O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this.be error, and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Accuse me thus: That I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay;
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;

That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchas'd right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate;
Since my appeal says, I did strive to prove
The constancy and virtue of your love.

CXXII.

* This makes the ninth in the noble series of thirteen on “Fi. delity,"

Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,

51

We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;

Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, t' anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assur'd,
And brought to medicine a healthful state,
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur'd:
But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

What potions have I drunk of siren tears,
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!

What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,
In the distraction of this madding fever!

O, benefit of ill! now I find true,

That better is by evil still made better;

And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

*This and the next two are set off by themselves, as forming, together, a poem entitled "Forgiveness." In our numbering, they follow the XCVI.

51 Eager is sharp, acid. See Hamlet, Act i. sc. 4, note 1 ; and sc. 5, note 7.

H

So 1 return rebuk'd to my content,

And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

That you were once unkind, befriends me now;
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel:
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer'd in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remember'd
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits;
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd
The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

"Tis better to be vile, than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd,
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing:
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good!
No, I am that I am; and they that level
At my abuses, reckon up their own:

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;

This Sonnet is regarded as standing alone, its subject being, perhaps, "Reputation." In our numbering, it follows the LXXXVI

Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist:

Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies, thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee,
Were to import forgetfulness in me

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids, built up with newer might,
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire,
Than think that we before have heard them told.

Tuis and the next three are made continuate with the CIVIL in the series entitled "Fidelity."

52 That poor retention" is the table-book given to him by his friend, incapable of retaining, or rather of containing, so much as the tablet of the brain. - MALONE

Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past;
For thy records and what we see do lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste:
This I do vow, and this shall ever be,

I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As subject to time's love or to time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers
gather'd.

No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-number'd hours;

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have liv'd for crime

Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent;
For compound sweet foregoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?