106 When in the chronicle of wasted time, I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights, Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have expressed, Even such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but prophecies Of this our time, all you prefiguring, And for they looked but with divining eyes, They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. 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, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage, Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 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 rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes. 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 figured to thee my true spirit, What's new to speak, what now to register, That may express my love, or thy dear merit? 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 hallowed thy fair name. 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, Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead. 109 O never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seemed my flame to qualify, As easy might I from my self depart, As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love, if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, So that my self bring water for my stain, Never believe though in my nature reigned, All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good: For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.