Sonnet CXVI.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”

LET me not to the marriage of true minds   
Admit impediments. Love is not love   
Which alters when it alteration finds,   
Or bends with the remover to remove:   
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,            5
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;   
It is the star to every wandering bark,   
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.   
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks   
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;     10
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,   
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.   
  If this be error, and upon me prov’d,   
  I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.   

Sonnet CXVII.

“Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all”

ACCUSE me thus: that I have scanted all   
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,   
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,   
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;   
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,            5
And given to time your own dear-purchas’d right;   
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds   
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.   
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,   
And on just proof surmise accumulate;     10
Bring me within the level of your frown,   
But shoot not at me in your waken’d hate;   
  Since my appeal says I did strive to prove   
  The constancy and virtue of your love.   

Sonnet CXVIII.

“Like as, to make our appetites more keen”

LIKE as, to make our appetites more keen   
With eager compounds we our palate urge;   
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,   
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;   
Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,            5
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;   
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness   
To be diseas’d, ere that there was true needing.   
Thus policy in love, to anticipate   
The ills that were not, grew to faults assur’d,     10
And brought to medicine a healthful state,   
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d;   
  But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,   
  Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.   

Sonnet CXIX.

“What potions have I drunk of Siren tears”

WHAT potions have I drunk of Siren tears   
Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within,   
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,   
Still losing when I saw myself to win!   
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,            5
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never!   
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,   
In the distraction of this madding fever!   
O benefit of ill! now I find true   
That better is by evil still made better;     10
And ruin’d love, when it is built anew,   
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.   
  So I return rebuk’d to my content,   
  And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.   

Sonnet CXX.

“That you were once unkind befriends me now”

THAT you were once unkind befriends me now   
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,   
Needs must I under my transgression bow,   
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel.   
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,            5
As I by yours, you ’ve pass’d a hell of time;   
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken   
To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime.   
O! that our night of woe might have remember’d   
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,     10
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’d   
The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!   
  But that your trespass now becomes a fee;   
  Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.   

Sonnet CXXI.

“’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d”

’TIS better to be vile than vile esteem’d   
When not to be receives reproach of being;   
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d   
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:   
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes            5
Give salutation to my sportive blood?   
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,   
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?   
No, I am that I am, and they that level   
At my abuses reckon up their own:     10
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;   
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;   
  Unless this general evil they maintain,   
  All men are bad and in their badness reign.   

Sonnet CXXII.

“Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain”

THY gift, thy tables, are within my brain   
Full character’d with lasting memory,   
Which shall above that idle rank remain,   
Beyond all date, even to eternity:   
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart            5
Have faculty by nature to subsist;   
Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his part   
Of thee, thy record never can be miss’d.   
That poor retention could not so much hold,   
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;     10
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,   
To trust those tables that receive thee more:   
  To keep an adjunct to remember thee   
  Were to import forgetfulness in me.   

Sonnet CXXIII.

“No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change”

NO, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change   
Thy pyramids built up with newer might   
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;   
They are but dressings of a former sight.   
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire            5
What thou dost foist upon us that is old;   
And rather make them born to our desire   
Than think that we before have heard them told.   
Thy registers and thee I both defy,   
Not wondering at the present nor the past,     10
For thy records and what we see doth lie,   
Made more or less by thy continual haste.   
  This I do vow, and this shall ever be;   
  I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.   

Sonnet CXXIV.

“If my dear love were but the child of state”

IF my dear love were but the child of state   
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,   
As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,   
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d.   
No, it was builded far from accident;            5
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls   
Under the blow of thralled discontent,   
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:   
It fears not policy, that heretic,   
Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,     10
But all alone stands hugely politic,   
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.   
  To this I witness call the fools of time,   
  Which die for goodness, who have liv’d for crime.   

Sonnet CXXV.

“Were ’t aught to me I bore the canopy”

WERE ’t aught to me I bore the canopy   
With my extern the outward honouring,   
Or laid great bases for eternity,   
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?   
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour            5
Lose all and more by paying too much rent,   
For compound sweet foregoing simple savour   
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?   
No; let me be obsequious in thy heart,   
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,     10
Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art,   
But mutual render, only me for thee.   
  Hence, thou suborn’d informer! a true soul   
  When most impeach’d stands least in thy control.