Oh! what-a mansion have those vices got, -
Which for their habitation chuse out thee:
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turn to fair that eyes can fee!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege,
The hardest knife, ill us'd, doth lose his edge.
Complaint for his Lover's Absence.
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have. I felt, what dark days seen ?"
What old December's barrenness every where?
And yet this time remov'd was summer's time;
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lord's decease.
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me,
But hope of orphans and un-father'd fruit;
For fummer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or if they fing, 'tis with so dull a chear,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud py'd April (drest in all his trim)
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Cou'd make me any summer's story tell;
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermillion in the rose ;
They were but fsweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those..
Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
The forward violet thus did I chide;
Sweet thief! whence didst thou steal thy sweet that
If not from my love's breath? the purple pride,
Which on thy foft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love's veins thou hast too grofly dy'd:
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
The rofes fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
And to his robb'ry had annex'd thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth,
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could fee,
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.
An Invocation to his Muse.
Where art thou muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might ?
Spend'it thou thy fury on fome worthless fong,
Dark'ning thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful muse, and strait redeem,
In gentle numbers, time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And give thy pen both skill and argument.
Rife, resty muse, my love's sweet face survey,...
If time hath any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a fatire to decay,
And make time's spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame, faster than time wastes life,
So thou prevent'st his scithe, and crooked knife.
Oh! truant muse! whall shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?
But truth and beauty on my love depends:
So dost thou too, and therein dignify'd.
Make answer, muse, wilt thou not haply say,
Truth needs no colour with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd.
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse no filence so, for't lies in thee
To make her much out-live a gilded tomb,
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be..
Then do thy office, muse, I teach thee how
To make her feem long hence, as she shows now.
To me, fair love, you never can be old;
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forest shook three fummers pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn'd,
In process of the seasons, have I seen;
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you, fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no place perceiv'd;
So your sweet hue, which, methinks, still does stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd.
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,
Ere you was born, was beauty's summer dead.
Let not my love be call'd Idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idle show;
Since all alike my fongs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so:
Kind is my love to day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confin'd,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument;
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent;
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often liv'd alone :
Which three, till now, have never fate in one.
When in the chronicle of wasted time,
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old chime,
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then in the blazon of tweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I.see their antic pen would have express'd
Even fuch a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all our prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not still enough their worth to sing:
For we who now behold these present days,
Have eyes: to wonder, but lack tongues to praife.
My love is strength'ned, tho' more weak in seem
I love not less, tho' less the show appear:
That love is merchandiz'd, whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it in my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days.
Not that the summer is less pleasant now,
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the
But that wild musick burdens every bough,
And sweets grown common, lose their dear delight.
Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,
Becaufe I would not dull you with my fong.
Alack! what poverty my muse brings forth!
That having fuch a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare, is of more worth,
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
Oh! blame me not, if I can no more write !
Look in your glass, and their appears a face,
That overgoes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing my disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To marr the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend,
Than of your graces, and your gifts to tell:;
And more, much more, than in my verse can fit,
Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.
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