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AMOR OMNIA VINCIT

WHEN, in disgrace with fortune and men's

eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least ;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on Thee,-and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

REMEMBRANCE

WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear Friend,

All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

86

SONGS AND SONNETS

ALL-CONTAINING LOVE

THY bosom is endeared with all hearts,

Which I by lacking have supposéd dead,

And there reigns love and all love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed, that hidden in thee lie!

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give, That due of many now is thine alone :

Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

OF SHAKESPEARE

87

THE VITAL FORCE

IF thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust

shall cover,

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,

Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.

O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:

'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing

age,

A dearer birth than this his love had brought,

To march in ranks of better equipage :

But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'

ULL

FU

SUNSHINE AND CLOUD

many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.

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