And thou in this shalt find thy monument,

When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

What's in the brain that ink may character,
Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name.
So that eternal love, in love's fresh case,
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page;
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,

Where time and outward form would show it dead.

O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart,

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.
That is my home of love: if I have rang'd,
Like him that travels, I return again,

Just to the time, not with the time exchang'd;
So that myself bring water for my stain.

This, together with the LIX. and LX., finish the series of eleven, which seems to have been addressed, after an interval, to the same friend as the first nineteen.

This and the eight following are classed in a series of thir teen, entitled Fidelity." They seem addressed to a woman ; perhaps to the same as the XCIX., which precedes them in our numbering.

Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all.

Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view;"
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most

dear,

Made old offences of affections new:

Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,"
And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confin'd.

Then, give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure, and most, most loving breast.

O! 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.

44 Motley was the proper dress of allowed or professional fools See As You Like It, Act ii. sc. 7; also King Henry VIII., Prologue, note 1.

H.

45 To blench is to start or fly off from. See The Winter's Tale, Act i. sc. 2, note 34.-The Poet means that his offences have given his heart another youth, by proving the strength of his friend's affection

H.

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 eysell '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.*

47

48

Your love and pity doth th' 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

46 Eysell is an old word for vinegar.

47 It is scarce possible to doubt that in the two foregoing Son nets we have some of the Poet's honest feelings respecting him self. Some foolish rhymester having spoken of Shakespeare and Garrick as kindred minds, Charles Lamb thereupon quotes from these Sonnets, and comments thus: "Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness in our sweet Shakespeare, and dream of any congeniality between him and one that, by every traditior of him, appears to have been as mere a player as ever existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest players' vices.envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after applause; one who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even of women. performers that stood in his way; a manager full of managerial tricks and stratagems and finesse ;- that any resemblance should ne dreamed of between him and Shakespeare,-Shakespeare who, In the plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, could, with that noble modesty which we can neither imitate nor appreciate express himself thus of his own sense of his own defects:

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd;
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope.'"

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

my

That 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.

48

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
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 rud'st or gentlest sight,

The most sweet favour, or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,

49

The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature: Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue."

50

Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?

48 The meaning seems to be, you are the only person who has power to change my stubborn resolution, either to what is right or to what is wrong.

49 Latch is a provincial word for catch. See Macbeth, Act iv sc. 3, note 12.

H.

50 The word untrue is here used as a substantive. The sin cerity of my affection is the cause of my untruth; that is, of my not seeing objects truly, such as they appear to the rest of mankind.-MALONE.

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?
(), '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.

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 th' 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?

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove :