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XI



As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow\'st,

In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow\'st,

Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest,

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;

Without this folly, age, and cold decay:

If all were minded so, the times should cease

And threescore year would make the world away.

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:

Look, whom she best endow\'d, she gave thee more;

Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

  She carv\'d thee for her seal, and meant thereby,

  Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXXXII



I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o\'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book. 

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devis\'d,

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz\'d

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;

  And their gross painting might be better us\'d

  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus\'d.

 	--William Shakespeare

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