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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 ftill 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 foon 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 loft, 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 lafting 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 adjun& to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

CXXIII.

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 fight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou doft foist upon us that is old;

And rather make them born to our defire

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.

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