Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
“My parts had power to charm a sacred nun.”
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
Cheek neither red nor pale, but mingled so.
Let my unsounded self, supposed a fool,
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
Thou, best of dearest and my only care,
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
Suspect, I may, but not directly tell,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell.
To praise the clear unmatched red and white,
To make him curse this cursed crimeful night.
Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive,
Thus hoping that Adonis is alive.
Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins,
And proud of many, lives upon his gains.
Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty,
With soft-slow tongue, the true mark of modesty.
Yea the illiterate, that know not how,
The studded bridle on a ragged bough.
Not that the summer is less pleasant now,
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show.
But if thou live, remember not to be,
For she that was thy Lucrece, now attend me.
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls.
So glides he in the night from the Venus’ eye,
So far from home into my deeds to pry.
Showing life’s triumph in the map of death,
To stifle beauty and to steal his breath.
O appetite, from judgment, stand aloof!
That we must curb it upon others’ proof.
Poetry
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