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I



From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty\'s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed\'st thy light\'s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

Thou that art now the world\'s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And tender churl mak\'st waste in niggarding:

  Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

  To eat the world\'s due, by the grave and thee.

 	--William Shakespeare

A God. The God. One word can make all the difference in the world.

- C.S. Lewis, In Religion

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