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CXXIV



If my dear love were but the child of state,

It might for Fortune\'s bastard be unfather\'d,

As subject to Time\'s love or to Time\'s hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather\'d.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th\' inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-number\'d hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic, 

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.

  To this I witness call the fools of time,

  Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

 	--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

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
-Tolstoy, Leo