The painful warrior famouséd for fight,1 After a thousand victories once foiled, Is from the book of honor razéd quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toiled: Then happy I, that love and am beloved Where I may not remove, nor be removed.
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit. Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it: Till whatsoever star that guides by moving Points on me graciously with fair aspéct, And puts apparel on my tattered loving, To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee, Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired
1 Fight. The original has worth. Theobald, who saw that the alternate rhyme is invariably preserved in the other Sonnets, proposed to make one of two changes; to read fight instead of worth, or forth instead of quite. We are not perfectly satisfied with either change; but as the first has been adopted in all modern editions, we will not attempt to disturb the received reading, and we have no doubt that some error is involved in the original.
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired: For then my thoughts (from far where I abide) Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul's imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
How can I then return in happy plight, That am debarred the benefit of rest? When day's oppression is not eased by night, But day by night and night by day oppressed? And each, though enemies to either's reign, Do in consent shake hands to torture me, The one by toil, the other to complain How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please him, thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven : So flatter I the swart-complexioned night;
When sparkling stars twire not, thou gild'st the
1 Twire. Malone proposed to read twirl, and Steevens conjectured that twire means quire. Gifford, in a note upon Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd," explains that in the passage before us the meaning is "when the stars do not gleam or appear at intervals." He adds, "Twire should not have been suffered to grow obsolete, for we have no word now in use that can take its place, or be considered as precisely synonymous with it in sense leer and twinkle are merely shades of it." Gifford quotes several pas
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make grief's length seem
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least ; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Holy I think on thee, and then my state. (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; 1 For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste :
sages from Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher in confirmation of his opinion. But there are four lines in Drayton's "Polyolbion' which contain a parallel use of the word:
"Suppose 'twixt noon and night the sun is half-way wrought, (The shadows to be large, by his descending brought,) Who with a fervent eye looks through the twiring glades. And his disperséd rays commixeth with the shades."
1 See Cymbeline, Illustrations of Act II.
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless' night And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe, And moan the expense of many a many a vanished
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
Thy bosom is endearéd with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposéd dead; And there reigns love and all love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious3 tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye, As interest of the dead, which now appear But things removed, that hidden in thee lie! Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give; That due of many now is thine alone: Their images I loved I view in thee, And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.
1 Dateless, endless; having no certain time of expiration. 2 If we understand expense to be used as analogous to passing away, there is no difficulty in this line. What we expend is gone from us; and so the poet moans the expense of many a vanished sight. Malone thinks that sight is used for sigh; but this is cer tainly a very strained conjecture.
If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time; And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve1 them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought! "Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."
Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack 2 on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Reserve, the same as preserve. In Pericles we have,- "Reserve that excellent complexion."
2 Rack. Tooke, in his full discussion of the meaning of this word, ("Diversions of Purley," Part II. Chap. IV.,) holds that rack means " merely that which is reeked; " and that in all the instances of its use by Shakspeare the word signifies vapor. He illustrates the passage before us by quoting the lines in the First Part of Henry IV., where the Prince in some degree justifies his course of profligacy:
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