When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I fee down-razed,
And brafs eternal flave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm foil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with lofs and loss with store;
When I have seen fuch interchange of state,
Or ftate itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But fad mortality o'erfways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful fiege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation ! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's cheft lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Tired with all these, for reftful death I cry
As, to behold defert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And pureft faith unhappily forfworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely ftrumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And ftrength by limping fway difabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill :
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
Ah, wherefore with infection should he live
And with his presence grace impiety,
That fin by him advantage should achieve
And lace itself with his society?
Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
And steal dead feeing of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly feek
Roses of shadow, fince his rose is true?
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins ? For she hath no exchequer now but his,
And, proud of many, lives upon his gains.
O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had
In days long fince, before these last so bad.
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durft inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden treffes of the dead,
The right of fepulchres, were fhorn away,
To live a fecond life on fecond head;
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no fummer of another's green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.
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