What's in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, fweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very fame;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to neceffary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.
O, never say that I was falfe of heart, Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify. As eafy might I from myself depart
As from my foul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Juft to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain❜d,
To leave for nothing all thy fum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rofe; in it thou art my
Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, fold cheap what is most
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth
Afkance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confined.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
for my fake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd ;
Whilft, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eifel, 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I affure
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
Your love and pity doth the impreffion fill
Which vulgar scandal ftamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my fhames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my fteel'd fenfe or changes right or wrong.
In fo profound abyfm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's fenfe
To critic and to flatterer ftopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are fo ftrongly in my purpose bred
That all the world befides methinks they're dead.
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