The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
My sprite is thine, the better part of me.
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
The prey of worms, my body being dead;
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
Too base of thee to be rememb'red.
The worth of that, is that which it contains
And that is this, and this with thee remains.
That thou art blam'd, shall not be thy defect
For flander'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, flander doth not approve
Their worth the greater, being woord of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast past by the ambush of young days,
Either not affail'd, or victor, being charg'd
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarg'd;
If fome suspect of ill, mask not thy show,
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts should'st owe.
O how I faint, when I of you do write !
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name;
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-ty'd, speaking of your fame.
But fince your worth (wide as the ocean is)
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear;.
My faucy bark (inferior far to his)
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up a-float,
Whilst he upon your foundless deep doth ride;=
Or (being wreck'd) I am a worthless boat,
Ile of tall building, and of goodly pride.
Then if he thrive, and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my love was my decays:
Or shall I live your epitaph to make ?
Or you survive, when I in earth am rotten?
From hence your memory death cannot take,..
Althonin me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Tho' I (once gone) to all the world must die;
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in mens eyes shall lie:.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You ftill shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
Where breath most breathes, ev'n in the mouths-of
The Picture of True Lover
Let me not to the marriage of true minds.
Admit impediments; love is not love,
Whichialters 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, barky
Whose worth's unknown, altho' his height be taken
Love's not time's fool, tho' rosy lips and cheeks
With his bending fickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it down even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
I grant thou wert not marry'd to my muse,
And therefore may'st without attaint o'er-look
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blesfing every book:
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue;
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;
And therefore art enforc'd to feek a-new
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days::
And do so love, yet when they have devis'd..
What strained touches rhetorick can lend,
Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz'd,
In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend."
And their gross painting might be better us'd,
Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abus'd.
I never saw that you did painting need,
And therefore to you fair no painting set :
I found (or thought I found) you did exceed....
The barren tender of a poet's debt:
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself being extant, well might show,
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This filence of my fin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;...
For I impair not beauty, being mute,
When others wou'd give life, and bring a tomb.
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,,
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
Who is it, that says most, which can fay more
Than this rich praise, that you alone are you?
In whose confine immured is the store,
Which should example where your equal grew.
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,
That to his fubject lends not fome small glory:
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story.
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear;
And fuch a counterpart shall fame his writ,
Making him still admir'd every where.
You to your beauteous blessing add a curse,
Being fond of praise, which makes your praises
My tongue-ty'd muse in manners holds her still,
While comments of your praise, richly compil'd,
Referve their character with golden quilt,
And precious phrafe by all the mufes fill'd.
I think goodthoughts, whilft others write good words,
And, like unletter'd clerk, still cry amen
To every hymn that able spirit affords,
In polish'd form of well-refined pen.
Hearing you praised, I say 'tis so, 'tis true,
And to the most of praise add something more;
But that is in my thought, whose love to you
(Tho' words come hindmoft) holds his ranks before::
Then others, for the breath of words, refpect;
Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
Was it the proud full fail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of (all-too-precious) you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain rehearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?;
No, neither he nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He nor that affable familiar ghoft,
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors, of my filence cannot boast;
I was not fick of any fear from thence..
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter, that infeebled mine.
Farewel, thou art too dear for my possessing,
And, like enough, thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee, but by thy granting,
And for that riches, where is my deferving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking :
So thy great gift upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In fleep a king, but waking, no fuch matter.
Sympathizing Love.
As it fell upon a day,
In the merry month of May,
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