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LXXII



O! lest the world should task you to recite

What merit lived in me, that you should love

After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,

For you in me can nothing worthy prove;

Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,

To do more for me than mine own desert,

And hang more praise upon deceased I

Than niggard truth would willingly impart:

O! lest your true love may seem false in this

That you for love speak well of me untrue,

My name be buried where my body is,

And live no more to shame nor me nor you.

  For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,

  And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXXXII



I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o\'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use

Of their fair subject, blessing every book. 

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;

And therefore art enforced to seek anew

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, love; yet when they have devis\'d,

What strained touches rhetoric can lend,

Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz\'d

In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;

  And their gross painting might be better us\'d

  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus\'d.

 	--William Shakespeare

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself, and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is
no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise. -Marcus Aurelius, Mediations (2nd C.),
4.20, TR. Maxwell Staniforth

CXXXIII



How oft when thou, my music, music play\'st,

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway\'st

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,

At the wood\'s boldness by thee blushing stand!

To be so tickled, they would change their state 

And situation with those dancing chips,

O\'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more bless\'d than living lips.

  Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

  Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

 	--William Shakespeare