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.
No; Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change a
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 wondering at the present nor the past;
For thy records and what we see do 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.
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As subject to time's love or to time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers ga-
ther'd.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number'd 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.
Were it aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favor
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent;
For compound sweet foregoing simple savor;
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 mix'd with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soul, When most impeach'd, stands least in thy control.
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 delay'd, answer'd must be;
And her quietus is to render thee.
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 slander'd with a bastard shame :
For since each hand hath put on nature's power.
Fairing the foul with art's false-borrow'd face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy hour,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited; and they mourners seem
At such, who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem:
They seem to mourn, that those who are not born fair, are yet possessed of an artificial beauty, by which they pass for what they are not; and thus dishonor nature by their inperfect imitation and false pretensions.'-Malone.
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says, beauty should look so.
How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st Upon that blessed wood, whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
envy those jacks,1 ‚1 that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand;
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more bless'd than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner, but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
A jack is part of a small kind of spinnet, called a virginal.
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,
laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having; and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof; and, proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream:
All this the world well knows; yet none knows
well
To shun the heaven that Teads men to this
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak; yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she, belied with false compare.
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