Which by and by black night doth take away. (73) For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any. (10) Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck; But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive. Plays. O how this Spring of love resembleth Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. i. My duty will I boast of, nothing else. Two Gen. Ver., V. iv. My beauty Needs not the painted flourish of your praise. Love's Labour's Lost, II. i. Fie, painted Rhetoric! O she needs it not ; To things of sale a seller's praise belongs,She passes praise.-L. L. L., IV. iii. Beauty doth varnish age as if new-born. But true, sweet beauty lived and died with him.-V. and A., 180. Art thou a woman's son and canst not feel V. and A., 34. V. and A., 121. What is thy body but a swallowing grave? V. and A., 127. Sonnets. Unthrifty loveliness! why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy? Profitless usurer.—(4) Hearing you praised, I say 'tis so.-(85) Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon sure; Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, And by and by clean starved for a look.-(75) For Slander's mark was ever yet the fair.-(70) Thou art thy Mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime.-(3) Anon permit the basest clouds to ride Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare. (52) Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still; The better angel is a man right fair; The worser spirit a woman coloured ill; To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil; Wooing his purity with her foul pride.—(144) I s'gh the lack of many a thing I sought.-(30) And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight. (30) When I perhaps compounded am with clay. (71) Sweet Roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made. (54) Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward; Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard. (133) That is my home of love; if I have ranged, Like him that travels, I return again.-(109) I do forgive thy robbery, gentle Thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty. (40) That sweet Thief which sourly robs from me. (35) Plays. Gold that's put to use more gold begets. V. and A., 128. She says 'tis so; they answer all 'tis so! Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. So my state, You follow the young prince up and down like his ill-angel.-Pt. II. Henry IV., I. ii. There is a good angel about him, but the devil outbids him too.-Pt. II. Henry IV., II. iv. You do draw my spirits from me My heart with her but as guest-wise sojourned, O me; you Juggler! you Canker-blossom! night And stolen my Love's heart from him? Plays. Fair Helena, who more engilds the night My legs can keep no race with my desires. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge Sonnets. From limits far remote where thou dost stay. (44) But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought, To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, But that so much of earth and water wrought. (44) How like Eve's Apple doth thy beauty grow, If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show. (93) Let those who are in favour with their stars, Of public honour and proud tiles boast, Whilst I, whom Fortune of such triumph bars, Unlooked-for joy in that I honour most : Then happy I, that love and am beloved, Where I may not remove, nor be removed. Where wasteful time debateth with decay. (25) Nature and sickness (15) Debate it at their leisure. All's Well that Ends Well, I. ii. The Pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass. My lord will go away to-night; A very serious business calls on him, But puts it off by a compelled restraint. Plays. Join her hand with his A. Y. L., V. iv. I fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Twelfth Night, I. v. Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we. T. N., II. ii. The clock upbraids me with the waste of time. But O, how vile an Idol proves this God! Antony and Cleopatra, III. ii. Prove this a prosperous day, the three-nooked world shall bear the olive freely. Antony and Cleopatra, IV. vi. This comparison shows the uselessness of placing the Sonnets en gros between Romeo and Juliet and Part III. of King Henry VI., as is done in the Leopold Shakspeare, and the folly of limiting them, as Mr. Tyler would, to the years 1598-1601. These extracts present a panorama of the Poet's progress. All along the Sonnets are the seed-bed of thoughts and expressions afterwards sown in the Dramas during at least a dozen years. The order observed is, roughly, that of the Dramas, not of the Sonnets. According to the poetic data now adduced, this comparative criterion tells us that a large number of the Sonnets were produced either before or else they belong to the time of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and other of the early Plays. No one who is intimately acquainted with Shakspeare will deny or doubt that this diagnosis demonstrates the period of certain Sonnets and Plays to have been the same, even though they may not |