OF SHAKESPEARE 3

169.

EYE FLATTERY

R whether doth my mind, being crown'd with

OR

you,

Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?
Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchemy,

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 :
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup :

If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

170

SONGS AND SONNETS

THE GROWTH OF LOVE

THOSE lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you

dearer :

Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;

Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,

Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'

When I was certain o'er incertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?

Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

OF SHAKESPEARE

171

TRUE LOVE

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-fixéd 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 cheeks
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.

A SELF ACCUSATION

ACCUSE me thus: that I have scanted all

Wherein I should your great deserts repay,

Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;

That I have frequent been with unknown minds

And given to time your own dear-purchased right; That I have hoisted sail to all the winds

Which should transport me farthest from your sight.

Book both my wilfulness and errors down
And on just proof surmise accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate;

Since my appeal says, I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.

SICK PASSION

LIKE as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge;

As, to prevent our maladies unseen,

We sicken, to shun sickness, when we purge :

Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding,

And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, to anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assured; And brought to medicine a healthful state, Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured:

But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.