114

SONGS AND SONNETS

NIHIL NOVI, NIHIL INAUDITI

F there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains be

guiled,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burden of a former child!

O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!

That I might see what the old world could say To this composéd wonder of your frame; Whether we are mended, or whether better they, Or whether revolution be the same.

O, sure I am, the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

OF SHAKESPEARE

115

REVOLUTIONS

LIKE as the waves make towards the pebbled

shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

ALAS

S it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenour of thy jealousy?

O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great :
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake ;
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake :

For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake else

where,

From me far off, with others all too near.

OF SHAKESPEARE

A LESSON

SIN of self-love possesseth all mine eye

And all my soul and all my every part;

And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read ;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

117

A PROTEST

AGAINST my Love shall be, as I am now,

With Time's injurious hand crush'd and

o'erworn;

When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his

brow

With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn

Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night,

And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;

For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory

My sweet Love's beauty, though my lover's life.

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green.