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LXIII.

Against my love shall be, as I am now,

With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o’erworn ;
When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night;
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of fight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For fuch a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My fweet love's beauty, though my lover's life :
His beauty fhall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.

LXIV.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I fee down-razed,
And brass eternal flave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm foil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with lofs and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or ftate 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.

LXV.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But fad mortality o'ersways 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 ftrong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's cheft 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.

LXVI.

Tired with all thefe, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And pureft faith unhappily forfworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely ftrumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping fway difabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth mifcalled fimplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill :

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

LXVII.

Ah, wherefore with infection should he live
And with his presence grace impiety,

That fin by him advantage should achieve
And lace itself with his fociety?

Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
And steal dead seeing of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indire&ly seek

Roses of shadow, fince his rofe is true?

Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins ? For she hath no exchequer now but his,

And, proud of many, lives upon his gains.

O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had
In days long fince, before these last so bad.

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