O truant Mufe, what fhall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So doft thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer, Mufe: wilt thou not haply say,
'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But beft is beft, if never intermix'd'?
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excute not filence fo; for 't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Mufe; I teach thee how
To make him feem long hence as he shows now.
My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seem-
I love not lefs, though less the show appear: [ing;
That love is merchandized 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 with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth fing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the fummer is lefs pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I fometime 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 over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
Were it not finful 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 fit, Your own glass shows you when you look in it.
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such feems your beauty ftill. Three winters cold
Have from the forefts fhook three fummers' pride,
Three beauteous fprings 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 faw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your fweet hue, which methinks ftill doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred :
Ere you were born was beauty's fummer dead.
Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my fongs and praises be
To one, of one, ftill fuch, and ever fo.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still conftant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse, to conftancy confined,
One thing expreffing, leaves out difference.
'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument,
'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 lived alone, Which three till now never kept seat in one.
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