CV



Let not my love be call'd idolatry,

Nor my beloved as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

Therefore my verse to constancy confin'd,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument,

'Fair, kind, and true,' varying to other words;

And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.

  Fair, kind, and true, have often liv'd alone,

  Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

 	--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