The Sonnets (Modern)
Not Peer Reviewed
1215
82
¶I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
¶And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
¶The dedicated words which writers use
¶Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
1220Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
¶Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
¶And therefore art enforced to seek anew
¶Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
¶And do so, love; yet when they have devised
1225What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend,
¶Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized
¶In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;
¶_And their gross painting might be better used
¶_Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.
1230
83
¶I never saw that you did painting need,
¶And therefore to your fair no painting set;
¶I found (or thought I found) you did exceed
¶The barren tender of a poet's debt;
1235And therefore have I slept in your report,
¶That you yourself, being extant, well might show
¶How far a modern quill doth come too short,
¶Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
¶This silence for my sin you did impute,
1240Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;
¶For I impair not beauty, being mute,
¶When others would give life, and bring a tomb.
¶_There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
¶_Than both your poets can in praise devise.
1245
84
¶Who is it that says most which can say more
¶Than this rich praise: that you alone are you?
¶In whose confine immured is the store
¶Which should example where your equal grew?
1250Lean penury within that pen doth dwell
¶That to his subject lends not some small glory;
¶But he that writes of you, if he can tell
¶That you are you, so dignifies his story.
¶Let him but copy what in you is writ,
1255Not making worse what nature made so clear,
¶And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
¶Making his style admired everywhere.
¶_You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
¶_Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.