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LXXX



O! how I faint when I of you do write,

Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,

And in the praise thereof spends all his might,

To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!

But since your worth--wide as the ocean is,--

The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,

My saucy bark, inferior far to his,

On your broad main doth wilfully appear.

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,

Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;

Or, being wrack\'d, I am a worthless boat,

He of tall building, and of goodly pride:

  Then if he thrive and I be cast away,

  The worst was this,--my love was my decay.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXXXIII



I never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set;

I found, or thought I found, you did exceed

That barren tender of a poet\'s debt:

And therefore have I slept in your report,

That you yourself, being extant, well might show

How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. 

This silence for my sin you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory being dumb;

For I impair not beauty being mute,

When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

  There lives more life in one of your fair eyes

  Than both your poets can in praise devise.

 	--William Shakespeare

CIV



To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I ey\'d,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,

Have from the forests shook three summers\' pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn\'d,

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn\'d,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv\'d;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv\'d:

  For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:

  Ere you were born was beauty\'s summer dead.

 	--William Shakespeare