CXVIII.

Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,

We ficken to fhun fickness when we purge;

Even fo, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, To bitter fauces did I frame my feeding;

And fick of welfare found a kind of meetness

To be diseased, ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, to anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults affured, And brought to medicine a healthful state, Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured: But thence I learn, and find the leffon true, Drugs poison him that fo fell fick of you.

CXIX.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
Diftill'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears,
Still lofing when I saw myself to win!

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself 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 ruin'd 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.

CXX.

That you were once unkind befriends me now,

And for that forrow which I then did feel
Needs muft I under my tranfgreffion bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've paff'd a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I fuffer'd in your crime.
O, that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true forrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble falve which wounded bofoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

CXXI.

'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 falutation 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.

CXXII.

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd 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 miss'd.
That poor retention could not fo 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.