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XLIX



Against that time, if ever that time come,

When I shall see thee frown on my defects,

When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,

Call\'d to that audit by advis\'d respects;

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,

And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,

When love, converted from the thing it was,

Shall reasons find of settled gravity;

Against that time do I ensconce me here,

Within the knowledge of mine own desert,

And this my hand, against my self uprear,

To guard the lawful reasons on thy part: 

  To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,

  Since why to love I can allege no cause.

 	--William Shakespeare

LIX



If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguil\'d,

Which labouring for invention bear amiss

The second burthen of a former child!

O! that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done!

That I might see what the old world could say

To this composed wonder of your frame;

Wh\'r we are mended, or wh\'r better they,

Or whether revolution be the same. 

  O! sure I am the wits of former days,

  To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

 	--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

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