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Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell;

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those :
Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play.
The forward violet thus did I chide ;

Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If not from my love's breath? The purple pride,
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd:
The lily I condemned4 for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair ;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
And to his robb'ry has annex'd thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth,
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.

AN INVOCATION TO HIS MUSE.

Where art thou, muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Dark'ning thy power to lend base subjects light ?
Return, forgetful muse, and strait redeem,
In gentle numbers, time so idly spent ;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And give thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty muse, my love's sweet face survey,
If time hath any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,

And make time's spoils despised every where.

Give my love fame, faster than time wastes life,
So thou prevent'st his scythe, and crooked knife.
O truant muse! what shall be thy amends,
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy'd?

[4] For presuming to emulate the whiteness of thy hand.

MALONE.

But truth and beauty on my love depends:
So dost thou too, and therein dignify'd.
Make answer, muse, wilt thou not haply say,
Truth needs no colour with his colour fix'd ;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay ;
But best is best, if never intermix'd ?
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb ?
Excuse no silence so, for 't lies in thee,

To make her much outlive a golden tomb,
And to be prais'd of ages yet to be.

Then do thy office, muse, I teach thee how
To make her seem long hence, as she shows now.

CONSTANT AFFECTION.

To me, fair love, you never can be old ;
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters' cold
Have from the forest shook three summers' pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,
In process of the seasons, have I seen;

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you, fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his figure, and no place perceiv'd;
So your sweet hue, which, methinks, still does stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd.

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead.

Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idle show;
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so :
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confin'd,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words ;
And in this change is my invention spent ;

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords,
Fair, kind, and true, have often liv'd alone :
Which three, till now, have never sat in one.

When in the chronicle of wasted time,
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,

In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antick pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not still enough your worth to sing :
For we, who now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

AMAZEMENT.

My love is strengthen'd, tho' more weak in seeming;
I love not less, tho' less the show appear:

That love is merchandiz'd, whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it in my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days.
Not that the summer is less pleasant now,
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night;
But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grow common lose their dear delight.
Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song.

Alack! what poverty my muse brings forth !
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare, is of more worth,
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
O blame me not, if I no more can write !
Look in your glass, and there appears a face,
That overthrows my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend,
Than of your graces, and your gifts to tell ;

And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,
Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

A LOVER'S EXCUSE FOR HIS LONG ABSENCE.

O! never say that I was false of heart,
Tho' absence seem'a my flame to qualify;
As easy might I from myself depart,

As from my soul which in my breasts doth lie.
That is my home of love; if I have rang'd,
Like him that travels, I return again

Just to the time, not with the time exchang'd;
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, tho' in my nature reign'd
All frailties, that besiege all kind of blood,
That it could so prepost'rously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to thy view ;6

Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear;
Made old offences of affections new.

Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely : but by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worst assays prov'd thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end,
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confin'd.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most loving breast.

A COMPLAINT.

O for my sake do you with fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,

Than public means which publick manners breeds."
Thence comes it, that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink

[5] Read thy breast, &c.

[6] Appeared like a Fool.

ANON.
MALONE.

[7] The author seems here to lament his being reduced to the necessity of appearing on the stage, or writing for the theatre. MALONE.

Potions of eysel 'gainst my strong infection; 8
No bitterness, that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
E'en that your pity is enough to cure me.
Your love and pity doth th' impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill.
So you o'er-skreen my bad, my good allow ?
You are my all; the world and I must strive,
To know my shame and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysme I throw all care
Of other voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are:
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides me thinks I'm dead.

SELF-FLATTERY OF HER BEAUTY.

Since I left you mine eye is in my mind,
And that which governs me to go about,
Doth part his function, and is partly blind ;
Seems seeing, but effectually is out,

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of birds, of flowers, or shape, which it doth lack;
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what he doth catch;

For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,

To crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature ;
Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.
Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you,
Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchymy?
To make of monsters, and things indigest,
Such cherubims as your sweet self resemble;
Creating every bad a perfect best,
As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
O'tis the first, 'tis flatt'ry in my seeing,

[8] Eysel is vinegar. STEEVENS.-Vinegar is esteemed efficacious in

preventing the communication of the plague and other distempers.

MAL

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