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LXXXIV



Who is it that says most, which can say more,

Than this rich praise,--that you alone, are you?

In whose confine immured is the store

Which should example where your equal grew.

Lean penury within that pen doth dwell

That to his subject lends not some small glory;

But he that writes of you, if he can tell

That you are you, so dignifies his story,

Let him but copy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so clear,

And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,

Making his style admired every where.

  You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

  Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

 	--William Shakespeare

XXV



Let those who are in favour with their stars

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars

Unlook\'d for joy in that I honour most.

Great princes\' favourites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun\'s eye,

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foil\'d,

Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil\'d:

Then happy I, that love and am belov\'d,

Where I may not remove nor be remov\'d.

 	--William Shakespeare

CXII



Your love and pity doth the impression fill,

Which vulgar scandal stamp\'d upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill, 

So you o\'er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue;

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel\'d sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others\' voices, that my adder\'s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

  You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

  That all the world besides methinks are dead.

 	--William Shakespeare