Calling to mind since first my love begun,

Where in the map of all my miseryIs modell’d out the world of my disgrace.Whilst, in despite of tyrannizing times,Medea-like, I make thee young again,Proudly thou scorn’st my world-outwearing rhymesAnd murtherest virtue with thy coy disdain.And though in youth my youth untimely perish,To keep thee from oblivion and the graveEnsuing ages yet my rhymes shall…

Who, having now brought on his end with care,Leaves to his son all he had heap’d together;This new rich novice, lavish of his chest,To one man gives, doth on another spend,Then here he riots, yet among the restHaps to lend some to one true honest friend.Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste,False friends thy kindness,…

Nor thou nor I the better yet can have;Bad is the match where neither party won.I offer free conditions of fair peace,My heart for hostage that it shall remain;Discharge our forces, here let malice cease,So for my pledge thou give me pledge again.Or if no thing but death will serve thy turn,Still thirsting for subversion…

From age to age what thou hast sought to see,One in whom all the excellencies be,In whom Heav’n looks itself as in a glass.Time, look thyself in this tralucent glass,And thy youth past in this pure mirror see,As the world’s beauty in his infancy,What is was then, and thou before it was.Pass on, and to…

Sometimes what Schoolmen scarcely can decide,Nor yet wise Reason absolutely knows.In making trial of a murther wrought,If the vile actors of the heinous deedNear the dead body happily be brought,Oft it hath been prov’d the breathless corse will bleed.She’s coming near, that my poor heart hath slain,Long since departed, to the world no more,The ancient…

The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,First unto Athens brought philosophy:In this fair region on a goodly plain,Stretching her bounds unto the bord’ring main,The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,Smiling to see the ocean billows play:Latmus, where young Endymion used to keepHis fairest flock of silver-fleeced…

O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adoreThy crystal stream, refined by her eyes,Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the springGently distills his nectar-dropping showers,Where nightingales in Arden sit and singAmongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers;Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen:Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand’ring years,And in these shades, dear nymph, he…

With heavy sighs whilst thus I break the air,Painting my passions in these sad designs,Since she disdains to bless my happy verse,The strong-built trophies to her living fame,Ever henceforth my bosom be your hearse,Wherein the world shall now entomb her name.Enclose my music, you poor senseless walls,Since she is deaf and will not hear my…

Where most I lost, there most of all I wan,Pined with hunger rising from a feast.Methinks I fly, yet want I legs to go,Wise in conceit, in act a very sot,Ravish’d with joy amid a hell of woe;What most I seem, that surest am I not.I build my hopes a world above the sky,Yet with…

Nor now to prove our chanceLonger will tarry;But putting to the main,At Caux, the mouth of Seine,With all his martial trainLanded King Harry.And taking many a fort,Furnish’d in warlike sort,Marcheth tow’rds AgincourtIn happy hour;Skirmishing day by dayWith those that stopp’d his way,Where the French gen’ral layWith all his power.Which, in his height of pride,King Henry…

Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust,The diamond shall once consume to dust,And freshest colors with foul stains disgrac’d;Paper and ink can paint but naked words,To write with blood of force offends the sight;And if with tears I find them all too light,And sighs and signs a silly hope affotds,O sweetest shadow, how thou…

There was a time you told me that you would;But now again you will the same deny,If it might please you, would to God you could.What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not, neither.Nor love nor hate, how then? What will you do?What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either,Or will you love…