Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

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

With what I most enjoy contented least:

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings’.

30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.

Then can I drown an eye unused to flow

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

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

And moan th‘expense of many a vanished sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

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

All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

31

Thy bosom is endearèd with all hearts

Which I by lacking have supposed dead,

And there reigns love, and all love’s loving parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye

As interest of the dead, which now appear

But things removed that hidden in thee lie!

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give:

That due of many now is thine alone.

Their images I loved I view in thee,

And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

32

If thou survive my well-contented day

When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,

And shalt by fortune once more resurvey

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,

Compare them with the bett‘ring of the time,

And though they be outstripped by every pen,

Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme

Exceeded by the height of happier men.

O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

‘Had my friend’s muse grown with this growing age,

A dearer birth than this his love had brought

To march in ranks of better equipage;

But since he died, and poets better prove,

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

33

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

Even so my sun one early morn did shine

With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

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

The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth:

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

34

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day

And make me travel forth without my cloak,

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

Hiding thy brav’ry in their rotten smoke?

‘Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break

To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,

For no man well of such a salve can speak

That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace.

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.

Th’offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief

To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.

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

And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.

35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud.

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and even I in this,

Authorizing thy trespass with compare,

Myself corrupting salving thy amiss,

Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—

Thy adverse party is thy advocate—

And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence.

Such civil war is in my love and hate

That I an accessory needs must be

To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

36

Let me confess that we two must be twain

Although our undivided loves are one;

So shall those blots that do with me remain

Without thy help by me be borne alone.

In our two loves there is but one respect,

Though in our lives a separable spite

Which, though it alter not love’s sole effect,