107
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom. 4
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 8
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rime,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: 12
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
108
What's in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit? 4
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name. 8
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page; 12
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.
1–4 Cf. n.
5 mortal: deadly (?); cf. n.
6 presage: presentiment
10 subscribes: submits
13 in this: in this verse
1 character: write
3 register: record
9 in love's fresh case: always renewed
11 gives . . . place: withdraws when wrinkles must come
13, 14 Cf. n.
