O,

THE PLAYER'S DEGRADATION

FOR my sake do you with fortune chide

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand :
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd ;

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

THE WORLD WELL LOST

YOUR love and pity doth the impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my

brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense :

You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides, methinks, are dead.

THE OMNIPRESENT VISION

INCE I left you, mine eye is in my mind;

SINCE

And that which governs me to go about Doth part his function and is partly blind, Seems seeing, but effectually is out;

For it no form delivers to the heart

Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch :
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;

For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,

The mountain or the sea, the day or night,

The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature :

Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.

EYE FLATTERY

R whether doth my mind, being crown'd with

OR

you,

Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?
Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchemy,

To make of monsters and things indigest
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best,

As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

O, 'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up :
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup :

If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin

That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

THE GROWTH OF LOVE

THOSE lines that I before have writ do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you

dearer :

Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.

But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;

Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,

Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'

When I was certain o'er incertainty,

Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?

Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?