164

SONGS AND SONNETS

PROTESTATION

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 ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.

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.

AN APOLOGY

ALAS, 'tis true I have gone here and there

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored 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 proved thee my best of love,

Now all is done, have 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 confined :—

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

THE PLAYER'S DEGRADATION

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.

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 eisel '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.

OF SHAKESPEARE

167

THE WORLD WELL LOST

YOUR love and pity doth the 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;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my 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.

168.

SONGS AND SONNETS

THE OMNIPRESENT VISION

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 rudest or gentlest sight,

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

The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature :

Incapable of more, replete with you,

My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.