TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF THESE INSUING SONNETS MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESSE AND THAT ETERNITIE PROMISED BY OUR EVER-LIVING POET WISHETH THE WELL-WISHING ADVENTURER IN SETTING FORTH T. T. TO HIS FRIEND, THAT HE SHOULD MARRY ROM fairest creatures we desire increase, FROM 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 Within thine own blood buriest thy content Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. WHE A REVIVAL 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 tatter'd weed, of small worth held : Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, If thou couldst 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, Lo LIFE CONTINUED OOK in thy glass, and tell the face thou Now is the time that face should form another; For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee But if thou live, remember'd not to be, CHILDLESSNESS NTHRIFTY loveliness, why dost thou spend Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, 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 deceive. Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee, Which, used, lives th' executor to be. |