And fortify yourself, in your decay,
With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens yet unfet,
With virtuous with would bear you living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit.
So should the lines of life that life repair,
Which this (time's pencil) or my pupil pen,
Neither in inward worth, nor outward fair,
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.
Who will believe my verse, in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deferts?
Tho' yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb,
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces-;
The age to come would say this poet lyes,
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.
So should my papers (yellow'd with their age)
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue;
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage,
And stretched metre of an antick song.
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing fight,
Serving with looks his facred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.
But when from high-most pitch, with weary care,
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day.;
The eyes ('fore duteous) now converted are
From his low track, and look another way.
So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a fon.
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank, the lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abufe
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a fum of sums, yet can'st not live?
For having traffick with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive;
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit can'st thou leave ?
Thy unus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee,
Which used lives th' executor to be.
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze, where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very fame,
And that unfair, which fairly doth excel.
For never resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snow'd, and barrenness every where.
Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prifoner, pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
But flowers distill'd, thơ' they with winter meet,
Lose but their show, their substance still lives sweet.
Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd,
Make sweet some vial, treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure, e'er it be self-kill'd:
That use is not forbidden ufury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one:
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee;
Then what could death do, if thou should'st depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not felf-will'd, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest, and make worms thine heir.
An Invitation to Marriage.
Musick to hear, why hear'st thou musick sadly ?
Sweets with fweets war not, joy delights in joy :
Why lov'it thou that, which thou receiv'st not gladly?
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy ?
If the true concord of well tuned founds,
By unions married do offend thy ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou should'st bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling fire and child, and happy mother,
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing :
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee, thou single wilt prove none.
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye,
That thou consum'st thyself in single life ?
Ah! if thou issue-less shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife:
The world will be thy widow, and still weep,
That thou no form of thee haft left behind;
When every private widow well may keep,
By childrens eyes, her husband's shape in mind:
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend,
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it:
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unus'd, the us'rer so destroys it.
No love towards others in that bosom fits.
That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.
For shame! deny, that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident;
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov'd of many,
But that thou none lov'st, is most evident:
For thou art so possess'd with murd'rous hate,
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate,
Which to repair, should be thy chief defire.
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodg'd than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself, at least, kind-hearted prove :
Make thee another self, for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.
As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
'Thou may'st call thine, when thou from youth con-
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase; [verteft.
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay;
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threefcore years would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harth, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom the best endow'd, she gave the more ;
Which bounteous gift thou should'st in bounty cherish:
She carv'd thee for her feal, and meant thereby
Thou should'st print more, nor let that copy dié.
When I do count the clock, that tells the time,
And fee the brave day funk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And fable curls are filver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I fee barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier, with white and bristly beard;
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they fee others grow;
And nothing'gainst time's scithe can make defence,
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her (tho' I know the lyes)
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