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lyimo

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shakespear

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As to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.

Even so being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,

To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love t' anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.

But thence I learn and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you.

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What potions have I drunk of Siren tears

Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,

Still losing when I saw my self to win!

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,

Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted

In the distraction of this madding fever!

O benefit of ill, now I find true

That better is, by evil still made better.

And ruined love when it is built anew

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

So I return rebuked to my content,

And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

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That you were once unkind befriends me now,

And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,

Needs must I under my transgression bow,

Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken

As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time,

And I a tyrant have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.

O that our night of woe might have remembered

My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you, as you to me then tendered

The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee,

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

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'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,

When not to be, receives reproach of being,

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,

Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.

For why should others' false adulterate eyes

Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses, reckon up their own,

I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;

By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown

Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad and in their badness reign.

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Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

Full charactered with lasting memory,

Which shall above that idle rank remain

Beyond all date even to eternity.

Or at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist,

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part

Of thee, thy record never can be missed:

That poor retention could not so much hold,

Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,

Therefore to give them from me was I bold,

To trust those tables that receive thee more:

To keep an adjunct to remember thee

Were to import forgetfulness in me.

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No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,

Thy pyramids built up with newer might

To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,

They are but dressings Of a former sight:

Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,

What thou dost foist upon us that is old,

And rather make them born to our desire,

Than think that we before have heard them told:

Thy registers and thee I both defy,

Not wond'ring at the present, nor the past,

For thy records, and what we see doth lie,

Made more or less by thy continual haste:

This I do vow and this shall ever be,

I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.

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