For we which now behold these present days

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

107

Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Now with the drops of this most balmy time

My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,

Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme

While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes;

And thou in this shalt find thy monument

When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.

108

What’s in the brain that ink may character

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

What’s new to speak, what now to register,

That may express my love or thy dear merit?

Nothing, sweet boy; but yet like prayers divine

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

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

Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

So that eternal love in love’s fresh case

Weighs not the dust and injury of age,

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,

But makes antiquity for aye his page,

Finding the first conceit of love there bred

Where time and outward form would show it dead.

109

O never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify—

As easy might I from myself depart

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.

That is my home of love. If I have ranged,

Like him that travels I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe, though in my nature reigned

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stained

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;

For nothing this wide universe I call

Save thou my rose; in it thou art my all.

110

Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely. But, by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays proved thee my best of love.

Now all is done, have what shall have no end;

Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

111

O, for my sake do you with fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,

Whilst like a willing patient I will drink

Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance to correct correction.

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye

Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

112

Your love and pity doth th‘impression fill

Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill,

So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all the world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue—

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steeled sense or changes, right or wrong.

In so profound abyss I throw all care

Of others’ voices that my adder’s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

You are so strongly in my purpose bred

That all the world besides, methinks, they’re dead.

113

Since I left you mine eye is in my mind,

And that which governs me to go about

Doth part his function and is partly blind,

Seems seeing, but effectually is out;

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch.

Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;

For if it see the rud‘st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet favour or deformèd’st creature,