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But sad mortality o'er-sways 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 wreckful siege of battering 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. |
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, |
As, to behold desert a beggar born, |
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, |
And purest faith unhappily forsworn, |
And guilded 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 miscall'd 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. |
Ah! wherefore with infection should he live, |
And with his presence grace impiety, |
That sin by him advantage should achieve |
And lace itself with his society? |
Why should false painting imitate his cheek |
And steal dead seeing of his living hue? |
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek |
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true? |
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, |
Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins? |
For she hath no excheckr now but his, |
And, proud of many, lives upon his gains. |
O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had |
In days long since, before these last so bad. |
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, |
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, |
Before the bastard signs of fair were born, |
Or durst inhabit on a living brow; |
Before the golden tresses of the dead, |
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away, |
To live a second life on second head; |
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay: |
In him those holy antique hours are seen, |
Without all ornament, itself and true, |
Making no summer of another's green, |
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; |
And him as for a map doth Nature store, |
To show false Art what beauty was of yore. |
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view |
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend; |
All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, |
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. |
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd; |
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own |
In other accents do this praise confound |
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. |
They look into the beauty of thy mind, |
And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds; |
Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind, |
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: |
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, |
The solve is this, that thou dost common grow. |
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, |
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair; |
The ornament of beauty is suspect, |
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air. |
So thou be good, slander doth but approve |
Thy worth the greater, being woo'd of time; |
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, |
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. |
Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days, |
Either not assail'd or victor being charged; |
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, |
To tie up envy evermore enlarged: |
If some suspect of ill mask'd not thy show, |
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. |
No longer mourn for me when I am dead |
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell |
Give warning to the world that I am fled |
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: |
Nay, if you read this line, remember not |
The hand that writ it; for I love you so |
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot |
If thinking on me then should make you woe. |
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse |
When I perhaps compounded am with clay, |
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse. |
But let your love even with my life decay, |
Lest the wise world should look into your moan |
And mock you with me after I am gone. |
O, lest the world should task you to recite |
What merit lived in me, that you should love |
After my death, dear love, forget me quite, |
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