Give salutation to my sportive blood?
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;68
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.
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 subsist;
Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
poor retention could not so much hold,69
68 bevel] e. crooked. "In masonry and joinery [bevel is] a kind of square, one leg of which is frequently crooked, according to the sweep of an arch or vault." BUILDER'S DICT.
69 That poor retention could not so much hold] retention is the table-book given to him by his friend, incapable of retaining, or rather of containing, so much as the tablet of the brain." MALONE.
Nor need I tallies, thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee,
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
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 dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire,
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past;
For thy records and what we see do lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste :
This I do vow, and this shall ever be,
I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee:
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time's love, or to time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers
gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have liv'd for crime.
Were it aught to me I bore the canopy,
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 simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No;-let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds,70 knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soul,
When most impeached, stands least in thy
70 seconds] On this word, which is probably a misprint, Steevens has a note too preposterously absurd to be transferred to the present pages.
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st,
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st!
If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure:
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
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 bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited; and they mourners seem
71 and they mourners seem, &c.] "They seem to mourn that those who are not born fair, are yet possessed of an artificial beauty, by which they pass for what they are not, and thus dishonor nature by their imperfect imitation and false pretensions." MALONE.
At such, who not born fair, no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem;
Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
every tongue says, beauty should look so
How oft, when thou, my musick, musick play'st,
Upon that blessed 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,72 that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, [reap,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest
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 bless'd than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner, but despised straight,
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
72 jacks Of the virginal,—a musical instrument of the spinnet kind.
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