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PERSONAL SONNETS.

1594.

SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, WHEN HE HAS KNOWN HIM SOME THREE YEARS.

THESE two sonnets will come in here appropriately enough, because there is a date in the one which is written when the Poet has known his friend three years, and because the fragment is on the same subject. As the second was unfinished, we may suppose it was never sent, but that it remained among the loose papers given by the Poet to Herbert, who put it in at the end of the Southampton sonnets, and thus divided them from the latter series. Time and subject determine its present place.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still: three winters' cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green :
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived;

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born was Beauty's summer dead.

(104.)

O thou, my lovely Boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle-hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein showest
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self growest!
If Nature, sov'reign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May Time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill:
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure:
Her audit, tho' delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee!

(126.)

A PERSONAL SONNET.

SHAKSPEARE PROPOSES TO WRITE OF THE EARL IN HIS ABSENCE ABROAD.

In this sonnet an absence is contemplated. Not an absence of the Poet, but of the Earl. And the Poet proposed to take advantage of this separation to sing of his friend, and thus try to do his subject justice. To praise his friend whilst they are together is somewhat absurd, because they are so much one that it is like praising himself. Even for this, for his modesty's sake, he says, let us be divided by distance, if by nothing else, so that he can, as it were, hold his friend, the better part of himself, at arm's length, to look on his virtues and praise his worth, and give that due to him which is the friend's alone. This sonnet establishes the fact that the Earl is about to go abroad or to leave home, and that Shakspeare intends to sing of him, to write about him, in his absence. He stops at home here'-to sing of him who doth hence remain.' It is a somewhat fantastic excuse for a parting, and very different to the real parting that has to come.

SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, WHO IS LEAVING ENGLAND.

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 deserv'st alone!
Oh, Absence,' what a torment would'st thou prove,
Were it not thy sour image 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.

(39.)

1 The Earl's absence; Shakspeare would not speak thus of his own, and of its proving a torment to his friend! This absence of the Earl also teaches the Poet how to write of his friend when he is away; gives him his cue for the following sonnets.

DRAMATIC SONNETS.

1595.

THE EARL TO MISTRESS VERNON ON AND IN HIS ABSENCE ABROAD.

IT was in May 1595 that, according to Mr. Standen, the Earl of Southampton had got into disgrace at Court, and that Elizabeth Vernon and her ill good man waited upon her irate Majesty to know her resolution in the matter, and her Majesty sent out word to say firmly that she was sufficiently resolved. In September of the same year, White tells us that the Earl of Southampton has been courting the fair Mistress Vernon with too much familiarity; the meaning of which is too plain for comment. The Queen's resolve was, without doubt, that Southampton should leave the Court in consequence. The following sonnets tell the story of his parting, his absence, and the cause of both. The cause is something he has done, for which he holds himself solely guilty. He admits that they must be twain, although they are one in love. The parting is imposed on them by a separating spite. This parting will not change their feeling toward each other, though it will steal sweet hours from their delight by the compulsory absence. He may not call her his any more, lest the guilt which he bewails should shame her, nor must she notice him for others to see, else it will be to her own

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