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CVII



Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control, 

Supposed as forfeit to a confin'd doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,

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.

 	--William Shakespeare

CXI



O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdu'd

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:

Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd;

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,

Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance, to correct correction.

  Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,

  Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

 	--William Shakespeare

XCIII



So shall I live, supposing thou art true,

Like a deceived husband; so love's face

May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;

Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:

For there can live no hatred in thine eye,

Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.

In many's looks, the false heart's history

Is writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange. 

But heaven in thy creation did decree

That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;

Whate'er thy thoughts, or thy heart's workings be,

Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.

  How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow,

  If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!



XCIV



They that have power to hurt, and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;

They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,

And husband nature's riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others, but stewards of their excellence.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself, it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity: 

  For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

  Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

 	--William Shakespeare