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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 miss'd. |
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 import forgetfulness in me. |
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 wondering 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. |
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 gather'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 't aught to me I bore the canopy, |
With my extern the outward honouring, |
Or laid great bases for eternity, |
Which prove 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 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 bower, |
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. |
Therefore my mistress' brows 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. |
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. |
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 |
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