DEDICATION OF EARLY SONNETS.

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of children's wee fingers, for twining winningly about the lusty energies of youth, and realizing the antique image of Love riding on a lion; the laughing mite triumphantly leading captive the fettered might, having taken him 'prisoner, in a red rose chain!' Seeing his young friend surrounded with temptations, his personal beauty of mien and manner being so prominent a mark for the darts of the enemy, he would fain have him safely shielded by the sacred shelter of marriage. Accordingly he assails him with suggestion and argument in many forms of natural appeal; and whilst harping much on the main object for which marriage was designed, the harmony of the life truly wedded rises like a strain of exquisite music, as it were, wooing the youth from within the doors of the marriage sanctuary.

These sonnets the poet sends to his friend in written embassage' of love, hoping that he may yet have something worthy of print, so that he can dare to boast publicly of that affection for his friend, which he only ventures for the present to show privately.

DEDICATORY.

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit:
Duty so great which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it:
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect :

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;

Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.

(26.)

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby Beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl! mak'st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise:
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou could'st answer, "this fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,"
Proving his beauty by succession thine!

This were to be new-made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world-unbless some mother:
For where is she so fair, whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity?

Thou art thy Mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:

(1.)

(2.)

YOUNG MEN SHOULD MARRY.

So thou, through windows of thine age, shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time:

But if thou live-remembered not to be---
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

Unthrifty loveliness! why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And, being frank, she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard! why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer! why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For, having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceave:
Then how, when Nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives thy executor to be.

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same,
And that unfair, which fairly doth excell:
For never-resting Time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed, and bareness everywhere:
Then, were not Summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was !

(3.)

(4.)

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But flowers distilled, tho' they with winter meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

(5.)

Then let not Winter's rugged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:

Make sweet some phial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-killed:

That use is not forbidden luxury,

Which happies those that pay the willing loan:
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or, ten times happier! be it ten for one:
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:

Then what could Death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair.

To be Death's conquest, and make worms thine heir.

Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under-eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty:
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong Youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty, still
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble Age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes-'fore duteous-now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:

So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son.

Music to hear! why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:

Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tunéd sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling Sire, and Child, and happy Mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

(6.)

(7.)

Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee-" Thou single wilt prove none.”

(8.)

WORDS OF WARNING.

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,

That thou consum'st thyself in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow! and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep,
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but its place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused, the user so destroys it:

No love towards others in that bosom sits
That on himself such murderous shame commits.

For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident:

(9.)

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lov'st is most evident;
For thou art so possessed with murderous hate
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire;
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

Which to repair should be thy chief desire:

O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall Hate be freer lodged than gentle Love?

Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself, at least, kind-hearted prove;
Make thee another self, for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest

(10.)

Thou may'st call thine, when thou from youth convertest:
Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase;

Without this, folly, age, and cold decay:

If all were minded so, the times should cease,

And threescore years would make the world away:
Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:

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