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CIII.

Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument, all bare, is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside !
O, blame me not, if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
Were it not finful then, ftriving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;

And more, much more, than in my verfe can fit, Your own glass shows you when you look in it.

:

CIV.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when firft your eye I eyed,
Such feems your beauty ftill. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three fummers' pride,
Three beauteous fprings to yellow autumn turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I faw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your fweet hue, which methinks ftill doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred :

Ere you were born was beauty's fummer dead.

CV.

Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still fuch, and ever fo.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still conftant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verfe, to conftancy confined,
One thing expreffing, leaves out difference.
'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument,
'Fair, kind, and true,' varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone, Which three till now never kept seat in one.

CVI.

When in the chronicle of wafted time
I fee descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to fing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

CVII.

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic foul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppofed as forfeit to a confined doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the fad augurs mock their own prefage;
Incertainties now crown themselves affured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime,
While he infults o'er dull and speechless tribes :

And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

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