hour, when day turns into night,"],["Look in your glass, and there appears a face","When sun doth fade and moonlight lights thy face,"],["That over-goes my blunt invention quite,","Thy raven hair fair framing skin so white."],["Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.","I find my verse far outstripped by thy grace."],["Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,","When sleepless hours at my desk I spend"],["To mar the subject that before was well?","I find myself back ringing thy fair bell"],["For to no other pass my verses tend","I rifle through past rhymes, and these amend,"],["Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;","And of no other subject can I tell."],["And more, much more, than in my verse can sit","I'd paint thee plain as thou art by Sun lit"],["Your own glass shows you when you look in it.","If only I did not lack the sharp wit!"]],[["To me, fair friend, you never can be old,","Even as you yet unmarried do grow old"],["For as you were when first your eye I eyed,","Unworthy next to you seems any bride,"],["Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold","Three years with sheets unshared and bed still cold"],["Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,","You've wasted with no woman by your side;"],["Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd","An austere reputation you have earned"],["In process of the seasons have I seen,","In public with no lover to be seen"],["Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,","Three winters' worth of summer's saplings burned"],["Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.","Once autumn has dried wood that had been green"],["Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,","Last rays of sun still warm the cooling land"],["Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;","Fade slowly so its loss is scarce perceived"],["So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,","Thy puissant seed, I do thee reprimand,"],["Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:","Should not pass by in this world unreceived;"],["For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;","I urge you take a bride, it must be said;"],["Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.","All Nature is a widow with thee dead."]],[["Let not my love be call'd idolatry,","I do not falsely claim virtues in thee,"],["Nor my beloved as an idol show,","Enough already teem in thee and grow"],["Since all alike my songs and praises be","I'd also not claim shares of these in me,"],["To one, of one, still such, and ever so.","Compared to thee I am but dull and slow"],["Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,","I would with words thy virtues to thee bind"],["Still constant in a wondrous excellence;","I do this and ask nought for recompense;"],["Therefore my verse to constancy confined,","The good in thee leaves me to thy faults blind,"],["One thing expressing, leaves out difference.","And robs me of my easily swayed sense"],["'Fair, kind and true' is all my argument,","You bear the jewels of heaven, sparsely sent,"],["'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words;","Distributed meagerly--Nature hoards;"],["And in this change is my invention spent,","A miser could thee sing with three words spent,"],["Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.","And find that he still many more affords"],["'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone,","Most people find themselves arrayed with none"],["Which three till now never kept seat in one.","But in thy character they fuse as one."]],[["When in the chronicle of wasted time","When we look back upon a nobler time"],["I see descriptions of the fairest wights,","Attention turns to thin frivolous flights,"],["And beauty making beautiful old rhyme","Bold prose of noble deeds and florid rhyme"],["In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,","That sings of maidens fair and gallant knights."],["Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,","In their array thought noblest and best"],["Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,","Their stories do inspire, I'll allow,"],["I see their antique pen would have express'd","But all is vanity.  Time shall arrest"],["Even such a beauty as you master now.","What these romantic notions do endow."],["So all their praises are but prophecies","When sages on earth look'd for prophecies"],["Of this our time, all you prefiguring;","Their hopes from horoscopes a bright path figuring"],["And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,","They deemed their calculations of thee but a tease"],["They had not skill enough your worth to sing:","And longed for the delights you would be triggering."],["For we, which now behold these present days,","Those who were born too far before your days"],["Had eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.","Rue that they passed before they knew thy ways."]],[["Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul","No horoscope nor sign in flight of gull"],["Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,","That tells of days past and days yet to come"],["Can yet the lease of my true love control,","Can drive me to describe thee well in full,"],["Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.","Inspired by your worth but still struck dumb;"],["The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured","When dark days as predicted we've endured"],["And the sad augurs mock their own presage;","As gloomy omens past did ill presage"],["Incertainties now crown themselves assured","Til days are at their end, glory ensured,"],["And peace proclaims olives of endless age.","And we must with Apocalypse engage"],["Now with the drops of this most balmy time","Despite the passing of that cruel thief, time,"],["My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,","Which sucks our sap, our lifeblood cruel imbibes"],["Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,","Eventually leaves nothing but my rhyme"],["While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:","Which my beloved faithfully describes"],["And thou in this shalt find thy monument,","There comes a time when Death will not relent,"],["When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.","When life fades and vitality is spent."]],[["What's in the brain that ink may character","When urge in me to write of thee doth stir"],["Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?","What can be written so the page can bear it?"],["What's new to speak, what new to register,","When apt lies and false rhythms do occur"],["That may express my love or thy dear merit?","How can I truthfully then speak thy merit?"],["Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,","As daily praise I give thee what is thine;"],["I must, each day say o'er the very same,","E'en as thou dost ignore me all the same;"],["Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,","The sun's obscured, e'en though it did full shine"],["Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.","When mists and fogs and clouds in coolness came"],["So that eternal love in love's fresh case","Steady and smooth, it swerves not in its race"],["Weighs not the dust and injury of age,","Stoops not with such flirtations to engage,"],["Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,","Shall not thy memory from this world erase"],["But makes antiquity for aye his page,","Nor hoard it for itself within a cage"],["Finding the first conceit of love there bred","So rise each day anew and spring from bed"],["Where time and outward form would show it dead.","And share your grace wherever thou art led"]],[["O, never say that I was false of heart,","If I could love and longing set apart"],["Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.","Or that I could my true feelings deny."],["As easy might I from myself depart","I would still let them mix within my heart"],["As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:","Yet all my feelings I do then defy"],["That is my home of love: if I have ranged,","My love for thee remains always unchanged;"],["Like him that travels I return again,","To this bulwark I'd gladly myself chain"],["Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,","To find myself peculiarly arranged"],["So that myself bring water for my stain.","And tied tight to the mast in storm and rain"],["Never believe, though in my nature reign'd","'Tis sad if no ephemera remained"],["All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,","Where once an archive of thy graces stood"],["That it could so preposterously be stain'd,","I'd see thee not forgot nor thy name stained"],["To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;","Thy legacy untouched by fire and flood"],["For nothing this wide universe I call,","From my weak grip all things I cherish fall"],["Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.","And with my dying breath your name I call."]],[["Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there","When I at first to show my verse did dare"],["And made myself a motley to the view,","The treasures I bore were too scarce and few"],["Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,","I found myself of dignity stripped bare"],["Made old offences of affections new;","And shown to be quite foolish through and through"],["Most true it is that I have look'd on truth","At my strange rhymes some glanced, I say in truth,"],["Askance and strangely: but, by all above,","Some clearly not inspired from above"],["These blenches gave my heart another youth,","My best attempts served of my worth as proof,"],["And worse essays proved thee my best of love.","And still the worst displayed my sincere love."],["Now all is done, have what shall have no end:","As I approach my weakened, bitter end,"],["Mine appetite I never more will grind","Though from me slips my health, my looks, my mind;"],["On newer proof, to try an older friend,","I use my words to praise my dearest friend,"],["A god in love, to whom I am confined.","Who always has been true, e'en when unkind"],["Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,","The time will come, when I've written my best,"],["Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.","When I shall slip this life for well-earned rest."]],[["O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,","If in thy pantheon thou shouldst harsh deride"],["The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,","The goddess Muse who my verse amply feeds"],["That did not better for my life provide","I'd beg you'd give no respite from thy side"],["Than public means which public manners breeds.","But left me toil to fill my basic needs"],["Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,","You'd not be wrong to shame and reprimand"],["And almost thence my nature is subdued","Yet I by thy sweet mercy am renewed"],["To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:","I should then beg you, take me by my hand"],["Pity me then and wish I were renew'd;","And lead me to a respite I've pursued"],["Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink","I gulp this philtre down, despite the stink,"],["Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection","A pungent potion to stave off infection"],["No bitterness that I will bitter think,","Not fool enough it curative to think"],["Nor double penance, to correct correction.","Nor hate myself upon delay'd reflection"],["Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye","So desperate am I for a taste of thee"],["Even that your pity is enough to cure me.","I'd gulp this poison down if it need be."]],[["Your love and pity doth the impression fill","Why am I stirred when others remain still?"],["Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;","That I alone in unworthiness bow"],["For what care I who calls me well or ill,","How can I hate the world and all that's ill"],["So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?","When all I care is how you deem me now;"],["You are my all the world, and I must strive","My every thought for thee, I always strive"],["To know my shames and praises from your tongue:","To sing thy song with gay and skillful tongue"],["None else to me, nor I to none alive,","The two of us should not while we're alive"],["That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.","Care how to other poets we are sung."],["In so profound abysm I throw all care","I hear the rumblings from near and from far"],["Of others' voices, that my adder's sense","Of happenings that start beyond my fence;"],["To critic and to flatterer stopped are.","And so I fear the falling of thy star"],["Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:","The world doth wait for thy inheritance;"],["You are so strongly in my purpose bred","I set my verses down until I'm dead"],["That all the world besides methinks are dead.","That any thoughts against thee now are fled."]],[["Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;","My weakling eye informs my feeble mind"],["And that which governs me to go about","My skeptic brain regards him with much doubt"],["Doth part his function and is partly blind,","Thou hast of late neglected me, unkind,"],["Seems seeing, but effectually is out;","Still all that's beauteous in thee finds redoubt"],["For it no form delivers to the heart","My eye itself seeks glimpse to feed my heart,"],["Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch:","Awake though not the hour of his watch"],["Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,","It snares not words to speak, nor any art"],["Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:","To speed its eye to thee, a glimpse to catch."],["For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,","But even thy faintest traits do glow at night"],["The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,","The rudest vermin or the fairest creature"],["The mountain or the sea, the day or night,","Should catch then even in the dimmest light"],["The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature:","Thy foulest flaw or still thy fairest feature;"],["Incapable of more, replete with you,","My eye I trust not, but my heart I do;"],["My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.","My heart alone can show thee to be true."]],[["Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you,","When my dark queen doth summon, what to do?"],["Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?","Should I hope to be drawn to reverie?"],["Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,","Should I pretend thy heart is pure and true,"],["And that your love taught it this alchemy,","Ignoring warning signs of treachery?"],["To make of monsters and things indigest","Thou art a viper with false graces blest,"],["Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,","A mask of something worthy to resemble"],["Creating every bad a perfect best,","A visage to be changed upon request"],["As fast as objects to his beams assemble?","A false face for true nature to dissemble"],["O,'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing,","Behind fair mask, thy sneers I am not seeing"],["And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:","Upon which then my hungry eye doth sup;"],["Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,","My heart slakes then his thirst 'pon his mere being"],["And to his palate doth prepare the cup:","Without a thought for danger drinks it up"],["If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin","It seems a lesser risk and not a sin"],["That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.","To drink thy poison than not let thee in."]],[["Those lines that I before have writ do lie,","They misesteem my love for thee most high"],["Even those that said I could not love you dearer:","And reckon not how I do hold thee dearer"],["Yet then my judgment knew no reason why","My misery is heard in moan and sigh,"],["My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.","My suffering is plain in any mirror"],["But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents","Regrets for hasty promises and laments"],["Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings,","As time its weather and decay cruel brings"],["Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,","The years that pass wear souls and brain dements;"],["Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;","And spell the death and decay of all things"],["Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,","With my last gasping breath when dunked in sea"],["Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'","My final rhymes will find thee duly bless'd"],["When I was certain o'er incertainty,","Should I discount this fleeting ecstasy?"],["Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?","Last gasp of drowning man, toss'd and distress'd?"],["Love is a babe; then might I not say so,","Had thou intention base, I'll have thee know,"],["To give full growth to that which still doth grow?","I'd leap upon it as hart upon doe"]],[["Let me not to the marriage of true minds","Let not to the marriage of true minds"],["Admit impediments. Love is not love","Admit impediments.  Would one say Love"],["Which alters when it alteration finds,","Can that be called which twilight's dimness blinds,"],["Or bends with the remover to remove:","Mere vagabond, like wand'ring star above?"],["O no! it is an ever-fixed mark","The sundown doth a light within moon spark"],["That looks on tempests and is never shaken;","That lasts beyond when dreamers do awaken;"],["It is the star to every wandering bark,","Even when unlit by sun ne'er truly dark"],["Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.","Such sublime joy could never be mistaken"],["Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks","My pure heart, which no idle pleasure seeks,"],["Within his bending sickle's compass come:","May make it stand out briefly from the gloom"],["Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,","Upon this earth thy glory ebbs and peaks"],["But bears it out even to the edge of doom.","Yet Death and Time stand by to claim its doom"],["If this be error and upon me proved,","I may pretend at times I am unmoved,"],["I never writ, nor no man ever loved.","Still I cannot claim I am not loved."]],[["Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all","If in your debt I willingly do fall"],["Wherein I should your great deserts repay,","It is a debt I will quite gladly pay"],["Forgot upon your dearest love to call,","My nights of longing leave me in thy thrall"],["Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;","And unrewarded still at break of day."],["That I have frequent been with unknown minds","Know I've stood firm as oak while pine tree bends,"],["And given to time your own dear-purchased right","That I've born both spring's thaws and winter's bite"],["That I have hoisted sail to all the winds","I've suffered ocean swells and brutal winds"],["Which should transport me farthest from your sight.","And braved storms that blow all the day and night"],["Book both my wilfulness and errors down","And seen many a noble tree fall'n down"],["And on just proof surmise accumulate;","If I've lost favor and thou art irate"],["Bring me within the level of your frown,","Declare me dim, declare me but a clown,"],["But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate;","I pray you not my efforts to berate;"],["Since my appeal says I did strive to prove","My love for thee through words I hope to prove"],["The constancy and virtue of your love.","And by that proving strive to gain thy love"]],[["Like as, to make our appetites more keen,","When sickness turns our healthy pallors green"],["With eager compounds we our palate urge,","And we pray to avoid a funeral dirge"],["As, to prevent our maladies unseen,","When in our illness final days are seen"],["We sicken to shun sickness when we purge,","We seek our souls to feed, bad humors purge;"],["Even so, being tuff of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,","When I did find my fruit sucked dry of sweetness"],["To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding","When subject to this world's unkindest feeding"],["And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness","A spectrum full to seek in its completeness"],["To be diseased ere that there was true needing.","A lustful wanting, an unhealthy needing;"],["Thus policy in love, to anticipate","How changed and wretched are things now of late,"],["The ills that were not, grew to faults assured","They've taken turns ironic and absurd"],["And brought to medicine a healthful state","My fortunes, so perverse and deviate,"],["Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured:","Do swerve like gyring flight of sickly bird;"],["But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,","No medicine returns a healthy hue:"],["Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.","But Time alone will cure or kill, 'tis true."]],[["What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,","Should alchemy mix sweet love with bitter tear"],["Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within,","Each element tempering with its dark twin"],["Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,","As one withdraws, the other draws then near"],["Still losing when I saw myself to win!","They complement and prove each other then."],["What wretched errors hath my heart committed,","'Tis travesty to find thy fair soul quitted"],["Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!","Beyond which mortal brain may endeavour"],["How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted","No rhyme can rhyme, no meter can be fitted,"],["In the distraction of this madding fever!","And my poor brain is stripped of all thoughts clever."],["O benefit of ill! now I find true","I find on singing of thee, pure and true,"],["That better is by evil still made better;","My words unstopped and flowing, never better."],["And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,","Someday my pen, to pay thy praises due,"],["Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.","Shall find new strength that none shall ever fetter"],["So I return rebuked to my content","For now I find my quill split, dry, and bent:"],["And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.","My verse exhausted and my talents spent"]],[["That you were once unkind befriends me now,","My urge to praise thee, post-betrayal now"],["And for that sorrow which I then did feel","Unnerves me, though it should my old wounds heal;"],["Needs must I under my transgression bow,","To this reversal I should need to bow"],["Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.","To make this switch in attitude feel real"],["For if you were by my unkindness shaken","Thy time with me I trust is happily taken,"],["As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time,","To waste thy fleeting hours would be a crime"],["And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken","I bid thee from thy slumber to awaken"],["To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.","To see the sun and hear my song and rhyme"],["O, that our night of woe might have remember'd","We find ourselves by unkind world cruel-rendered"],["My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,","Whilst Time us spares and memory still remits;"],["And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd","Remembering the kindness thou hast tendered"],["The humble slave which wounded bosoms fits!","I pay to thee in verse what thus befits;"],["But that your trespass now becomes a fee;","My debt to thee repaid in full shall be"],["Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.","I pay it gladly and revel in thee."]],[["'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,","Tis better to be vile than be vile esteemed"],["When not to be receives reproach of being,","'Tis no shame, wicked to the wicked being;"],["And the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd","'Tis wrong to seek that you should be redeem'd"],["Not by our feeling but by others' seeing:","If villainy's called out from one's false-seeing."],["For why should others false adulterate eyes","Shall my foes who rejoice in my demise"],["Give salutation to my sportive blood?","Take shameful pride when spattered with my blood?"],["Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,","Why care about what others may despise,"],["Which in their wills count bad what I think good?","Those who can't tell pure water from base mud?"],["No, I am that I am, and they that level","Those jealous fools who in thy flaws do revel"],["At my abuses reckon up their own:","And try to make their falsehoods broadly known"],["I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;","They seek to bring the world to their low level,"],["By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;","My virtues hid, while theirs are falsely shown."],["Unless this general evil they maintain,","This mortal world immortals do disdain:"],["All men are bad, and in their badness reign.","All living die, in verse alone remain."]],[["Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain","When thou hast passed, in verse thou shalt remain,"],["Full character'd with lasting memory,","Amongst great heroes, noble company;"],["Which shall above that idle rank remain","With words I strive to give thee due refrain"],["Beyond all date, even to eternity;","My failings here do bring me misery."],["Or at the least, so long as brain and heart","The feelings in me that stir in my heart"],["Have faculty by nature to subsist;","Inspired in me by lips so lightly kiss'd"],["Till each to razed oblivion yield his part","Thy gentle touch spurs me to pursue art"],["Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.","And sing the praises of the joys I've miss'd"],["That poor retention could not so much hold,","I find myself yet grown so cruelly old"],["Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;","As age doth catch me and knock on my door"],["Therefore to give them from me was I bold,","I would not care to be advised or told"],["To trust those tables that receive thee more:","How I could love thee better or yet more."],["To keep an adjunct to remember thee","To battle fading memories of thee"],["Were to import forgetfulness in me.","I pledge my verse for all the world to see."]],[["No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:","The fact that I stand steadfast find not strange;"],["Thy pyramids built up with newer might","My shadow only shifts as moves the light."],["To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;","My views of beauty shade shall not derange,"],["They are but dressings of a former sight.","My views of truth change not with the sun's flight"],["Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire","You offer nothing novel to inspire;"],["What thou dost foist upon us that is old,","I despair not as both of us grow old"],["And rather make them born to our desire","In verse I copy all things I admire"],["Than think that we before have heard them told.","And gild them to conceal the rot and mold."],["Thy registers and thee I both defy,","My words do not true memory belie"],["Not wondering at the present nor the past,","I do not falsely color moments past"],["For thy records and what we see doth lie,","Nor trying the true present to deny"],["Made more or less by thy continual haste.","As I now in my verse all strive to cast."],["This I do vow and this shall ever be;","So do thy worst, Death, there's no fear in me:"],["I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.","I live through thee as thou shalt live through me"]],[["If my dear love were but the child of state,","Thy beauty I attribute not to Fate;"],["It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd'","Since Fortune's bastards often are unfathered;"],["As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,","'Tis not for thee to miss the harvest, late,"],["Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.","To lie in fields ungleaned and ungathered"],["No, it was builded far from accident;","Thy beauty is for the eternal meant;"],["It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls","It stands upright; it neither bows nor falls"],["Under the blow of thralled discontent,","In strong winds stands unbroken and unbent"],["Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:","In sunlight bright it neither burns nor palls."],["It fears not policy, that heretic,","Like blooms in an ill garden, weak and sick,"],["Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,","Deceptively sweet in their final hours;"],["But all alone stands hugely politic,","Their stems are nought but scented candle's wick"],["That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.","They bend and break, unblessed with thy powers"],["To this I witness call the fools of time,","I disdain fate and challenge cruel thief Time,"],["Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.","And set forth pen and ink, the tools of rhyme."]],[["Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy,","As I held up thy nuptial canopy"],["With my extern the outward honouring,","And offered rhymes up, then thy wedding savouring,"],["Or laid great bases for eternity,","For thee an insufficient panoply"],["Which prove more short than waste or ruining?","Despite my effort and endeavouring"],["Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour","The vulgar crowd, eager to win thy favour"],["Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,","The simple joys reject, their tastes ill-bent"],["For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,","Unequipped pure virtue well to savour:"],["Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?","They mistake shallow dross as heaven-sent"],["No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,","Be thou the tenth muse, see my offered heart,"],["And take thou my oblation, poor but free,","Accept my love in sweet humility"],["Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art,","Yet think not I demand the same in part,"],["But mutual render, only me for thee.","I could not shirk responsibility"],["Hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soul","The need to praise thee nestles in my soul"],["When most impeach'd stands least in thy control.","In giving to you freely I stay whole."]],[["O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power","Cruel Fate, master of men, so cold and dour,"],["Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;","Who finds herself grow stronger by the hour"],["Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st","We trace the waters to the valley's lowest"],["Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st;","And watch the sedges grow as river flow'st"],["If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,","We slept and Nature did, with Night so black,"],["As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,","Grace thee with what thy foes envy and lack,"],["She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill","Those cads who slander thee and wish thee ill"],["May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.","Will prod thee, and won't rest 'til thou art still."],["Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!","The goddess who designed thee for her pleasure"],["She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:","Did form thee as a dark alluring treasure"],["Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be,","The onus to praise thee is upon me,"],["And her quietus is to render thee.","This burden puts me in such reverie"],["(    )","Alas my words I find are at an end"],["(    )","[       ]"]],[["In the old age black was not counted fair,","The world sees not to deem thy darkness fair,"],["Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;","Thy wan complexion some would sickly claim."],["But now is black beauty's successive heir,","The passions stirred by innocence laid bare,"],["And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:","The lusciousness in darkness stirs the same;"],["For since each hand hath put on nature's power,","My dark lady's the lady of the hour,"],["Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face,","She crafted black of hair and fair of face,"],["Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,","The darkness only magnifying her power"],["But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.","And passion yet be stirred by her dark grace"],["Therefore my mistress' brows are raven black,","And thus her beauty is arrayed in black;"],["Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem","A lovely shade seen only in a dream"],["At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,","Thus tinted with a color others lack,"],["Slandering creation with a false esteem:","Her hair and eyes contrasting skin of cream"],["Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,","These gems set in her face, as dark as sloe,"],["That every tongue says beauty should look so.","Transformed from eyes of hawk to tragic doe."]],[["How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,","I'd have thee with my worthy verse now graced"],["Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds","But find it drown'd out by more earthy sounds"],["With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st","With vulgar celebrations we are faced;"],["The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,","The crowd moves gaily, the dancer twirls and bounds."],["Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap","The peasants caper round and eager leap"],["To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,","At hearing folk tunes from an untrained band"],["Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,","We sneak away and to the forest creep,"],["At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!","Like youthful lovers, creeping hand in hand;"],["To be so tickled, they would change their state","And so with tingling lips I stand and wait"],["And situation with those dancing chips,","To feel thee brush thy skin on legs and hips"],["O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,","Far from the crowd, we seek our lusts to sate,"],["Making dead wood more blest than living lips.","Caressing chin and cheeks and ears and lips"],["Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,","My darling, touching you is such sweet bliss"],["Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.","That I should shudder at the lightest kiss."]],[["The expense of spirit in a waste of shame","Those who you deem your jewels yet decay,"],["Is lust in action; and till action, lust","Still shining bright but showing signs of rust"],["Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,","They feign at being loyal and homage pay"],["Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,","With vows of fealty but no cause for trust"],["Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,","If losing favor with thee were my fate,"],["Past reason hunted, and no sooner had","Cast off and scorned as a common cad"],["Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait","I'd find myself subject to general hate"],["On purpose laid to make the taker mad;","Then soon dismissed as though a passing fad."],["Mad in pursuit and in possession so;","Time doth disorient in its swift flow;"],["Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;","The past and future meet at a thin seam"],["A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;","The present is the hardest yet to know"],["Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.","And brilliant in this moment thou dost gleam"],["All this the world well knows; yet none knows well","Thou couldst be false, This I know all too well;"],["To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.","But known or not cruel mistress Time shall tell"]],[["My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;","I can't compare my Lady to the Sun."],["Coral is far more red than her lips' red;","And yet to praise her I am meekly led;"],["If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;","If porcelain is white, her skin is dun;"],["If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.","If silk be soft, coarse wires grow on her head;"],["I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,","Some others conjure flowers at her sight,"],["But no such roses see I in her cheeks;","Her blooms are less like roses, more like leeks;"],["And in some perfumes is there more delight","The peacock's plumage makes her seem less bright,"],["Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.","She smells fair, but compared to flowers she reeks."],["I love to hear her speak, yet well I know","Her voice sings not like viol meeting bow"],["That music hath a far more pleasing sound;","The lark produces a more pleasant sound."],["I grant I never saw a goddess go;","She is no goddess sent to earth below,"],["My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:","And mortals graceful as she do abound."],["And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare","And yet for these shortfalls I give no care"],["As any she belied with false compare.","And no one in this world deem I so fair"]],[["Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,","Thy disdain put to words is a dark art"],["As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;","And with thy stinginess so sharp and cruel"],["For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart","And as they do cruel wound my tender heart"],["Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.","I cannot say no to thee as a rule;"],["Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold","The foolish may think thou hast grown too old;"],["Thy face hath not the power to make love groan:","To them it seems a thing that's simply shown:"],["To say they err I dare not be so bold,","Thy might in age has grown less sure and bold."],["Although I swear it to myself alone.","To make that judgment is not mine alone"],["And, to be sure that is not false I swear,","My back alone does not thy scratches wear:"],["A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,","Your marks of passion are by others known"],["One on another's neck, do witness bear","I would such marks be happiest to bear"],["Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place.","And proud to wear them, since they are my own;"],["In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,","Thy dark looks make me stir and fuel my needs,"],["And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.","Thy beauty shines still, and my lust it feeds."]],[["Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,","A day will come when I do cease to be:"],["Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,","Behold and cause such sorrow that I'm slain;"],["Have put on black and loving mourners be,","They wound me more than all the woes I see"],["Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.","Thou mourn'st me while I still on earth remain"],["And truly not the morning sun of heaven","Not blazing Sun for all its strength and meaning"],["Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,","Nor moon with its reflected flame yet blessed"],["Nor that full star that ushers in the even","Nor wandering star that appears in the evening"],["Doth half that glory to the sober west,","That holds court in the twilight in the west"],["As those two mourning eyes become thy face:","Where still the last glow of the sunset's blaze"],["O, let it then as well beseem thy heart","Doth light the sky the hours we're apart"],["To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace,","Which mine own heart until the end would chase"],["And suit thy pity like in every part.","And only death shall see us sadly part."],["Then will I swear beauty herself is black","If you doubt me and think my motives black,"],["And all they foul that thy complexion lack.","Call cruel death life, and claim my noose is slack"]],[["Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan","When vulgar labors turn your Love to stone"],["For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!","And with its absence causes misery"],["Is't not enough to torture me alone,","I curse the work that wearies flesh and bone:"],["But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?","Must my love be subject to drudgery?"],["Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,","'Tis pity that dull toil my friend has taken"],["And my next self thou harder hast engross'd:","And left my heart forlorn and tempest toss'd."],["Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;","'Tis unfair every day I late awaken,"],["A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd.","My dear friend's time to earthly labors lost."],["Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,","I adopt thy reputation as its ward"],["But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail;","That it should be preserv'd and never fail"],["Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;","Were you to release me and cut this cord"],["Thou canst not then use rigor in my gaol:","I'd reject my parole and shun still bail"],["And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,","For 'tis no prison, I belong to thee,"],["Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.","And in such bondage find myself still free."]],[["So, now I have confess'd that he is thine,","My rival bows to thee like storm-blown pine,"],["And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,","And he bends like a reed to your fierce will"],["Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine","When I am blessed to see your visage shine"],["Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still:","But cursed to know that I'll not claim it still"],["But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,","A steady sturdy oak I vow to be;"],["For thou art covetous and he is kind;","I am not to reality so blind;"],["He learn'd but surety-like to write for me","Thy nature not thy words cleave him to thee"],["Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.","'Tis true love that the two of us doth bind"],["The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,","A profit greedy and unjust you take,"],["Thou usurer, that put'st forth all to use,","And with this sordid path that thou hast chose,"],["And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;","This world you scour, like a common rake,"],["So him I lose through my unkind abuse.","With nought to gain but little yet to lose;"],["Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:","When storm has passed I stand there plain to see;"],["He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.","His love is gone, and yet I claim not thee."]],[["Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'","This lust will surely overcome thy Will"],["And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;","As my weak will succumbs to your strong must"],["More than enough am I that vex thee still,","Drunk on this draught, I would these pages fill,"],["To thy sweet will making addition thus.","And to thy will must bend, just or unjust;"],["Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,","Wouldst thou, if I may seek a boon audacious,"],["Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?","Wilt thou let me place my will next to thine?"],["Shall will in others seem right gracious,","I'd tremble if you'd be so kind and gracious"],["And in my will no fair acceptance shine?","Thy wants should sated by this Will of mine"],["The sea all water, yet receives rain still","As deluge from above thy barrels fill,"],["And in abundance addeth to his store;","Relentless though the rain above may pour;"],["So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'","This Will of thine doth o'erbrim, not spill,"],["One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.","Thy wells and barrels, now and evermore;"],["Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;","Will will be purified and Will distill:"],["Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'","So Will be true to self and to thy will."]],[["If thy soul cheque thee that I come so near,","As we do share our company and our beer"],["Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy 'Will,'","I bid thee not to disregard thy Will"],["And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;","As 'Will' I be, I'll always hold thee dear."],["Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.","Will's will will hold its sway within thee still."],["'Will' will fulfil the treasure of thy love,","This Will will seek thee out with all his love"],["Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.","And Will will strive to make our wills as one;"],["In things of great receipt with ease we prove","And as I heed decrees from up above"],["Among a number one is reckon'd none:","I scratch my ill-rhymed thoughts upon the page"],["Then in the number let me pass untold,","I hope not as a fool will you me hold,"],["Though in thy stores' account I one must be;","As this ill doggerel you laugh to see"],["For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold","This verse my whimsy demands must be told,"],["That nothing me, a something sweet to thee:","E'en as this wordplay makes a fool of me"],["Make but my name thy love, and love that still,","Upon pun after pun these rhymes I fill"],["And then thou lovest me, for my name is 'Will.'","And strive as ever to fulfill thy Will,"]],[["Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,","There is a wisdom I deny my eyes"],["That they behold, and see not what they see?","Which falseness recognize but dare not see"],["They know what beauty is, see where it lies,","Let not my heart fall thus to thy disguise"],["Yet what the best is take the worst to be.","Let it be wise to what is vile in thee;"],["If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks","Could I be damned while caught upon thy hooks"],["Be anchor'd in the bay where all men ride,","And through such lies true virtue is denied"],["Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,","Could I with songs of thee fill many books"],["Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?","Which plot with thee thy true face then to hide?"],["Why should my heart think that a several plot","Is it this web you've spun, if I am caught,"],["Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?","Would trap me to dishonor and disgrace?"],["Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not,","Dement itself so to believe its lot"],["To put fair truth upon so foul a face?","And praise the mask you wear upon your face"],["In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,","Thy vulnerable charms are cruelly bared"],["And to this false plague are they now transferr'd.","To face this sight my heart is ill-prepared."]],[["When my love swears that she is made of truth","My passions my beloved seems to sooth"],["I do believe her, though I know she lies,","And yet such scratches leaves she on my thighs"],["That she might think me some untutor'd youth,","A sly cat playing kitten, so she meweth,"],["Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.","And in false coyness she'd herself disguise."],["Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,","Each song I hear by flatterers, falsely sung,"],["Although she knows my days are past the best,","Deflates my soul and makes my mood depress'd."],["Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:","I think myself thy master, with skilled tongue:"],["On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.","In knowing self deceit I still am bless'd"],["But wherefore says she not she is unjust?","Admit signs of our aging though I must;"],["And wherefore say not I that I am old?","The mirror's glass shows I am growing old"],["O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,","Her lies only omissions, this I trust,"],["And age in love loves not to have years told:","Yet speaking not true when truth be too bold."],["Therefore I lie with her and she with me,","We come together, and in reverie"],["And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.","We lie as one, what bliss and misery."]],[["O, call not me to justify the wrong","Each word I guide to where it may belong"],["That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;","That flows imperfectly to hand from heart"],["Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;","If I should wrong thee with my deeds or song"],["Use power with power and slay me not by art.","May I be flogged and cruelly torn apart"],["Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight,","To spurn me she needs but deny delight."],["Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:","I wither not at comments cruel and snide;"],["What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might","Sharp words sting, but could be a harsh glare's bite"],["Is more than my o'er-press'd defense can bide?","Is more than wounded heart can then abide"],["Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows","My mistress, with a cold, slow sneer she knows"],["Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,","My plight, my hopeless battling she sees,"],["And therefore from my face she turns my foes,","One hopeful moment mercy she me shows"],["That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:","Only to wound me deep as she may please."],["Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,","Scold if she must, by this I am not slain;"],["Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.","Her gaze would kill me, words cause only pain."]],[["Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press","Despair of losing you doth me impress"],["My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;","To treat my earnest efforts with disdain"],["Lest sorrow lend me words and words express","I'm too confused to ably express"],["The manner of my pity-wanting pain.","The scattered and confused thoughts that remain"],["If I might teach thee wit, better it were,","If pitying me it should to thee occur,"],["Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;","As we do age and grow both grey and slow"],["As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,","When faced with final days, do not demur:"],["No news but health from their physicians know;","Do rage hard and despair, don't meekly go"],["For if I should despair, I should grow mad,","'Twould make me inconsolable and sad"],["And in my madness might speak ill of thee:","To see thee wounded by the loss of me."],["Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,","Heed not the words of those who call us bad"],["Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be,","I bid thee scorn their hateful jealousy"],["That I may not be so, nor thou belied,","Glance not to me e'en when I'm by thy side"],["Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.","Together we shall face the eventide"]],[["In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,","When protests of thy finest virtues rise"],["For they in thee a thousand errors note;","My heart holds dear what others do not note."],["But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,","Some others do thy minor faults despise"],["Who in despite of view is pleased to dote;","They criticize where I indulge and dote"],["Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,","I heed not calls, to other beds invited,"],["Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,","Though in my loneliness desire has grown"],["Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited","I find my weak flesh helplessly excited"],["To any sensual feast with thee alone:","With needs that can be met by thee alone"],["But my five wits nor my five senses can","In thrall of you, I do the best I can,"],["Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,","Resist the many charms and lures of thee,"],["Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man,","It is my goal, as both poet and man,"],["Thy proud hearts slave and vassal wretch to be:","To praise thee in hopes that you will please me"],["Only my plague thus far I count my gain,","This dual nature do I curse, in vain,"],["That she that makes me sin awards me pain.","As I hide faults and make thy graces plain."]],[["Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate,","My scorned love and your casual hate,"],["Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:","They cancel not and allow not removing;"],["O, but with mine compare thou thine own state,","They cannot one another fill and sate"],["And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;","But temper hard each other with this proving"],["Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,","This mix of vice and virtue, mine and thine,"],["That have profaned their scarlet ornaments","Which did dissemble with false innocence"],["And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,","They drink up falseness like mislabeled wine"],["Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.","Avoiding not their false and sickly scents"],["Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lovest those","These poets, for whom thy affection grows,"],["Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:","Should stir only your superiority,"],["Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows","Thy kindness sooths me, but this poet knows"],["Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.","Compared to lineage inferiority"],["If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,","Anything in you you'd see Death denied,"],["By self-example mayst thou be denied!","Then share it--thou shalt find it multiplied."]],[["Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch","Like desperate mother chasing hen to catch"],["One of her feather'd creatures broke away,","Her feathered flock which flees from birds of prey"],["Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch","She scurries round, this wayward beast to snatch"],["In pursuit of the thing she would have stay,","And seeks to keep the predators at bay,"],["Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,","The child in tears bounds after her in chase,"],["Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent","Her mother doth ignore the child's lament"],["To follow that which flies before her face,","No guilt doth show upon her placid face,"],["Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;","Her efforts on these earthy duties spent;"],["So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,","As thou doth chase the worldly, as needs be,"],["Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;","And seek'st that which to thy virtues is blind;"],["But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,","Upon that bird's return turn back to me"],["And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind:","And soothe me with thy tender kisses kind"],["So will I pray that thou mayst have thy 'Will,'","The thought of thy kind acts does soothe and thrill"],["If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.","As words of praise for thee flow from my quill"]],[["Two loves I have of comfort and despair,","Two spirits on my shoulders I do bear"],["Which like two spirits do suggest me still:","Each pulls at me as I do ink my quill;"],["The better angel is a man right fair,","The first would tempt me back into my chair"],["The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.","His counterpart, she serves to try my will."],["To win me soon to hell, my female evil","His noble nature warns me now from evil,"],["Tempteth my better angel from my side,","Her counterpart tempts over to her side"],["And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,","With subtle machinations of a devil"],["Wooing his purity with her foul pride.","Leaving my temptations undefied"],["And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend","His words fall in the furrows, gone ungleaned,"],["Suspect I may, but not directly tell;","His counterpart forms 'round him a false shell"],["But being both from me, both to each friend,","Both beings blessed and from the same milk weaned,"],["I guess one angel in another's hell:","Both spawned from heaven and fallen to same hell"],["Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,","They contradict and quarrel, fuel my doubt,"],["Till my bad angel fire my good one out.","Till my bad angel cast my good one out."]],[["Those lips that Love's own hand did make","My heart froze as my mistress spake,"],["Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate'","Her voice paused as she said, \"I hate-\""],["To me that languish'd for her sake;","I braced myself, a blow to take,"],["But when she saw my woeful state,","And for the next word I did wait"],["Straight in her heart did mercy come,","She brushed aside my mournful gloom,"],["Chiding that tongue that ever sweet","And gave to me a look so sweet"],["Was used in giving gentle doom,","Did summon song from silent room"],["And taught it thus anew to greet:","And smiled as my heart skipped a beat"],["'I hate' she alter'd with an end,","What Winter blighted Spring then green'd"],["That follow'd it as gentle day","I paused as night's darkness turn'd day"],["Doth follow night, who like a fiend","The sun, once hid, is newly seen,"],["From heaven to hell is flown away;","Makes light the land and warms the clay."],["'I hate' from hate away she threw,","Thy lips formed speech and froze me through"],["And saved my life, saying 'not you.'","Then finished up, \"I hate not you.\""]],[["Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,","A canker rose did bloom upon thy birth"],["[                 ] these rebel powers that thee array;","Housing rot that soon would cause decay"],["Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,","Believe you still your foes have any worth"],["Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?","When nothing mortal should cause thee dismay?"],["Why so large cost, having so short a lease,","Why should thy wealth then trickle and decrease?"],["Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?","Think on this question, raised by your dear friend:"],["Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,","Who should, when Death gives thee thy last release,"],["Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?","Claim this estate, their feeding at an end?"],["Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,","You should ensure the world won't feel your loss"],["And let that pine to aggravate thy store;","Build not thy castles made of sand on shore"],["Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;","Which topple at first wave's mild, gentle toss."],["Within be fed, without be rich no more:","And profit from me when I am no more"],["So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,","We strive to outlive Death, we mortal men,"],["And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.","And only through our children live again."]],[["My love is as a fever, longing still","Poor winged creature, well-fed but still ill,"],["For that which longer nurseth the disease,","Hungry for something fair to bring it ease"],["Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,","Content not with a feast but given pill"],["The uncertain sickly appetite to please.","A palliative for this sinister disease"],["My reason, the physician to my love,","So, bid to stay inside, the roosting dove,"],["Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,","Which mournful cries but never truly wept,"],["Hath left me, and I desperate now approve","Doth scold and grumble from his perch above."],["Desire is death, which physic did except.","I speak truth unchecked, but when by thee kept"],["Past cure I am, now reason is past care,","I deem thee pure when you are foul as tar"],["And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;","And declare pure the black heart in thy breast"],["My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,","Thy fickle sins and virtues mix and war"],["At random from the truth vainly express'd;","The worst of thee mixed up against the best;"],["For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,","I'd deem thee fair and call thee pure and white"],["Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.","Whose hair and heart are darker than the night."]],[["O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,","I curse the vision of eyes blind and dead"],["Which have no correspondence with true sight!","Which conjure flaws from true Beauty in sight"],["Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,","Why think themselves astray when truths are read"],["That censures falsely what they see aright?","In Eden find themselves in dimmest blight"],["If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,","Should I then take for lies these truths I wrote?"],["What means the world to say it is not so?","Am I so blind I mistake friend for foe?"],["If it be not, then love doth well denote","I mix so fact with flatteries I wrote"],["Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'","That my eyes truth from falsehood fail to know."],["How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,","Shall I straighten my mirror, now askew,"],["That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?","And truly face my discontent and tears?"],["No marvel then, though I mistake my view;","My heart denies that which my eyes then knew,"],["The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.","Within it I do stash my doubts and fears"],["O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,","By thy pure beauty I am thus struck blind"],["Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.","But still enthralled to thy sight do I find."]],[["Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,","You do deny me all the love I've sought:"],["When I against myself with thee partake?","How could you be so blind to this mistake?"],["Do I not think on thee, when I forgot","To memorialize thee, cruel despot Time I've fought:"],["Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake?","Against his scythe myself I'd martyr make"],["Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?","I long to please thee, dutifully attend"],["On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon?","And rest not til my duties have been done"],["Nay, if thou lour'st on me, do I not spend","Should I to my few criticisms amend"],["Revenge upon myself with present moan?","Great seas of ink in praise when thou art gone?"],["What merit do I in myself respect,","My pride I mistake not for self-respect,"],["That is so proud thy service to despise,","Nor do I thy indifference despise"],["When all my best doth worship thy defect,","My ghastly face the mirror doth reflect"],["Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?","Even as I tremble to face my demise"],["But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;","My vision blurred, my eyes closed as I pined:"],["Those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.","E'en as death comes thou art still in my mind"]],[["O, from what power hast thou this powerful might","Why doth it spark such hope, this fading light,"],["With insufficiency my heart to sway?","To bring me joy what should bring me dismay?"],["To make me give the lie to my true sight,","The dark could shade thy face in spots at night"],["And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?","In which I'd catch your vision in bright day;"],["Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,","Why indulge this sick need to do me ill,"],["That in the very refuse of thy deeds","These cruel intentions and these crueler deeds?"],["There is such strength and warrantize of skill","Why should thy cruelty give me a sick thrill,"],["That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?","I stir at whip but slack to fill my needs?"],["Who taught thee how to make me love thee more","Why should I misery on misery pour"],["The more I hear and see just cause of hate?","Even as I doubt and curse cruel Fate"],["O, though I love what others do abhor,","Deceive myself I do, I love thee more;"],["With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:","In mirror's glass alone do I find hate;"],["If thy unworthiness raised love in me,","I find myself, blind to the faults I see,"],["More worthy I to be beloved of thee.","Yet sharpened to what's lacking within me."]],[["Love is too young to know what conscience is;","Oh she whose looks can cause both dread or bliss"],["Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?","I find myself in thrall of my dark love"],["Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,","I keep myself pure, worthy of thy kiss,"],["Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:","And wait for inspiration from above"],["For, thou betraying me, I do betray","My baser part stirs strongly, to my dismay,"],["My nobler part to my gross body's treason;","These carnal urges feel like vulgar treason"],["My soul doth tell my body that he may","My heart and soul would strip all flesh away"],["Triumph in love; flesh stays no father reason;","If possible, love thee beyond all reason"],["But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee","My rival gives poor praise, then doth claim thee"],["As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,","E'en serving thee and sleeping by thy side"],["He is contented thy poor drudge to be,","His morals for thy fleshly treats did flee,"],["To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.","Nobility thus soiled and cast aside."],["No want of conscience hold it that I call","I stand now noble, but do shameful call"],["Her 'love' for whose dear love I rise and fall.","To thee when I'm spurred by my own lust's thrall"]],[["In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,","I can't for either of you bear much scorn"],["But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,","Though dual betrayals I from thee am wearing:"],["In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,","Though both of you did break a vow true sworn"],["In vowing new hate after new love bearing.","You break an oath that never did need swearing"],["But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,","In breaking this vow, can I angry be"],["When I break twenty? I am perjured most;","For every crime of thine I twenty boast;"],["For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee","Of being too like me I do accuse thee"],["And all my honest faith in thee is lost,","When of we three my sins total the most"],["For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,","With this betrayal I think on your kindness"],["Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,","And forgive thee when thou woundest me;"],["And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,","On seeing thy misdeeds I do feign blindness"],["Or made them swear against the thing they see;","And still I praise thee when thy faults I see,"],["For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I,","To speak the truth in verse I am too shy"],["To swear against the truth so foul a lie!","And seek to sing the truth in bitter lie."]],[["Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:","When waking in a sylvan glade from sleep"],["A maid of Dian's this advantage found,","A nymph of Dian hearkened to the sound"],["And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep","Near to a river, flowing fast and deep"],["In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;","The little love god resting may be found"],["Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love","In wand'ring wilderness, struck ill with love"],["A dateless lively heat, still to endure,","Many seek this spot to find their cure,"],["And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove","Praying for reprieve from up above"],["Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.","Fair Eros strings his bow so he shoots sure;"],["But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,","This visage seen and fair form thus admired,"],["The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;","By visions in my sleep I'm cursed and blessed"],["I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,","In dreams he comes e'en after I've retired,"],["And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,","Hoping end of malady stirred from rest,"],["But found no cure: the bath for my help lies","'Tis easy in Arcadia to surmise"],["Where Cupid got new fire--my mistress' eyes.","That even here the fear of death still lies."]],[["The little Love-god lying once asleep","The tiny love god, rousing from his sleep,"],["Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,","Doth stride forth with his little bow in hand"],["Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep","Thus armed, target to target he doth leap;"],["Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand","Dear Eros flits his wings across this land"],["The fairest votary took up that fire","He warms his arrows by a red-flamed fire"],["Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;","Once it had kindled and the muscles warmed"],["And so the general of hot desire","And at this spot where he did once retire"],["Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.","A fire which would ever glow had form'd."],["This brand she quenched in a cool well by,","Neglected by the general reverie"],["Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,","Yet this cooled not, not sudden nor eventual."],["Growing a bath and healthful remedy","This warm'd them 'gainst the cold and misery"],["For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,","Pleasing e'en the soul with feeling sensual,"],["Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,","Thermodynamic rules sent from above;"],["Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.","Mere water cannot quench the fire of love."]]]