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CXII



Your love and pity doth the impression fill,

Which vulgar scandal stamp\'d upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill, 

So you o\'er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue;

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel\'d sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others\' voices, that my adder\'s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

  You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

  That all the world besides methinks are dead.

 	--William Shakespeare

XCI



Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,

Some in their wealth, some in their body\'s force,

Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;

Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;

And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,

Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:

But these particulars are not my measure,

All these I better in one general best.

Thy love is better than high birth to me,

Richer than wealth, prouder than garments\' costs,

Of more delight than hawks and horses be;

And having thee, of all men\'s pride I boast:

  Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take

  All this away, and me most wretchcd make.

 	--William Shakespeare

CXIV



Or whether doth my mind, being crown\'d with you,

Drink up the monarch\'s plague, this flattery?

Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,

And that your love taught it this alchemy,

To make of monsters and things indigest

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,

Creating every bad a perfect best,

As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

O! \'tis the first, \'tis flattery in my seeing,

And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is \'greeing, 

And to his palate doth prepare the cup:

  If it be poison\'d, \'tis the lesser sin

  That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

 	--William Shakespeare

Love, and do what you like.
St. Augustine