LXXIX.

Whilft I alone did call upon thy aid,
My verfe alone had all thy gentle grace;
But now my gracious numbers are decay'd,
And my fick Mufe doth give another place.
I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
Deferves the travail of a worthier pen;
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
And found it in thy cheek; he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

Then thank him not for that which he doth fay,
Since what he owes thee thou thyself doft pay.

LXXX.

O, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame! But fince your worth, wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My faucy bark, inferior far to his,

On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shalloweft help will hold me up afloat,
Whilft he upon your foundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:

Then if he thrive and I be caft away,

The worst was this; my love was my decay.

LXXXI.

Or

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
you furvive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world muft die :
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live-fuch virtue hath my pen —
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths

of men.

LXXXII.

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair fubject, blessing every book.
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
Finding thy worth a limit paft my praise;
And therefore art enforced to feek anew
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
And do so, love; yet when they have devised
What ftrained touches rhetoric can lend,
Thou truly fair wert truly fympathifed
In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
And their grofs painting might be better used
Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

LXXXIII.

I never faw that you did painting need,
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt:

And therefore have I slept in your report,

That you yourself, being extant, well might show How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

This filence for my

fin you

did impute,

Which shall be moft my glory, being dumb;

For I impair not beauty being mute,

When others would give life and bring a tomb. There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise.