CIV. To me, fair friend, you never can be old, Such feems your beauty ftill. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three fummers' pride, Three beauteous fprings to yellow autumn turn'd In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred : CV. Let not my love be call'd idolatry, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone, Which three till now never kept seat in one. CVI. When in the chronicle of wafted time And, for they look'd but with divining eyes, CVII. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic foul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppofed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the fad 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, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime, 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? What's new to speak, what new to register, That may express my love, or thy dear merit? Nothing, fweet 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 hallow'd thy fair name. So that eternal love in love's fresh case Weighs not the duft and injury of age, Nor gives to neceffary wrinkles place, But makes antiquity for aye his page; Finding the firft conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead. |