Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath masked him from me
now,
Yet him for this my love no whit disdain-
eth;
Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.
WHAT is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you
tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new;
Speak of the Spring, and foison of the year-
WHY didst thou promise such a beauteous The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
And make me travel forth without cloak,
my
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou
break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak,
That heals the wound, and cures not the dis-
grace;
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief—
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.
Th' offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl, which thy
love sheds,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And
you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part;
But you like none, none you, for constant
heart.
О, ноw much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth
give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odor which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses-
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds. When Summer's breath their masked buds
THOSE pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits;
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ah me! but yet thou might'st my seat for-
bear,
And chide thy Beauty and thy straying Youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break a two-fold
truth;
But, for their virtue only is their show;
They live unwooed, and unrespected fade—
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors
made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils your
truth.
Nor marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall out-live this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these con-
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor War's quick fire
shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
FAREWELL! thou art too dear for my possess
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate;
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
Shall you pace forth: your praise shall still And for that riches where is my deserving?
Even in the eyes of all posterity,
That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
THAT thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast past by the ambush of young days,
Either not assailed, or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged.
If some suspect of ill masked not thy show, Then, thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not
knowing,
Or me, to whom gav'st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment mak-
ing.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king; but waking, no such matter.
SOME say thy fault is youth, some wantonness; Some say thy grace is youth, and gentle sport; Both grace and faults are loved of more and
Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a throned queen
The basest jewel will be well esteemed,
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated, and for true things
deemed.
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
If like a lamb he could his looks translate!
How
many gazers might'st thou lead away.
If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy
state!
But do not so; I love thee in such sort As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
How like a Winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days
What old December's bareness every where! And yet this time removed was Summer's
The teeming Autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs after their lords' de
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For Summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the win-
ter's near.
FROM you nave I been absent in the Spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any Summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where
they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you-you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play.
THE forward violet thus did I chide:
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
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 see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing;
For we, which now behold these present
days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Nor mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now, with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me sub-
scribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy While he insults o'er dull and speechless
If not from my love's breath? the purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
And to this robbery had annexed thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet in color it had stolen from thee.
WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent.
LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height
be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
O! NEVER say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart,
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again—
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged;
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reigned
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all.
When Cupid having me, his slave, descried
In Mars's livery, prancing in the press,
"What now, Sir Fool?" said he, "I would
no less;
Look here I say."—I looked, and Stella spied,
Who, hard by, made a window send forth
light;
My heart then quaked; then dazzled were mine eyes;
One hand forgot to rule, the other to fight;
Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly
cries.
My foe came on and beat the air for me,
Till that her blush taught me my shame to
O HAPPY Thames, that didst my Stella bear!
I saw myself, with many a smiling line
Upon thy cheerful face, joy's livery wear,
While those fair planets on thy streams did
shine;
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear;
While wanton winds, with beauties so divine
COME Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of Ravished, staid not till in her golden hair
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe;
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and
low!
They did themselves, O sweetest prison!
And fain those Eol's youth there would their stay
Have made, but forced by Nature still to fly,
With shield of proof, shield me from out the First did with puffing kiss those locks display. prease
She so dishevelled, blushed :—from window I,
Of those fierce darts despair doth at me With sight thereof, cried out, O fair disgrace!
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest
bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
IN martial sports I had my cunning tried,
And yet to break more staves did me address;
While with the people's shouts, I must confess,
Youth, luck, and praise e'en filled my veins
with pride;
Let Honor's self to thee grant highest place.
WITH how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! may it be, that even in heavenly
place
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks, thy languished grace;
To me that feel the like thy state descries.
Then even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me—
Is constant love deemed there but want of
wit?
I KNOW that all beneath the Moon decays; And what by mortals in this world is brought, In time's great periods shall return to nought; That fairest states have fatal nights and days. I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays, With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds, of few or none are sought; That there is nothing lighter than vain praise. I know frail beauty 's like the purple flower To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of mind's accords, Where sense and will bring under reason's power:
Know what I list, this all cannot me move, But that, alas! I both must write and love. WILLIAM DRUMMOND.
IF it be true that any beauteous thing
Raises the pure and just desire of man
From earth to God, the eternal Fount of all,
Such I believe my love: for as in her
So fair, in whom I all besides forget,
I view the gentle work of her Creator,
I have no care for any other thing,
Whilst thus I love. Nor is it marvellous,
Since the effect is not of my own power,
If the soul doth, by nature tempted forth,
Enamored through the eyes,
Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth,
And through them riseth to the primal Love,
As to its end, and honors in admiring;
For who adores the Maker needs must love
his work.
MICHAEL ANGELO. (Italian.)
Translation of J. E. Taylor.
In the merrie moneth of Maye,
In a morne by break of daye,
With a troupe of damsells playing,
Forth I yode forsooth a-maying;
Where anon by a wood side, Where as May was in his pride, I espied all alone
Phillida and Corydon.
Much adoe there was, God wot; He wold love, and she wold not. She sayd never man was trewe; He sayes none was false to you.
He sayde hee had lovde her longe
She sayes love should have no wronge.
Corydon wold kisse her then :
She sayes maids must kisse no men,
Tyll they doe for good and all. When she made the shepperde call All the heavens to wytnes truthe, Never loved a truer youthe.
Then with many a prettie othe,
Yea, and naye, and faithe and trothe-
Such as seelie shepperdes use
When they will not love abuse—
Love, that had bene long deluded, Was with kisses sweete concluded; And Phillida with garlands gaye Was made the ladye of the Maye.
LOVE is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that most with cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
More we enjoy it, more it dies; If not enjoyed, it sighing cries Heigh-ho!
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