The Fourth Decade

Needs must I leave and yet needs must I love;In vain my wit doth tell in verse my woe;Despair in me, disdain in thee, doth showHow by my wit I do my folly prove.All this my heart from love can never move.Love is not in my heart. No, Lady, no,My heart is love itself. Till I foregoMy heart I never can my love remove.How can I then leave love? I do intendNot to crave grace, but yet to wish it still;Not to praise thee, but beauty to commend;And so, by beauty's praise, praise thee I will;For as my heart is love, love not in me,So beauty thou, beauty is not in thee.

Sweet sovereign, since so many minds remainObedient subjects at thy beauty's call,So many hearts bound in thy hairs as thrall,So many eyes die with one look's disdain,Go, seek the honour that doth thee pertain,That the Fifth Monarchy may thee befall!Thou hast such means to conquer men withal,As all the world must yield or else be slain.To fight, thou need'st no weapons but thine eyes,Thine hair hath gold enough to pay thy men,And for their food thy beauty will suffice;For men and armour, Lady, care have none;For one will sooner yield unto thee thenWhen he shall meet thee naked all alone.

When your perfections to my thoughts appear,They say among themselves, "O happy we,Whichever shall so rare an object see!"But happy heart, if thoughts less happy were!For their delights have cost my heart full dear,In whom of love a thousand causes be,And each cause breeds a thousand loves in me,And each love more than thousand hearts can bear.How can my heart so many loves then hold,Which yet by heaps increase from day to day?But like a ship that's o'ercharged with gold,Must either sink or hurl the gold away.But hurl not love; thou canst not, feeble heart;In thine own blood, thou therefore drowned art!

Fools be they that inveigh 'gainst Mahomet,Who's but a moral of love's monarchy.But a dull adamant, as straw by jet,He in an iron chest was drawn on high.In midst of Mecca's temple roof, some say,He now hangs without touch or stay at all.That Mahomet is she to whom I pray;May ne'er man pray so ineffectual!Mine eyes, love's strange exhaling adamants,Un'wares, to my heart's temple's height have wroughtThe iron idol that compassion wants,Who my oft tears and travails sets at nought.Iron hath been transformed to gold by art;Her face, limbs, flesh and all, gold; save her heart.

Ready to seek out death in my disgrace,My mistress 'gan to smooth her gathered brows,Whereby I am reprieved for a space.O hope and fear! who half your torments knows?It is some mercy in a black-mouthed judgeTo haste his prisoner's end, if he must die.Dear, if all other favour you shall grudge,Do speedy execution with your eye;With one sole look you leave in me no soul!Count it a loss to lose a faithful slave.Would God, that I might hear my last bell toll,So in your bosom I might dig a grave!Doubtful delay is worse than any fever,Or help me soon, or cast me off for ever!

Each day, new proofs of new despair I find,That is, new deaths. No marvel then, though IMake exile my last help; to th'end mine eyeShould not behold the death to me assigned.Not that from death absence might save my mind,But that it might take death more patiently;Like him, the which by judge condemned to die,To suffer with more ease, his eyes doth blind.Your lips in scarlet clad, my judges be,Pronouncing sentence of eternal "No!"Despair, the hangman that tormenteth me;The death I suffer is the life I have.For only life doth make me die in woe,And only death I for my pardon crave.

The richest relic Rome did ever viewWas' Caesar's tomb; on which, with cunning hand,Jove's triple honours, the three fair Graces, stand,Telling his virtues in their virtues true.This Rome admired; but dearest dear, in youDwelleth the wonder of the happiest land,And all the world to Neptune's furthest strand,For what Rome shaped hath living life in you.Thy naked beauty, bounteously displayed,Enricheth monarchies of hearts with love;Thine eyes to hear complaints are open laid;Thine eyes' kind looks requite all pains I prove;That of my death I dare not thee accuse;But pride in me that baser chance refuse.

Why thus unjustly, say, my cruel fate,Dost thou adjudge my luckless eyes and heart,The one to live exiled from that sweet smart,Where th' other pines, imprisoned without date?My luckless eyes must never more debateOf those bright beams that eased my love apart;And yet my heart, bound to them with love's dart,Must there dwell ever to bemoan my state.O had mine eyes been suffered there to rest,Often they had my heart's unquiet eased;Or had my heart with banishment been blest,Mine eye with beauty never had been pleased!But since these cross effects hath fortune wrought,Dwell, heart, with her; eyes, view her in my thought!

Hope, like the hyaena, coming to be old,Alters his shape, is turned into despair.Pity my hoary hopes, Maid of clear mould!Think not that frowns can ever make thee fair.What harm is it to kiss, to laugh, to play?Beauty's no blossom, if it be not used.Sweet dalliance keeps the wrinkles long away;Repentance follows them that have refused.To bring you to the knowledge of your good,I seek, I sue. O try and then believe!Each image can be chaste that's carved of wood.You show you live, when men you do relieve.Iron with wearing shines; rust wasteth treasure.On earth but love there is no other pleasure.