When in the chronicle of wafted time
I fee descriptions of the faireft wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime
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 fee their antique pen would have expreff'd
Even fuch a beauty as you mafter 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 skill enough your worth to fing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic foul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the fad augurs mock their own prefage;
Incertainties now crown themselves affured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime,
While he infults o'er dull and fpeechless tribes:
And thou in this fhalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crefts and tombs of brass are spent.
What's in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, fweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day fay o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to neceffary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the firft conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.
O, never say that I was false of heart, Though abfence feem'd my flame to qualify. As eafy might I from myself depart
As from my foul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my ftain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy fum 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 the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, fold cheap what is most
Made old offences of affections new;
Moft true it is that I have look'd on truth
Afkance and ftrangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have 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 confined.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
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