From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,

And found it in thy cheek: he can afford

No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

Then thank him not for that which he doth say,

Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.

80

O, how I faint when I of you do write,

Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,

And in the praise thereof spends all his might,

To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!

But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,

The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,

My saucy barque, inferior far to his,

On your broad main doth wilfully appear.

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat

Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;

Or, being wrecked, I am a worthless boat,

He of tall building and of goodly pride.

Then if he thrive and I be cast away,

The worst was this: my love was my decay.

81

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.

From hence your memory death cannot take,

Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Though I, once gone, to all the world must die.

The earth can yield me but a common grave

When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

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

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

When all the breathers of this world are dead.

You still shall live—such virtue hath my pen—

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of

men.

82

I grant thou wert not married to my muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of these time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devised

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized

In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;

And their gross painting might be better used

Where cheeks need blood: in thee it is abused.

83

I never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set.

I found—or thought I found—you did exceed

The barren tender of a poet’s debt;

And therefore have I slept in your report:

That you yourself, being extant, well might show

How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

This silence for my sin you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;

For I impair not beauty, being mute,

When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

There lives more life in one of your fair eyes

Than both your poets can in praise devise.

84

Who is it that says most which can say more

Than this rich praise: that you alone are you,

In whose confine immured is the store

Which should example where your equal grew?

Lean penury within that pen doth dwell

That to his subject lends not some small glory;

But he that writes of you, if he can tell

That you are you, so dignifies his story.

Let him but copy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so clear,

And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,

Making his style admired everywhere.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

85

My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still

While comments of your praise, richly compiled,

Reserve thy character with golden quill

And precious phrase by all the muses filed.

I think good thoughts whilst other write good words,

And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’

To every hymn that able spirit affords

In polished form of well-refinèd pen.

Hearing you praised I say “Tis so, ’tis true,’

And to the most of praise add something more;

But that is in my thought, whose love to you,

Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.

Then others for the breath of words respect,

Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

86

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse

Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?