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Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. --R. W. Emerson

CXXI



\'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem\'d,

When not to be receives reproach of being;

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem\'d

Not by our feeling, but by others\' seeing:

For why should others\' false adulterate eyes

Give salutation 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.

 	--William Shakespeare

III



Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

Now is the time that face should form another;

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose unear\'d womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,

Of his self-love to stop posterity? 

Thou art thy mother\'s glass and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.

  But if thou live, remember\'d not to be,

  Die single and thine image dies with thee.

 	--William Shakespeare

XCIX



The forward violet thus did I chide:

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If not from my love\'s breath? The purple pride

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells

In my love\'s veins thou hast too grossly dy\'d.

The lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stol\'n thy hair;

The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red nor white, had stol\'n of both,

And to his robbery had annex\'d thy breath;

But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth 

A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

  More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,

  But sweet, or colour it had stol\'n from thee.

 	--William Shakespeare