Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me

For that sweet odor which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumèd tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their maskèd buds discloses ;

But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwooed and unrespected fade, 10 Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made:

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

7

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store; 10
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on
men,

And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.