HOW like a winter hath my absence been From thee the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time: The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime Like widowed wombs after their lord’s decease: Yet this abundant issue seemed to me But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit; For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And, thou away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
BEING your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend Nor services to do, till you require: Nor dare I chide the world-without-end-hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu: Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought Save, where you are how happy you make those;— So true a fool is love, that in your will Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
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 heart, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply 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; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
THEY that have power to hurt, and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,— They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces, And husband nature’s riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others, but stewards of their excellence. The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.