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CLI.

Love is too young to know what confcience is;
Yet who knows not confcience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Left guilty of my faults thy fweet felf prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray

My nobler part to my grofs body's treason;
My foul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,
But rifing at thy name doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,
He is contented thy poor drudge to be,

To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy fide.

No want of conscience hold it that I call

Her 'love' for whofe dear love I rife and fall.

CLII.

In loving thee thou know'ft I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forfworn, to me love fwearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjured moft;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is loft:

For I have fworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them fwear against the thing they fee;
For I have fworn thee fair; more perjured I,
To fwear against the truth fo foul a lie!

CLIII.

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep :
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow'd from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat, ftill to endure,

And grew a feething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a fovereign cure.
But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my
breaft;
I, fick withal, the help of bath defired,
And thither hied, a fad diftemper'd gueft,

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire, my mistress' eyes.

CLIV.

The little Love-god lying once asleep

Laid by his fide his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And fo the general of hot defire

Was fleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.

This brand fhe quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy

For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,

Came there for cure, and this by that I

prove, Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

NOTES.

I. The theme of this and other early fonnets is fimilarly treated in Venus & Adonis, ll. 162-174:-

Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
Dainties to tafle, fresh beauty for the use,

Herbs for their fmell, and fappy plants to bear:
Things growing to themselves are growth's abufe:
Seeds Spring from feeds and beauty breedeth beauty;
Thou waft begot; to get it is thy duty.

Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed,
Unless the earth with thy increase be fed ?
By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead:
And fo, in fpite of death, thou doft survive,
In that thy likeness fill is left alive.

6. Self-fubflantial fuel, fuel of the substance of

the flame itself.

12. Makeft wafle in niggarding. Compare Romeo & Juliet, A& 1. fc. 1, 1. 223

BEN. Then he hath fworn that she will fill live chafte ? ROM. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste.

13, 14. Pity the world, or else be a glutton devouring the world's due, by means of the grave

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