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
importforgetfulness 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 thralled 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
fickle 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.
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,
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.
128
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,
Do I envy those jacks that
nimble leap,
To kiss the tender
inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips which should that
harvest reap,
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 blest than living lips,
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
129
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous,
bloody full of blame,
Savage,
extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose 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 leads men to this hell.
130
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 damasked, 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 grant I never saw a
goddess go,
My
mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
131
Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,
As those whose beauties
proudly make them cruel;
For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,
Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;
To say they err, I dare not be so bold,
Although I swear it to my self alone.
And to be sure that is not false I swear,
A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,
One on another's neck do
witness bear
Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place.
In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
And
thence this
slander as I think proceeds.
132
Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart
torment me with disdain,
Have put on black, and
loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even
Doth half that glory to the sober west
As those two
mourning eyes become thy face:
O let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since
mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
And all they foul that thy
complexion lack.
133
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;
Is't not enough to
torture me alone,
But slave to
slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,
Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,
A
tormentthrice three-fold thus to be crossed:
Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail,
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,
Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.
And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine and all that is in me.
134
So now I have confessed that he is thine,
And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,
My self I'll
forfeit, so that other mine,
Thou wilt
restore to be my comfort still:
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous, and he is kind,
He
learned but surety-like to write for me,
Under that bond that him as fist doth bind.
The
statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,
And sue a friend, came
debtor for my sake,
So him I lose through my
unkind abuse.