THE IDEAL

WHILST I alone did call upon thy aid,

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, But now my gracious numbers are decay'd, And my sick Muse doth give another place.

I grant, sweet Love, thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
He robs thee of and pays it thee again.

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give
And found it in thy cheek; he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.

OF SHAKESPEARE

135

THE RIVAL DEFIED

HOW I faint when I of you do write,

Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!

But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark inferior far to his

On your broad main doth wilfully appear.

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:

Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this; my love was my decay.

A PROPHECY

R I shall live your epitaph to make,

OR

Or you survive when I in earth am rotten; From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die :
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombéd in men's eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live-such virtue hath my penWhere breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

I

THE TRUE PRAISE

GRANT thou wert not married to my Muse,

And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook

The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
And therefore art enforced to seek anew
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.

And do so, Love; yet when they have devised
What strainéd touches rhetoric can lend,
Thou truly fair wert truly sympathized
In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;

And their gross painting might be better used Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

OF HIS SILENCE

I

NEVER saw that

you

did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set;

I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt;

And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself being extant well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

This silence for my sin you did impute,
Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
For I impair not beauty being mute,

When others would give life and bring a tomb.

There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise.