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CXXI.

'Tis better to be vile than vile efteemed,
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?

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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 lasting 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 fubfift;

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss’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 thofe tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct 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 foift 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 prefent nor the past,

For thy records and what we see doth lie,

Made more or lefs by thy continual haste.

This I do vow,

and this fhall ever be,

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

CXXIV.

If

my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As fubject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers
No, it was builded far from accident;

It fuffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

[gather'd.

Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short number'd hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

[showers.

That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

CXXV.

Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet foregoing fimple favour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?

No, let me be obfequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art
But mutual render, only me for thee.

Hence, thou fuborn'd informer! a true foul

When most impeach'd stands leaft in thy control.

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