CHANGE AND CONTINUANCE

THOSE hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,

Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where :

Then, when not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was :

But flowers distill'd, though they with winter

meet,

Leese but their show; their substance still lives

sweet.

PERPETUATION

THEN
HEN let not winter's ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd: Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.

That use is not forbidden usury

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee :

Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair

To be death's conquest and make worms thine

heir.

FROM SUNRISE TO SUNSET

O! in the orient when the gracious light

Lo

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, Serving with looks his sacred majesty ;

And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle age, Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, Attending on his golden pilgrimage;

But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract and look another way:

So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.

HARMONY AND MELODY

MUSIC to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in

joy.

Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,
Resembling sire and child and happy mother
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:

Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one, Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none.'

A WARNING

S it for fear to wet a widow's eye

That thou consum'st thyself in single life?

Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;

The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep
By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind.

Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it.

No love toward others in that bosom sits

That on himself such murderous shame commits.

F