LXII.

Sin of felf-love poffeffeth all mine eye
And all my foul and all my every part;
And for this fin there is no remedy,

It is fo grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face fo gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths furmount.

But when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity, Mine own felf-love quite contrary I read ; Self fo felf-loving were iniquity.

"Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Against

my

LXIII.

love fhall be, as I am now,

With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell'd on to age's fteepy night;

And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For fuch a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My fweet love's beauty, though my lover's life :
His beauty fhall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.

E

LXIV.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I fee,down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm foil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or ftate itself confounded to decay ;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lofe.

LXV.

Since brafs, nor ftone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But fad mortality o'erfways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful fiege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation ! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

LXVI.

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry
As, to behold defert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And pureft faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely ftrumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping fway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And fimple truth mifcalled fimplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill :
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.