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Beauty in nature's coin must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof,
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
-Milton (1634)The greatest homage to truth is to use it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

LXXVII



Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;

These vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,

And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste. 

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;

Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know

Time's thievish progress to eternity.

Look! what thy memory cannot contain,

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find

Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain,

To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.

  These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,

  Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXXXVI



Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the prize of all too precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,

Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night

Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors of my silence cannot boast;

I was not sick of any fear from thence:

  But when your countenance fill'd up his line,

  Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.

 	--William Shakespeare