My love is ftrengthen'd, though more weak in feem-
I love not lefs, though less the show appear: [ing;
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in fummer's front doth fing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the fummer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild mufic burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
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 verse can fit, Your own glass shows you when you look in it.
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first 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 saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
your fweet hue, which methinks still 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.
Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
Το one, of one,
still such, and ever so.
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 feat in one.
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 fee their antique pen would have expreff'd
Even fuch a beauty as you mafter 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.
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