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XVI.

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time?
And fortify yourself in your decay

With means more bleffed than my barren rime?
Now ftand you on the top of happy hours,

And many maiden gardens, yet unset,

With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers
Much liker than your painted counterfeit :

So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself keeps yourself still;
muít live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

And you

XVII.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts ?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be fcorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And ftretched metre of an antique fong:

But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rime.

XVIII.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And fummer's lease hath all too fhort a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair fometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lofe poffeffion of that fair thou oweft,

Nor fhall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'ft;

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

XIX.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own fweet blood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading fweets;
But I forbid thee one moft heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to fucceeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.

XX.

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Haft thou, the master-mistress of my paffion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

Which steals men's eyes and women's fouls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, feli a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But fince she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.

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