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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 fearful meditation, 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 maiden virtue rudely 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 attending 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 painting imitate his cheek, |
And steal dead seeming of his living hue? |
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek, |
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