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If you were I and I were you,
How could I love you, say?

How could the roseleaf love the rue,
The day love nightfall and her dew,
Though night may love the day?

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

LXXXIX.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

HIS LADY'S BEAUTY.

GIVE place, ye lovers, here before

That spent your boasts and brags in vain ; My Lady's beauty passeth more

The best of yours, I dare well sayen,

Than doth the sun the candlelight,

Or brightest day the darkest night.

And thereto hath a troth as just
As had Penelope the fair;
For what she sayeth ye may it trust,
As it by writing sealed were;-

And virtues hath she many mo'
Than I with pen have skill to show.

I could rehearse, if that I would,

The whole effect of Nature's plaint, When she had lost the perfect mould,

The like to whom she could not paint :
With wringing hands, how did she cry!
And what she said, I know it, I.

I know she swore, with raging mind,
Her kingdom only set apart,

There was no loss by law of kind

That could have gone so near her heart;

And this was chiefly all her pain,

She could not make the like again.

Sith Nature thus gave her the praise
To be the chiefest work she wrought,
In faith, methink, some better ways
On your
behalf might well be sought,
Than to compare, as ye have done,
To match the candle with the sun.

XC.

Henry, Earl of Surrey.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

BEAUTY PREFIGURED.

WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best

Of hand, of foot, of lips, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have exprest
Ev'n such beauty as you master now.
So all the praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing;

For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. William Shakespeare.

XCI.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

HIS LOVE'S ETERNAL SUMMER.

SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease has all too short a date :

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed :

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed : But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare.

XCII.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

NATURE'S THEFT FROM LOVE.

THE forward violet thus did I chide :

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If not from my love's breath? The purple pride

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemnèd for thy hand,

And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair :
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
But, for his theft, in spite of all his growth,
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.

William Shakespeare.

XCIII.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

FAIR, KIND, AND TRUE.

LET not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my belovèd as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
'Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,

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"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. "Fair, kind, and true" have often lived alone,

Which three till now never kept seat in one.

William Shakespeare.

XCIV.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

SYLVIA.

WHO is Sylvia? what is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heavens such grace did lend her,

That she might admired be.

Is she kind, as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness;

Love doth to her eyes repair,

To help him of his blindness;
And, being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Sylvia let us sing,
That Sylvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling:
To her let us garlands bring.

William Shakespeare.

XCV.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

ROSALINE.

LIKE to the clear in highest sphere
Where all imperial glory shines,
Of selfsame colour is her hair.
Whether unfolded or in twines;
Heigh-ho, fair Rosaline !

Her eyes are sapphires set in snow,
Resembling heaven by every wink;
The gods do fear whenas they glow,
And I do tremble when I think :
Heigh-ho, would she were mine!

Her cheeks are like the blushing cloud
That beautifies Aurora's face,

Or like the silver crimson shroud
That Phoebus' smiling looks doth grace;
Heigh-ho, fair Rosaline !

Her lips are like two budded roses
Whom ranks of lilies neighbour nigh,
Within which bounds she balm encloses,
Apt to entice a deity :

Heigh-ho, would she were mine!

Her neck is like a stately tower
Where Love himself imprisoned lies,
To watch for glances every hour
From her divine and sacred eyes :
Heigh-ho, for Rosaline !

Her paps are centres of delight,
Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame,
Where Nature moulds the dew of light
To feed perfection with the same :

Heigh-ho, would she were mine!

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