O that our night of woe might have remembered

My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you as you to me then tendered

The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee;

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

121

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed

When not to be receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed

Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own.

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,

Unless this general evil they maintain:

All men are bad and in their badness reign.

122

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full charactered with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain

Beyond all date, even to eternity;

Or at the least so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist,

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed.

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more.

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

123

No, time, thou shalt not boast that I do change!

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,

They are but dressings of a former sight.

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire

Than think that we before have heard them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond’ring at the present nor the past;

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste.

This I do vow, and this shall ever be:

I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

124

If my dear love were but the child of state

It might for fortune’s bastard be unfathered,

As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,

Weeds among weeds or flowers with flowers gathered.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thrallèd discontent

Whereto th’inviting time our fashion calls.

It fears not policy, that heretic

Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

125

Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honouring,

Or laid great bases for eternity

Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

Lose all and more by paying too much rent,

For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,

Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?

No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art

But mutual render, only me for thee.

Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul

When most impeached stands least in thy control.

126

O thou my lovely boy, who in thy power

Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle-hour;

Who hast by waning grown, and therein show‘st

Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow’st—

If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,

As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,

She keeps thee to this purpose: that her skill

May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.

Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!

She may detain but not still keep her treasure.

Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.

127

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;

But now is black beauty’s successive heir,

And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:

For since each hand hath put on nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,

But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.