As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's
breath their masked buds discloses:
But for their
virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:
And so of you,
beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.
55
Not
marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When
wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn:
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the
ending doom.
So till the judgment that your self arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
56
Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,
To-morrow sharpened in his former might.
So love be thou, although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love, with a
perpetual dulness:
Let this sad interim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two
contracted new,
Come daily to the banks, that when they see:
Return of love, more blest may be the view.
Or call it winter, which being full of care,
Makes summer's
welcome,
thrice more wished, more rare.
57
Being your slave what should I do but tend,
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,
Nor think the
bitterness of
absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my
jealous thought,
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.
58
That god
forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th'
account of hours to crave,
Being your
vassal bound to stay your leisure.
O let me suffer (being at your beck)
Th' imprisoned
absence of your liberty,
And
patience tame to sufferance bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your
charter is so strong,
That you your self may privilage your time
To what you will, to you it doth belong,
Your self to
pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though
waiting so be hell,
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.
59
If there be nothing new, but that which is,
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which labouring for
invention bear amis
The second burthen of a former child!
O that record could with a
backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some
antique book,
Since mind at first in
character was done.
That I might see what the old world could say,
To this
composed wonder of your frame,
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O sure I am the wits of former days,
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
60
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes
hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to
maturity,
wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the
flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his
scythe to mow.
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth,
despite his cruel hand.
61
Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenure of thy
jealousy?
O no, thy love though much, is not so great,
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the
watchman ever for thy sake.
For thee watch I,
whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.
62
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded
inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so
gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such
account,
And for my self mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me my self indeed
beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite
contrary I read:
Self, so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
63
Against my love shall be as I am now
With Time's
injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
With lines and wrinkles, when his
youthful morn
Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,
And all those beauties
whereof now he's king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring:
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.
64
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,
When
sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,
And brass
eternal slave to
mortal rage.
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the
watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.
When I have seen such
interchange of State,
Or state it self confounded, to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.
65
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor
boundless sea,
But sad
mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer's honey
breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of batt'ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?
O
fearfulmeditation, where alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can
forbid?
O none, unless this
miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
66
Tired with all these for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a
beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And
maidenvirtuerudely strumpeted,
And right
perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And
captive good att
ending captain ill.
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that to die, I leave my love alone.
67
Ah
wherefore with
infection should he live,
And with his presence grace impiety,
That sin by him
advantage should achieve,
And lace it self with his society?
Why should false
paintingimitate his cheek,
And steal dead
seeming of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty
indirectly seek,
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
Why should he live, now nature
bankrupt is,
Beggared of blood to blush through
lively veins,
For she hath no
exchequer now but his,