LXXXI.

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou may'st true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee for1 my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief

To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.

LXXXII.

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevail'd?
Ah me! but yet thou might'st my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there

Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth;
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.

1 For:' because.

4*

LXXXIII.

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,

A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye :—

Thou dost love her, because thou knew'st I love her; And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,

And, losing her, my friend hath found that loss; Both find each other, and I lose both twain,

And both for my sake lay on me this cross: But here's the joy; my friend and I are one; Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone.

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,

And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed out-braves his dignity :

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,

Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,

Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!

Oh, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,

Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise ;

Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
Oh, what a mansion have those vices got,
Which for their habitation chose out thee!
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,

And all things turn to fair, that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

LXXXVI.

Some say, thy fault is youth, some wantonness ;
Some say, thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less :
Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a throned queen

The basest jewel will be well esteem'd;

So are those errors that in thee are seen

To truths translated, and for true things deem'd.
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,

If like a lamb he could his looks translate !

How many gazers might'st thou lead away,

If thou would'st use the strength of all thy state!

But do not so; I love thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

83

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,

And all my soul, and all my every part; And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart,
Methinks no face so gracious1 is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read,

Self so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

LXXXVIII.

Against my love shall be, as I am now,

With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn; When hours have drain'd his blood, and fill'd his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn

Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night;

And all those beauties, whereof now he's king,

Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his spring;

For such a time do I now fortify

Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory

My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them, still green.

1 'Gracious:' beautiful.

LXXXIX.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,
And brass eternal, slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

That time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

XC.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
Oh, 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? Oh 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?

Oh none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.