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LET those who are in favour with their stars,
Of public honour, and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlooked-for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favorites their fair leaves spread,
But as the marigold at the sun's eye;
And in themselves their pride was buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famousèd for fight,
After a thousand victories once foiled,
Is from the book of honour razèd quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled.
Then happy I, that love and am beloved,
Where I may not remove, nor be removed.

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 durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second 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 summer 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.

WHEN I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state 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 sad mortality o'er-sways 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 siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditatlon!-where, alack!
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest 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.

WEARY with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eye-lids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west,

Which by-and-bye black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,

That in the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed wherever it must expire,

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

O, LEST the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie;
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I,
Than niggard truth would willingly impart :
O! lest your true love may seem false in this,
That you, for love, speak well of me, untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

THAT thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time?
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstainèd prime.
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,
Either not assailed, or victor, being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged.

If some suspect of ill, masked not thy show,

Then thou alone, kingdoms of hearts should'st owe.

In the old age, black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now, is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy hour,
But is profaned, if not, lives in disgrace.
Therefore, my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited; and they mourners seem
At such, who not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem:

Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says, beauty should look so.

How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks, that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, that should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

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