SONNETS.

TO THE

ONLY BEGETTER OF THESE ENSUING SONNETS,

MR. W. H

ALL HAPPINESS

AND THAT ETERNITY

PROMISED BY OUR EVER-LIVING POET,

WISHETH THE

WELL-WISHING ADVENTURER

IN SETTING FORTH,

T. T.1

T. T.] 1. e. Thomas Thorpe.

SONNETS.

I.

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase.
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

II.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;

To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes, Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use, If thou could'st answer-" This fair child of mine Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse-" Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new-made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

III.

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother For where is she so fair, whose un-ear'd1 womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

2

Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime :
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

IV.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, ' un-ear'd] i. e. unploughed.

2 fond] i. e. foolish.