From off a hill whose concave womb reworded / A plaintful story from a sistering vale, / My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, / And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale; / Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale, / Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, / Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. / Upon her head a platted hive of straw, / Which fortified her visage from the sun, / Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw / The carcass of beauty spent and done: / Time had not scythed all that youth begun, / Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, / Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age. / Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, / Which on it had conceited characters, / Laundering the silken figures in the brine / That season'd woe had pelleted in tears, / And often reading what contents it bears; / As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe, / In clamours of all size, both high and low. / Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride, / As they did battery to the spheres intend; / Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied / To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend / Their view right on; anon their gazes lend / To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd, / The mind and sight distractedly commix'd. / Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat, / Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride / For some, untuck'd, descended her sheaved hat, / Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside; / Some in her threaden fillet still did bide, / And true to bondage would not break from thence, / Though slackly braided in loose negligence. / A thousand favours from a maund she drew / Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet, / Which one by one she in a river threw, / Upon whose weeping margent she was set; / Like usury, applying wet to wet, / Or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall / Where want cries some, but where excess begs all. / Of folded schedules had she many a one, / Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood; / Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone / Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud; / Found yet moe letters sadly penn'd in blood, / With sleided silk feat and affectedly / Enswathed, and seal'd to curious secrecy. / These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes, / And often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear: / Cried 'O false blood, thou register of lies, / What unapproved witness dost thou bear! / Ink would have seem'd more black and damned here!' / This said, in top of rage the lines she rents, / Big discontent so breaking their contents. / A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh / Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew / Of court, of city, and had let go by / The swiftest hours, observed as they flew / Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew, / And, privileged by age, desires to know / In brief the grounds and motives of her woe. / So slides he down upon his grained bat, / And comely-distant sits he by her side; / When he again desires her, being sat, / Her grievance with his hearing to divide: / If that from him there may be aught applied / Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage, / 'Tis promised in the charity of age. / 'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold / The injury of many a blasting hour, / Let it not tell your judgment I am old; / Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power: / I might as yet have been a spreading flower, / Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied / Love to myself and to no love beside. / 'But, woe is me! too early I attended / A youthful suit, it was to gain my grace / Of one by nature's outwards so commended, / That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face: / Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place; / And when in his fair parts she did abide, / She was new lodged and newly deified. / 'His browny locks did hang in crooked curls; / And every light occasion of the wind / Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls. / What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find: / Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind, / For on his visage was in little drawn / What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn. / 'Small show of man was yet upon his chin; / His phoenix down began but to appear / Like unshorn velvet on that termless skin / Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seem'd to wear: / Yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear; / And nice affections wavering stood in doubt / If best were as it was, or best without. / 'His qualities were beauteous as his form, / For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free; / Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm / As oft 'twixt May and April is to see, / When winds breathe sweet, untidy though they be. / His rudeness so with his authorized youth / Did livery falseness in a pride of truth. / 'Well could he ride, and often men would say / 'That horse his mettle from his rider takes: / Proud of subjection, noble by the sway, / What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop / he makes!' / And controversy hence a question takes, / Whether the horse by him became his deed, / Or he his manage by the well-doing steed. / 'But quickly on this side the verdict went: / His real habitude gave life and grace / To appertainings and to ornament, / Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case: / All aids, themselves

Now is the Winter of our Discontent, / / Made glorious Summer by this Son of Yorke: / / And all the clouds that lowr’d vpon our house / / In the deepe bosome of the Ocean buried. / / Now are our browes bound with Victorious Wreathes, / / Our bruised armes hung vp for Monuments; / / Our sterne Alarums chang’d to merry Meetings; / / Our dreadfull Marches, to delightfull Measures. / / Grim-visag’d Warre, hath smooth’d his wrinkled Front: / / And now, in stead of mounting Barbed Steeds, / / To fright the Soules of fearfull Aduersaries, / / He capers nimbly in a Ladies Chamber, / / To the lasciuious pleasing of a Lute. / / But I, that am not shap’d for sportiue trickes, / / Nor made to court an amorous Looking-glasse: / / I, that am Rudely stampt, and want loues Maiesty, / / To strut before a wonton ambling Nymph: / / I, that am curtail’d of this faire Proportion, / / Cheated of Feature by dissembling Nature, / / Deform’d, vn-finish’d, sent before my time / / Into this breathing World, scarse halfe made vp, / / And that so lamely and vnfashionable, / / That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them. / / Why I (in this weake piping time of Peace) / / Haue no delight to passe away the time, / / Vnlesse to see my Shadow in the Sunne, / / And descant on mine owne Deformity. / / And therefore, since I cannot proue a Louer, / / To entertaine these faire well spoken dayes, / / I am determined to proue a Villaine, / / And hate the idle pleasures of these dayes. / / Plots haue I laide, Inductions dangerous, / / By drunken Prophesies, Libels, and Dreames, / / To set my Brother Clarence and the King / / In deadly hate, the one against the other: / / And if King Edward be as true and iust, / / As I am Subtle, False, and Treacherous, / / This day should Clarence closely be mew’d vp: / / About a Prophesie, which sayes that G, / / Of Edwards heyres the murtherer shall be. / / Diue thoughts downe to my soule, here Clarence comes.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. / In me thou see'st the twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west, / Which by and by black night doth take away, / Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. / In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire / That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, / As the death-bed whereon it must expire, / Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. / This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

When my love swears that she is made of truth, / I do believe her, though I know she lies, / That she might think me some untutor'd youth, / Unskilful in the world's false forgeries. / Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, / Although I know my years be past the best, / I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue, / Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest. / But wherefore says my love that she is young? / And wherefore say not I that I am old? / O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue, / And age, in love, loves not to have years told. / Therefore I'll lie with love, and love with me, / Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be. / Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, / That like two spirits do suggest me still; / My better angel is a man right fair, / My worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. / To win me soon to hell, my female evil / Tempteth my better angel from my side, / And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, / Wooing his purity with her fair pride. / And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend, / Suspect I may, yet not directly tell: / For being both to me, both to each friend, / I guess one angel in another's hell; / The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt, / Till my bad angel fire my good one out. / Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, / 'Gainst whom the world could not hold argument, / Persuade my heart to this false perjury? / Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. / A woman I forswore; but I will prove, / Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: / My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; / Thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me. / My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is; / Then, thou fair sun, that on this earth doth shine, / Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is: / If broken, then it is no fault of mine. / If by me broke, what fool is not so wise / To break an oath, to win a paradise? / Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook / With young Adonis, lovely, fresh, and green, / Did court the lad with many a lovely look, / Such looks as none could look but beauty's queen. / She told him stories to delight his ear; / She showed him favors to allure his eye; / To win his heart, she touch'd him here and there, / Touches so soft still conquer chastity. / But whether unripe years did want conceit, / Or he refused to take her figured proffer, / The tender nibbler would not touch the bait, / But smile and jest at every gentle offer: / Then fell she on her back, fair queen, and toward: / He rose and ran away; ah, fool too froward! / If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? / O never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow'd: / Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll constant prove; / Those thoughts, to me like oaks, to thee like osiers bow'd. / Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, / Where all those pleasures live that art can comprehend. / If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice; / Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend; / All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; / Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire: / Thine eye Jove's lightning seems, thy voice his dreadful / thunder, / Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. / Celestial as thou art, O do not love that wrong, / To sing heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue. / Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn, / And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade, / When Cytherea, all in love forlorn, / A longing tarriance for Adonis made / Under an osier growing by a brook, / A brook where Adon used to cool his spleen: / Hot was the day; she hotter that did look / For his approach, that often there had been. / Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by, / And stood stark naked on the brook's green brim: / The sun look'd on the world with glorious eye, / Yet not so wistly as this queen on him. / He, spying her, bounced in, whereas he stood: / 'O Jove,' quoth she, 'why was not I a flood!' / Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle; / Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty; / Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle; / Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty: / A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, / None fairer, nor none falser to deface her. / Her lips to mine how often hath she joined, / Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing! / How many tales to please me hath she coined, / Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing! / Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings, / Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings. / She burn'd with love, as straw with fire flameth; / She burn'd out love, as soon as straw outburneth; / She framed the love, and yet she foil'd the framing; / She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning. / Was this a lover, or a lecher whether? / Bad in the best, though excellent in neither. / If music and sweet poetry agree, / As they must needs, the sister and the brother, / Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, / Because thou lovest the one, and I the other. / Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch / Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; / Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such / As, passing all conceit, needs no defence. / Thou lovest

Let the bird of loudest lay, / On the sole Arabian tree, / Herald sad and trumpet be, / To whose sound chaste wings obey. / But thou shrieking harbinger, / Foul precurrer of the fiend, / Augur of the fever's end, / To this troop come thou not near! / From this session interdict / Every fowl of tyrant wing, / Save the eagle, feather'd king: / Keep the obsequy so strict. / Let the priest in surplice white, / That defunctive music can, / Be the death-divining swan, / Lest the requiem lack his right. / And thou treble-dated crow, / That thy sable gender makest / With the breath thou givest and takest, / 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go. / Here the anthem doth commence: / Love and constancy is dead; / Phoenix and the turtle fled / In a mutual flame from hence. / So they loved, as love in twain / Had the essence but in one; / Two distincts, division none: / Number there in love was slain. / Hearts remote, yet not asunder; / Distance, and no space was seen / 'Twixt the turtle and his queen: / But in them it were a wonder. / So between them love did shine, / That the turtle saw his right / Flaming in the phoenix' sight; / Either was the other's mine. / Property was thus appalled, / That the self was not the same; / Single nature's double name / Neither two nor one was called. / Reason, in itself confounded, / Saw division grow together, / To themselves yet either neither, / Simple were so well compounded, / That it cried, How true a twain / Seemeth this concordant one! / Love hath reason, reason none, / If what parts can so remain. / Whereupon it made this threne / To the phoenix and the dove, / Co-supremes and stars of love, / As chorus to their tragic scene. / THRENOS. / Beauty, truth, and rarity, / Grace in all simplicity, / Here enclosed in cinders lie. / Death is now the phoenix' nest / And the turtle's loyal breast / To eternity doth rest, / Leaving no posterity: / 'Twas not their infirmity, / It was married chastity. / Truth may seem, but cannot be: / Beauty brag, but 'tis not she; / Truth and beauty buried be. / To this urn let those repair / That are either true or fair / For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

TO THE / RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY, / Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Tichfield. / The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness. / Your lordship's in all duty, / WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. / Lucius Tarquinius, for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus, after he had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs, not requiring or staying for the people's suffrages, had possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons and other noblemen of Rome, to besiege Ardea. During which siege the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son, in their discourses after supper every one commended the virtues of his own wife: among whom Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they posted to Rome; and intending, by their secret and sudden arrival, to make trial of that which every one had before avouched, only Collatinus finds his wife, though it were late in the night, spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece' beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight, hastily dispatcheth messengers, one to Rome for her father, another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius; and finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and withal suddenly stabbed herself. Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins; and bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the king: wherewith the people were so moved, that with one consent and a general acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled, and the state government changed from kings to consuls. / From the besieged Ardea all in post, / Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, / Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host, / And to Collatium bears the lightless fire / Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire / And girdle with embracing flames the waist / Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste. / Haply that name of 'chaste' unhappily set / This bateless edge on his keen appetite; / When Collatine unwisely did not let / To praise the clear unmatched red and white / Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight, / Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties, / With pure aspects did him peculiar duties. / For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent, / Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state; / What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent / In the possession of his beauteous mate; / Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate, / That kings might be espoused to more fame, / But king nor peer to such a peerless dame. / O happiness enjoy'd but of a few! / And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done / As is the morning's silver-melting dew / Against the golden splendor of the sun! / An expired date, cancell'd ere well begun: / Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms, / Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms. / Beauty itself doth of itself persuade / The eyes of men without an orator; / What needeth then apologies be made, / To set forth that which is so singular? / Or why is Collatine the publisher / Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown / From thievish ears, because it is his own? / Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty / Suggested this proud issue of a king; / For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be: / Perchance that envy of so rich a thing, / Braving compare, disdainfully did sting / His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt / That golden hap which their superiors want. / But some untimely thought did instigate / His all-too-timeless speed, if none of those: / His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state, / Neglected all, with swift intent he goes / To quench the coal which in his liver glows. / O rash false

Where art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long, / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? / Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song, / Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? / Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem, / In gentle numbers time so idly spent; / Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem / And gives thy pen both skill and argument. / Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey, / If Time have any wrinkle graven there; / If any, be a satire to decay, / And make time’s spoils despised every where. / Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, / So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife.

O truant Muse what shall be thy amends / For thy neglect of truth in beauty dy’d? / Both truth and beauty on my love depends; / So dost thou too, and therein dignified. / Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say, / ‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix’d; / Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay; / But best is best, if never intermix’d’? / Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? / Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee / To make him much outlive a gilded tomb / And to be prais’d of ages yet to be. / Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how / To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming; / I love not less, though less the show appear; / That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming, / The owner’s tongue doth publish every where. / Our love was new, and then but in the spring, / When I was wont to greet it with my lays; / As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing, / And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: / Not that the summer is less pleasant now / Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, / But that wild music burthens every bough, / And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. / Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue: / Because I would not dull you with my song.

Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, / That having such a scope to show her pride, / The argument, all bare, is of more worth / Than when it hath my added praise beside! / O! blame me not, if I no more can write! / Look in your glass, and there appears a face / That over-goes my blunt invention quite, / Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. / Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, / To mar the subject that before was well? / For to no other pass my verses tend / Than of your graces and your gifts to tell; / And more, much more, than in my verse can sit, / Your own glass shows you when you look in it.