Nor dare I chide the world-without-e Whilft I, my fovereign, watch the cloc Nor think the bitterness of absence fou When you have bid your servant once Nor dare I queftion with my jealous th Where you may be, or your affairs fup But, like a fad flave, ftay and think of Save, where you are, how happy you m

So true a fool is love, that in your w (Though you do any thing) he think

LVIII.

That God forbid, that made me first you I fhould in thought control your times of Or at your hand the account of hours to Being your vaffal, bound to stay your lei O, let me fuffer (being at your beck) The imprison'd abfence of your liberty; And patience, tame to fufferance, bide e Without accufing you of injury.

Be where you lift; your charter is fo ftror
That you yourself may privilege your tin
Do what you will, to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of felf-doing crime.

I am to wait, though waiting fo be hell
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or w

LIX.

If there be nothing new, but that, which Hath been before, how are our brains beg

4 the world-without-end bour,] The tedious ho if it would never end. So, in Love's Labour's Loft; "a time, methinks, too short

"To make a world without end bargain in." i. e. an everlasting bargain. This fingular epithet rowed probably from our Liturgy. MALONE. 5 And patience, tame to fufferance, bide each check, "A most poor man, made tame to fortune's plea Do what you will-] The quarto reads:-To wh There can, I think, be no doubt that To was a mifprin

Which, labouring for invention, bear amifs
The second burthen of a former child?
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courfes of the fun,
Show me your image in fome antique book,
Since mind at firft in character was done?!
That I might fee what the old world could fay
To this compofed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whe'r better they,
Or whether revolution be the fame.

O! fure I am, the wits of former days

To fubjects worse have given admiring praise.

LX.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled fhore,
So do our minutes haften to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,
In fequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipfes 'gainst his glory fight,

And time that gave, doth now his gift confound".

7 Show me your image in fome antique book,

Since mind at firft in character was done!] Would that I could read a defcription of you in the earlieft manufcript that appeared after the firft ufe of letters. That this is the meaning appears clearly from the next line:

"That I might fee what the old world could fay."

Again: "the wits of former days," &c.

We yet ufe the word character in the fame fenfe. MALONE.

This may allude to the ancient cuftom of inferting real portraits among the ornaments of illuminated manufcripts, with infcriptions under them. STEEVENS.

8 or whe'r better they,] Whe'r for whether. The fame abbrevia tion occurs in Venus and Adonis, and in King John. See Vol. IV. p. 469, n. 1. MALONE.

9 Nativity once in the main of light,] In the great body of light. So, the main of waters.

MALONE.

1-bis gift confound.] To confound in Shakspeare's age generally meant to deftroy, See Vol. V. p. 506, n. 4. MALONE.

VOL. X.

R

Time

Time doth transfix the flourish set on y And delves the parallels in beauty's bro Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to And yet, to times in hope, my verse Praising thy worth, despite his cruel b

LXI.

Is it thy will, thy image fhould keep op
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Doft thou defire my flumbers fhould be b
While fhadows, like to thee, do mock my
Is it thy spirit that thou send'ft from thee
So far from home, into my deeds to pry;
To find out fhames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenour of thy jealousy?
O no! thy love, though much, is not fo g
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake
Mine own true love that doth my reft defe
To play the watchman ever for thy fake:
For thee watch I, whilft thou doft wake
From me far off, with others all-too-nea

Time doth transfix the flourish-] The external de The Comedy of Errors:

"Like painted trunks o'er-flourish'd by the de 3 And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;] Rende fore even and fmooth, rough and uneven. So, in the "When forty winters fhall befiege thy brow, "And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field." Again, in the 19th Sonnet:

-Swift-footed time,

"O carve not with thy hours my love's fair br "Nor draw no line there with thine antique p Our authour uses the word parallel in the fame fenf "How am I then a villain,

"To counfel Caffio to this parallel courfe? 4 And yet, to times in hope, my verfe fhall ftand,] So, "Strong as a tower in hope, I fay amen." ST 5 It is my love-] See p. 220, n. 8. MALONE.

LXII.

Sin of felf-love poffeffeth all mine eye,
And all my foul, and all my every part;
And for this fin there is no remedy,
It is fo grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face fo gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of fuch account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths furmount.

But when my glafs shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity",
Mine own felf-love quite contrary I read,
Self fo felf-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

LXIII.

Against my love fhall be, as I am now,

With time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn";

When

6 Methinks no face fo gracious is as mine,] Gracious was frequently ufed by our authour and his contemporaries in the sense of beautiful. So, in King John:

"There was not fuch a gracious creature born." MALONE. 7 Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,] Thus the old copy. Beated was perhaps a mifprint for 'bated. 'Bated is properly overtbrown; laid low; abated; from abattre, Fr. Hence (if this be the true reading) it is here used by our authour with his ufual licence, for disfigured; reduced to a lower or worse state than before. So, in The Merchant of Venice:

"With 'bated breath and whispering humbleness," Again, in the 63d Sonnet:

"With time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn. Beated however, the regular participle from the verb to beat, may be right. We had in a former Sonnet-weather-beaten face. In K. Henry V. we find cafed, and in Macbeth-thrufted. MALONE.

I think we should read blafted. So, in K. Henry IV. P. I:

"every part about you blafted with antiquity." STEEVENS. 8 With time's injurious band cruth'd and o'erworn ;] The old copy reads cbrufbt. I fufpect that our author wrote frush'd, a word that occurs in Troilus and Creffida:

"I'll fruit, and unlock the rivets all."
R 2

Again,

When hours have drain'd his blood, and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travell'd on to age's fteepy night";

And all thofe beauties, whereof now he's king,
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of fight,
Stealing away the treasure of his fpring;
For fuch a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he fhall never cut from memory

My fweet love's beauty, though my lover's life':
His beauty fhall in these black lines be feen,
And they shall live, and he in them ftill green.

LXIV.

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich-proud cost of out-worn bury'd age;

Again, Holinfhed in his Defcription of Ireland, p. 29: "When they are fore fruft with fickness, or fo farre withered with age." To fay that a thing is first crush'd, and then over-worn, is little better than to obferve of a man, that he was first killed, and then wounded. STEEVENS.

To frub is to bruife or batter. See Troilus and Creffida, A& V. fc. vi. What then is obtained by the change? MALONE. 9-ben bis youthful morn

Hatb travell'd on to age's fleepy night;] So in K. Richard III : "And turn my infant morn to aged night."

I once thought that the poet wrote-fleepy night. But the word travell'd fhows, I think, that the old copy is right, however incongruous the epithet fleepy may appear. So, in the 7th Sonnet:

"Lo, in the orient when the gracious light

"Lifts up his burning head

"And having climb'd the freep-up heavenly hill,

"Refembling ftrong youth in his middle age,—.'

Thefe lines fully explain what the poet meant by the fleepy night

of age.

The fame oppofition is found in the 15th Sonnet:

"Then wasteful Time debateth with decay

"To change your day of youth to fullied night."

Were it not for the antithefis which was certainly intended between morn and night, we might read:

to age's fteepy beight. MALONE.

-though my lover's life:] See p. 220, n. 8. MALONE.

When