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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.

CVII.

Not 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 cónfined 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 subscribes,1
Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

CVIII.

What's in the brain that ink may character,

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

2

What's new to speak, what now to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

1 Subscribes, submits; acknowledges as a superior. 2 Now. So the original, but altered by Malone to new. agree with Mr. Dyce in thinking the alteration unnecessary.

We

So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;

Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.

CIX.

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 lie :
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.

CX.

Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley' to the view,

2

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new.

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1 Motley. Jaques, in As You Like It, exclaims, "Invest me in my motley. Motley was the dress of the domestic fool, or jester; and thus the buffoon himself came to be called a motley. Jaques, addressing Touchstone, says, "Will you be married, Motley ?" 2 Gored, wounded. In Hamlet we have,

“I have a voice and precedent of peace

To keep my name ungored."

Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches1 gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, have what shall have no end :
Mine appetite I never more will grind

2

On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A God in love, to whom I am confined.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

CXI.

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,

Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysell 3 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance, to correct correction.

1 Blenches, deviations.

2 Have. This is the word of the old copy. The reading of all modern editions is,

“Now all is done, save what shall have no end.”

Malone says this is unintelligible. His conjectural reading, which Tyrwhitt recommended, appears to us more so. "Now all is done" clearly applies to the blenches, the worse essays; but the poet then adds, "have thou what shall have no end' stant affection, my undivided friendship.

3 Eysell, vinegar.

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Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

CXII.

Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'ergreen my bad, my good allow ?1
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue ;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steeled sense or changes, right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others' voices, that my adder's sense

To critic and to flatterer stoppéd are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense :-
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

That all the world besides methinks are dead.3

1 Allow, approve.

2

2 This passage is obscure, and there is probably some slight misprint. Steevens says, with his usual amenity, "The meaning of this purblind and obscure stuff seems to be, You are the only person who has the power to change my stubborn resolution, either to what is right, or to what is wrong.'". We have little doubt that something like this is the meaning; but why has not this great conjectural critic, instead of calling out "purblind and obscure stuff,” tried his hand at some slight emendation? He is venturous enough when the text is clear. We might read thus :

"That my steeled sense so changes right or wrong. or we might read, as Malone has proposed, "E'er changes.'

3 This line presents in the old copy one of the many examples of how little the context was heeded. We there find,

"That all the world besides me thinks y' are dead."

Malone changes this to

"That all the world besides methinks they are dead." We adopt Mr. Dyce's better reading.

CXIII.

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind;
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch;'
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,

Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favor,2 or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.3

Or whether shall I

CXIV.

Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you,
Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery,
say mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchymy,
To make of monsters and things indigest
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best,
As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
O, 'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:

1 Latch. The original has lack. Malone substituted latch which signifies to lay hold of.

2 Favor, countenance.

3 Untrue is here used as a substantive. So in Measure for Measure :

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Say what you can, my false outweighs your true."

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