100

Where art thou, muse, that thou forget‘st so long

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?

Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,

Dark‘ning thy power to lend base subjects light?

Return, forgetful muse, and straight redeem

In gentle numbers time so idly spent;

Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem

And gives thy pen both skill and argument.

Rise, resty muse, my love’s sweet face survey

If time have any wrinkle graven there.

If any, be a satire to decay

And make time’s spoils despised everywhere.

Give my love fame faster than time wastes life;

So, thou prevene’st his scythe and crooked knife.

101

O truant muse, what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends;

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.

Make answer, muse. Wilt thou not haply say

‘Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,

Beauty no pencil beauty’s truth to lay,

But best is best if never intermixed’?

Because he needs no praise wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,

And to be praised of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office, muse; I teach thee how

To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

102

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming.

I love not less, though less the show appear.

That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming

The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.

Our love was new and then but in the spring

When I was wont to greet it with my lays,

As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days—

Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,

But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

103

Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth

That, having such a scope to show her pride,

The argument all bare is of more worth

Than when it hath my added praise beside!

O blame me not if I no more can write!

Look in your glass and there appears a face

That overgoes my blunt invention quite,

Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?—

For to no other pass my verses tend

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;

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

Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

104

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

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned

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

Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:

Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

105

Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my belovèd as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

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

Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence.

Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

‘Fair, kind, and true’ is all my argument,

‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words,

And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.

Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,

Which three till now never kept seat in one.

106

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

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

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And for they looked but with divining eyes

They had not skill enough your worth to sing;