• Ceffyl Dwr's Gallery
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  • Artist Info: O truant Muse what shall be thy amends<br />
    For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?<br />
    Both truth and beauty on my love depends;<br />
    So dost thou too, and therein dignified.<br />
    Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,<br />
    'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fixed;<br />
    Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;<br />
    But best is best, if never intermixed'?<br />
    Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?<br />
    Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee<br />
    To make him much outlive a gilded tomb<br />
    And to be praised of ages yet to be.<br />
    Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how<br />
    To make him seem, long hence, as he shows now. <br />
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    CII<br />
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    My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;<br />
    I love not less, though less the show appear;<br />
    That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,<br />
    The owner's tongue doth publish every where.<br />
    Our love was new, and then but in the spring,<br />
    When I was wont to greet it with my lays;<br />
    As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,<br />
    And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:<br />
    Not that the summer is less pleasant now<br />
    Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,<br />
    But that wild music burthens every bough,<br />
    And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.<br />
    Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:<br />
    Because I would not dull you with my song.<br />
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    CIII<br />
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    Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,<br />
    That having such a scope to show her pride,<br />
    The argument all bare is of more worth<br />
    Than when it hath my added praise beside!<br />
    O! blame me not, if I no more can write!<br />
    Look in your glass, and there appears a face<br />
    That over-goes my blunt invention quite,<br />
    Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.<br />
    Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,<br />
    To mar the subject that before was well?<br />
    For to no other pass my verses tend<br />
    Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;<br />
    And more, much more, than in my verse can sit,<br />
    Your own glass shows you when you look in it.<br />
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    CIV<br />
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    To me, fair friend, you never can be old,<br />
    For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,<br />
    Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,<br />
    Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,<br />
    Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,<br />
    In process of the seasons have I seen,<br />
    Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,<br />
    Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.<br />
    Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,<br />
    Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd;<br />
    So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,<br />
    Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv'd:<br />
    For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred:<br />
    Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.<br />
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    CV<br />
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    Let not my love be called idolatry,<br />
    Nor my beloved as an idol show,<br />
    Since all alike my songs and praises be<br />
    To one, of one, still such, and ever so.<br />
    Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,<br />
    Still constant in a wondrous excellence;<br />
    Therefore my verse to constancy confined,<br />
    One thing expressing, leaves out difference.<br />
    Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,<br />
    Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;<br />
    And in this change is my invention spent,<br />
    Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.<br />
    Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,<br />
    Which three till now, never kept seat in one.<br />
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    CVI<br />
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    When in the chronicle of wasted time<br />
    I see descriptions of the fairest wights,<br />
    And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,<br />
    In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,<br />
    Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,<br />
    Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,<br />
    I see their antique pen would have express'd<br />
    Even such a beauty as you master now.<br />
    So all their praises are but prophecies<br />
    Of this our time, all you prefiguring;<br />
    And for they looked but with divining eyes,<br />
    They had not skill enough your worth to sing:<br />
    For we, which now behold these present days,<br />
    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.<br />
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    CVII<br />
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    Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul<br />
    Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,<br />
    Can yet the lease of my true love control,<br />
    Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.<br />
    The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,<br />
    And the sad augurs mock their own presage;<br />
    Incertainties now crown themselves assured,<br />
    And peace proclaims olives of endless age.<br />
    Now with the drops of this most balmy time,<br />
    My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,<br />
    Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,<br />
    While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:<br />
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,<br />
    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.<br />
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    CVIII<br />
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    What's in the brain, that ink may character,<br />
    Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?<br />
    What's new to speak, what now to register,<br />
    That may express my love, or thy dear merit?<br />
    Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,<br />
    I must each day say o'er the very same;<br />
    Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,<br />
    Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.<br />
    So that eternal love in love's fresh case,<br />
    Weighs not the dust and injury of age,<br />
    Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,<br />
    But makes antiquity for aye his page;<br />
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred,<br />
    Where time and outward form would show it dead.<br />
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    CIX<br />
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    O! never say that I was false of heart,<br />
    Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify,<br />
    As easy might I from my self depart<br />
    As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:<br />
    That is my home of love: if I have ranged,<br />
    Like him that travels, I return again;<br />
    Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,<br />
    So that myself bring water for my stain.<br />
    Never believe though in my nature reigned,<br />
    All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,<br />
    That it could so preposterously be stained,<br />
    To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;<br />
    For nothing this wide universe I call,<br />
    Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.<br />
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    CX<br />
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    Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,<br />
    And made my self a motley to the view,<br />
    Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,<br />
    Made old offences of affections new;<br />
    Most true it is, that I have looked on truth<br />
    Askance and strangely; but, by all above,<br />
    These blenches gave my heart another youth,<br />
    And worse essays proved thee my best of love.<br />
    Now all is done, have what shall have no end:<br />
    Mine appetite I never more will grind<br />
    On newer proof, to try an older friend,<br />
    A god in love, to whom I am confined.<br />
    Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,<br />
    Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.<br />
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    CXI<br />
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    O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,<br />
    The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,<br />
    That did not better for my life provide<br />
    Than public means which public manners breeds.<br />
    Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,<br />
    And almost thence my nature is subdued<br />
    To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:<br />
    Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed;<br />
    Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink<br />
    Potions of eisell 'gainst my strong infection;<br />
    No bitterness that I will bitter think,<br />
    Nor double penance, to correct correction.<br />
    Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,<br />
    Even that your pity is enough to cure me.<br />
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    CXII<br />
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    Your love and pity doth the impression fill,<br />
    Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;<br />
    For what care I who calls me well or ill,<br />
    So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?<br />
    You are my all-the-world, and I must strive<br />
    To know my shames and praises from your tongue;<br />
    None else to me, nor I to none alive,<br />
    That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.<br />
    In so profound abysm I throw all care<br />
    Of others' voices, that my adder's sense<br />
    To critic and to flatterer stopped are.<br />
    Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:<br />
    You are so strongly in my purpose bred,<br />
    That all the world besides methinks y'are dea
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