In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;
In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,
In vowing new hate after new love bearing.
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee,
When I break twenty? I am perjur'd most;
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,
And all my honest faith in thee is lost:
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,
Or made them swear against the thing they see:
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur'd I,
To swear, against the truth, so foul a lie!

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:
A maid of Dian's this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrow'd from this holy fire of love
A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

But at my mistress' eye love's brand new-fir'd,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast:
I, sick withal, the help of bath desir'd,

And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest,

*This Sonnet and the next are set together by themselves, to be headed The Little Love-God." In our numbering, they follow the CXLIII. It is quite clear that they have no connection or continuity with any of the preceding.

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies

Where Cupid got new fire,—my mistress eyes.

CLIV.

The little Love-god, lying once asleep,

154.

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,

Whilst many nymphs, that vow'd chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire

Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd,
And so the general of hot desire

Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarm'd.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseas'd; but I, my mistress' thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

A LOVER'S COMPLAINT.

FROM off a hill, whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,

My spirits t' attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tun'd tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of a beauty spent and done:

Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage,
Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.

2

Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,'
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season'd woe had pelleted in tears,2
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,'
As they did battery to the spheres intend;

The more usual meaning of conceited was ingenious or fanerful.

H.

2 Laundering is laving or washing. Pelleted is formed into little balls.

3 In allusion to a piece of ordnance

Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orb'd earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and nowhere fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd.

Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride;
For some, untuck'd, descended her sheav'd hat,'
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,

And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.

A thousand favours from a maund she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set;
Like usury, applying wet to wet,"

Or monarchs' hands, that let not bounty fall
Where want cries "some," but where excess begs all

Of folded schedules had she many a one,

Which she perus'd, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood;
Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone,
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet more letters sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswath'd, and seal'd to curious secrecy."

H.

4 Called sheav'd because made from sheaves of straw. 5 Maund is still used for a basket in the north of Ergland. The original has bedded instead of beaded. The correction was suggested by Malone, and is approved by Dyce.

6 Like usury, because adding more to what is already too much. See As You Like It, Act ii. sc. 1, notes 6 and 7.

H.

7 Sleided silk is raw or unwrought silk; elsewhere called sleave silk. See Macbeth, Act ii. sc. 2, note 2.- Feat is neat, dexterous See Cymbeline, Act i. sc. 1, note 6; and Act v. sc. 5, note 3.

These often bath'd she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear,
Cried, O false blood! thou register of lies,
What unapproved witness dost thou bear!

Ink would have seem'd more black and damned here!

This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,
Big discontent so breaking their contents.

A reverend man that graz'd his cattle nigh,
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew,
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;
And, privileg'd by age, desires to know,
In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.

8

So slides he down upon his grained bat,'
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide :
If that from him there may be aught applied,
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
"Tis promis'd, in the charity of age.

Father, she says, though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied

Love to myself, and to no love beside.

Fancy was often used for love; here, of course, it means the subject of the passion.

Bat is cudgel or club; here meaning the man's staff.

H.

H

14