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Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight. |
I may not evermore acknowledge thee, |
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, |
Nor thou with public kindness honour me, |
Unless thou take that honour from thy name: |
But do not so; I love thee in such sort |
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. |
As a decrepit father takes delight |
To see his active child do deeds of youth, |
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, |
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. |
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, |
Or any of these all, or all, or more, |
Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit, |
I make my love engrafted to this store: |
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, |
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give |
That I in thy abundance am sufficed |
And by a part of all thy glory live. |
Look, what is best, that best I wish in thee: |
This wish I have; then ten times happy me! |
How can my Muse want subject to invent, |
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse |
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent |
For every vulgar paper to rehearse? |
O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me |
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; |
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, |
When thou thyself dost give invention light? |
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth |
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate; |
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth |
Eternal numbers to outlive long date. |
If my slight Muse do please these curious days, |
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. |
O, how thy worth with manners may I sing, |
When thou art all the better part of me? |
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? |
And what is 't but mine own when I praise thee? |
Even for this let us divided live, |
And our dear love lose name of single one, |
That by this separation I may give |
That due to thee which thou deservest alone. |
O absence, what a torment wouldst thou prove, |
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave |
To entertain the time with thoughts of love, |
Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, |
And that thou teachest how to make one twain, |
By praising him here who doth hence remain! |
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all; |
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? |
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; |
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more. |
Then if for my love thou my love receivest, |
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest; |
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest |
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest. |
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, |
Although thou steal thee all my poverty; |
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief |
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury. |
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, |
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes. |
Those petty wrongs that liberty commits, |
When I am sometime absent from thy heart, |
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, |
For still temptation follows where thou art. |
Gentle thou art and therefore to be won, |
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed; |
And when a woman woos, what woman's son |
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed? |
Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear, |
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, |
Who lead thee in their riot even there |
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth, |
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, |
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me. |
That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, |
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly; |
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, |
A loss in love that touches me more nearly. |
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye: |
Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her; |
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, |
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. |
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, |
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; |
Both find each other, and I lose both twain, |
And both for my sake lay on me this cross: |
But here's the joy; my friend and I are one; |
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone. |
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, |
For all the day they view things unrespected; |
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, |
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed. |
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, |
How would thy shadow's form form happy show |
To the clear day with thy much clearer light, |
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! |
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made |
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