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 misf'd.
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 truft those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
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 dreffings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou doft foift 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 wondering 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.
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As fubject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers
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 number'd hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not feen dwellers on form and favour
Lofe all, and more, by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet foregoing fimple favour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obfequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art
But mutual render, only me for thee.
Hence, thou fuborn'd informer! a true foul
When most impeach'd stands leaft in thy control.
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Doft hold Time's fickie glass, his fickle, hour;
Who haft by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'ft;
If Nature, fovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goeft onwards, ftill 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 delay'd, anfwer'd muft be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
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