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CXV



Those lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer:

Yet then my judgment knew no reason why

My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning Time, whose million\'d accidents

Creep in \'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp\'st intents,

Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;

Alas! why fearing of Time\'s tyranny,

Might I not then say, \'Now I love you best,\'

When I was certain o\'er incertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?

  Love is a babe, then might I not say so,

  To give full growth to that which still doth grow?



CXVI



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 tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth\'s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love\'s not Time\'s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle\'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.

 	--William Shakespeare

XXIII



As an unperfect actor on the stage,

Who with his fear is put beside his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength\'s abundance weakens his own heart;

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love\'s rite,

And in mine own love\'s strength seem to decay,

O\'ercharg\'d with burthen of mine own love\'s might. 

O! let my looks be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love, and look for recompense,

More than that tongue that more hath more express\'d.

  O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:

  To hear with eyes belongs to love\'s fine wit.

 	--William Shakespeare

Tis done. We have become a nation.
Benjamin Rush, on the ratification of the Constitution, letter to Boudinot, July 9, 1788