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Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That
means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the
distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly
persistent illusion. --Albert Einstein

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

XXXIX



O! how thy worth with manners may I sing,

When thou art all the better part of me?

What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?

And what is\'t but mine own when I praise thee?

Even for this, let us divided live,

And our dear love lose name of single one,

That by this separation I may give

That due to thee which thou deserv\'st alone.

O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove,

Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,

To entertain the time with thoughts of love,

Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, 

  And that thou teachest how to make one twain,

  By praising him here who doth hence remain.

 

XL



Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.

Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,

I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;

But yet be blam\'d, if thou thy self deceivest

By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,

Although thou steal thee all my poverty:

And yet, love knows it is a greater grief

To bear greater wrong, than hate\'s known injury.

  Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,

  Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.

 	--William Shakespeare

CI



O truant Muse what shall be thy amends

For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy\'d?

Both truth and beauty on my love depends;

So dost thou too, and therein dignified.

Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,

\'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix\'d;

Beauty no pencil, beauty\'s truth to lay;

But best is best, if never intermix\'d\'?

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

Excuse not silence so, for\'t lies in thee

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb

And to be prais\'d of ages yet to be.

  Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how

  To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

 	--William Shakespeare