Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/52

42 

I never saw that you did painting need,

And therefore to your fair no painting set;

I found, or thought I found, you did exceed

The barren tender of a poet's debt:

And therefore have I slept in your report,

That you yourself, being extant, well might show

How far a modern quill doth come too short,

Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.

This silence for my sin you did impute,

Which shall be most my glory, being dumb;

For I impair not beauty being mute,

When others would give life, and bring a tomb.

There lives more life in one of your fair eyes

Than both your poets can in praise devise.

 

Who is it that says most, which can say more

Than this rich praise,—that you alone are you,

In whose confine immured is the store

Which should example where your equal grew?

Lean penury within that pen doth dwell

That to his subject lends not some small glory;

But he that writes of you, if he can tell

That you are you, so dignifies his story.

Let him but copy what in you is writ,

Not making worse what nature made so clear,

And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,

Making his style admired everywhere.

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

 4 tender: offer to pay

5 in your report: in describing, praising, you

7 modern: ordinary

14 both your poets; Cf. n.  3, 4 In whose confine equal grew; cf. n.

10 clear: glorious

11 counterpart: reproduction

fame: give fame to

13 beauteous blessings: blessings of beauty

14 Being fond praises worse; cf. n. 