CXVIII. Like as, to make our appetites more keen, We ficken to fhun fickness when we purge; Even fo, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, To bitter fauces did I frame my feeding; And fick of welfare found a kind of meetness To be diseased, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults affured, And brought to medicine a healthful state, Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured: But thence I learn, and find the leffon true, Drugs poison him that fo fell fick of you. CXIX. What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, What wretched errors hath my heart committed, How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, In the distraction of this madding fever! O benefit of ill! now I find true That better is by evil still made better; And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. So I return rebuked to my content, And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent. CXX. That you were once unkind befriends me now, And for that forrow which I then did feel To weigh how once I fuffer'd in your crime. CXXI. 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, 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; 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. CXXII. Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart Till each to razed oblivion yield his part |