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If my dear love were but the child of state, |
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered, |
As subject to time's love or to time's hate, |
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. |
No it was builded far from accident, |
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls |
Under the blow of thralled discontent, |
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls: |
It fears not policy that heretic, |
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours, |
But all alone stands hugely politic, |
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. |
To this I witness call the fools of time, |
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. |
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Were't aught to me I bore the canopy, |
With my extern the outward honouring, |
Or laid great bases for eternity, |
Which proves more short than waste or ruining? |
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour |
Lose all, and more by paying too much rent |
For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour, |
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent? |
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, |
And take thou my oblation, poor but free, |
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art, |
But mutual render, only me for thee. |
Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul |
When most impeached, stands least in thy control. |
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O thou my lovely boy who in thy power, |
Dost hold Time's fickle glass his fickle hour: |
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st, |
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st. |
If Nature (sovereign 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 (though delayed) answered must be, |
And her quietus is to render thee. |
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In the old age black was not counted fair, |
Or if it were it bore not beauty's name: |
But now is black beauty's successive heir, |
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame, |
For since each hand hath put on nature's power, |
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face, |
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower, |
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. |
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black, |
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem, |
At such who not born fair no beauty lack, |
Slandering creation with a false esteem, |
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe, |
That every tongue says beauty should look so. |
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How oft when thou, my music, music play'st, |
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds |
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st |
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, |
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap, |
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, |
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap, |
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand. |
To be so tickled they would change their state |
And situation with those dancing chips, |
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, |
Making dead wood more blest than living lips, |
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, |
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. |
129 |
Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame |
Is lust in action, and till action, lust |
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody full of blame, |
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, |
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, |
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had |
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait, |
On purpose laid to make the taker mad. |
Mad in pursuit and in possession so, |
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme, |
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe, |
Before a joy proposed behind a dream. |
All this the world well knows yet none knows well, |
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. |
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