Beauty’s effect with beauty was bereft
Guilty thou art of murder and of theft
In days long since, before these last so bad
This told, I joy; but then no longer glad
Then, were not summer’s distillation left
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days
When he himself confounds, betrays
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise
A loss in love that touches me more nearly
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly
Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling
Or like the froward infant stilled with dandling
A loss in love that touches me more nearly
For there can live no hatred in thine eye
Though to itself it only and
Which knows no pity, but is still severe
Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here
So is her face illumined with her eye
And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him
The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim
Pausing for means to mourn some newer way
That I might see what the old world could say
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him
They that lose half with greater patience bear it
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit
May set at noon and make perpetual night
Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it
Since, in spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme
Compare them with the bettering of the time
Which prove shorter than waste or ruining?
Hast thou put on his shape to do him shame?
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours
The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours
The heavy motion that it doth behold
Let it not tell your judgment I am old
So they were with such distilling showers
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud
Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood
That heavy Saturn laughed and with him
The flowers are sweet, their colors fresh and trim
If all these pretty ills shall change thy good
Poetry
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