| |
| NO spring, nor summer 1 beauty hath such grace | |
| As I have seen in one autumnal face; | |
| Young beauties force our love, 2 and that’s a rape; | |
| This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape. | |
| If ’twere a shame to love, here ’twere no shame; | 5 |
| Affections here take reverence’s name. | |
| Were her first years the Golden Age? that’s true, | |
| But now they’re gold 3 oft tried, and ever new. | |
| That was her torrid and inflaming time; | |
| This is her tolerable 4 tropic clime. | 10 |
| Fair eyes; who asks more heat than comes from hence, | |
| He in a fever wishes pestilence. | |
| Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were, | |
| They were Love’s graves, for else 5 he is nowhere. | |
| Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit, | 15 |
| Vow’d to this trench, like an anachorite, | |
| And here, till hers, which must be his death, come, | |
| He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb. | |
| Here dwells he; though he sojourn everywhere | |
| In progress, yet his standing house is here; | 20 |
| Here, where still evening is, not noon, nor night; | |
| Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight. | |
| In all her words, unto all hearers fit, | |
| You may at revels, you at council, 6 sit. | |
| This is love’s timber; youth his underwood; | 25 |
| There he, as wine in June, enrages blood; | |
| Which then comes seasonablest, when our taste | |
| And appetite to other things is past. | |
| Xerxes’ strange Lydian love, the platane tree, | |
| Was loved for age, none being so large 7 as she; | 30 |
| Or else because, being young, nature did bless | |
| Her youth with age’s glory, barrenness. | |
| If we love things long sought, age is a thing | |
| Which we are fifty years in compassing; | |
| If transitory things, which soon decay, | 35 |
| Age must be loveliest at the latest day. | |
| But name not winter faces, whose skin’s slack, | |
| Lank as an unthrift’s purse, but a soul’s sack; 8 | |
| Whose eyes seek light within, for all here’s shade; | |
| Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out, than made; | 40 |
| Whose every tooth to a several place is gone, | |
| To vex their souls 9 at resurrection; | |
| Name not these living death-heads unto me, | |
| For these, not ancient, but antique 10 be. | |
| I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay | 45 |
| With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day. 11 | |
| Since such love’s motion natural 12 is, may still | |
| My love descend, and journey down the hill, | |
| Not panting after growing beauties; so | |
| I shall ebb out 13 with them who homeward go. | 50 |
