CV.

Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,
One thing expreffing, leaves out difference.
'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument,
'Fair, kind, and true,' varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone, Which three till now never kept feat in one.

CVI.

When in the chronicle of wafted time
I fee descriptions of the faireft wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of fweet beauty's beft,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expreff'd
Even fuch a beauty as you mafter now.
So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to fing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.