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-fixed mark,
That looks on tempefts, and is never shaken;
It is the ftar to every wandering bark,
Whofe worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rofy lips and cheeks
Within his bending fickle'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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Accufe me thus; that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deferts repay;
Forgot upon your deareft 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-purchas'd right;
That I have hoifted fail to all the winds
Which should transport me fartheft from your fight.
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
And on just proof, furmife 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 conftancy and virtue of your love.
Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We ficken to shun fickness, when we purge;
Even fo, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter fawces did I frame my feeding,
And, fick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be difeas'd, ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, to anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults affured,
And brought to medicine a healthful state,
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured.
But thence I learn, and find the leffon true,
Drugs poifon him that fo fell fick of you.
What potions have I drunk of Syren tears,
Diftil'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still lofing when I faw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilft it hath thought itself so blessed never!
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 still made better;
And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. So I return rebuk'd to my content,
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.
That you were once unkind, befriends me now,
And for that forrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my tranfgreffion bow,
Unless my nerves were brafs or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by your's, you have pass'd a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer'd in
your crime.
O that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true forrow hits,
And foon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble falve which wounded bofom fits!
But that your trefpafs now becomes a fee ;
Mine ranfom your's, and your's must ransom me.
'Tis better to be vile, than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure loft, which is so deem'd
fo
Not by our feeling, but by others' feeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give falutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer fpies,
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:
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,
Thy gift, thy tables, are within
Full character'd with lafting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or at the least so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not fo much hold,
Nor need I tallies, thy dear love to score
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To truft those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee,
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
No! Time, thou shalt not boaft 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 foift 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 prefent nor the past;
For thy records and what we fee doth lie,
Made more or lefs by thy continual hafte :
This I do vow, and this shall ever be,
I will be true, defpite thy scythe and thee.
dear love were but the child of state, It might for fortune's baftard be unfather'd,
As fubject to time's love, or to time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It fuffers not in fmiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretick,
Which works on leafes of fhort-number'd hours,
But all alone ftands hugely politick,
That it not grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. To this I witnefs call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have liv'd for crime.
Were it aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or lay'd great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not feen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet foregoing fimple favour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No; let me be obfequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
Hence, thou fuborn'd informer! a true foul,
When most impeach'd, stands least in thy control.
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