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Drink up the monarch's plague this flattery? |
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true, |
And that your love taught it this alchemy? |
To make of monsters, and things indigest, |
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, |
Creating every bad a perfect best |
As fast as objects to his beams assemble: |
O 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing, |
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up, |
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing, |
And to his palate doth prepare the cup. |
If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin, |
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. |
115 |
Those lines that I before have writ do lie, |
Even those that said I could not love you dearer, |
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why, |
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer, |
But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents |
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, |
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, |
Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things: |
Alas why fearing of time's tyranny, |
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,' |
When I was certain o'er incertainty, |
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? |
Love is a babe, then might I not say so |
To give full growth to that which still doth grow. |
116 |
Let me not to the marriage of true minds |
Admit impediments, love is not love |
Which alters when it alteration finds, |
Or bends with the remover to remove. |
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark |
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; |
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, |
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. |
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks |
Within his bending sickle's compass come, |
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, |
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: |
If this be error and upon me proved, |
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. |
117 |
Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all, |
Wherein I should your great deserts repay, |
Forgot upon your dearest love to call, |
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day, |
That I have frequent been with unknown minds, |
And given to time your own dear-purchased right, |
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds |
Which should transport me farthest from your sight. |
Book both my wilfulness and errors down, |
And on just proof surmise, accumulate, |
Bring me within the level of your frown, |
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate: |
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove |
The constancy and virtue of your love. |
118 |
Like as to make our appetite more keen |
With eager compounds we our palate urge, |
As to prevent our maladies unseen, |
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge. |
Even so being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, |
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; |
And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness, |
To be diseased ere that there was true needing. |
Thus policy in love t' anticipate |
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured, |
And brought to medicine a healthful state |
Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured. |
But thence I learn and find the lesson true, |
Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you. |
119 |
What potions have I drunk of Siren tears |
Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within, |
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, |
Still losing when I saw my self to win! |
What wretched errors hath my heart committed, |
Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never! |
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted |
In the distraction of this madding fever! |
O benefit of ill, now I find true |
That better is, by evil still made better. |
And ruined love when it is built anew |
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. |
So I return rebuked to my content, |
And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent. |
120 |
That you were once unkind befriends me now, |
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, |
Needs must I under my transgression bow, |
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel. |
For if you were by my unkindness shaken |
As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time, |
And I a tyrant have no leisure taken |
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime. |
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 |
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