CXIX. What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, What wretched errors hath my heart committed, How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, In the distraction of this madding fever! O benefit of ill! now I find true That better is by evil ftill made better; And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. So I return rebuked to my content, And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent. CXX. That you were once unkind befriends me now, To weigh how once I fuffer'd in your crime. CXXI. "Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, When not to be receives reproach of being; And the just pleasure loft, which is so deemed Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing: For why should others' false adulterate eyes Give falutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own: I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown; Unless this general evil they maintain, All men are bad and in their badness reign. CXXII. Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain Which shall above that idle rank remain, Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart Till each to razed oblivion yield his part CXXIII. No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange; They are but dreffings of a former fight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou doft foist upon us that is old; And rather make them born to our defire Than think that we before have heard them told. Thy registers and thee I both defy, Not wondering at the present nor the past, For thy records and what we see doth lie, This I do vow, and this shall ever be, I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee. |