Page 2256 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

Wherein she fram’d thee, in high heaven’s despite,
To shame the sun by day and her by night.

«And therefore hath she brib’d the destinies
To cross the curious workmanship of nature,
To mingle beauty with infirmities [735]

And pure perfection with impure defeature,
Making it subject to the tyranny
Of mad mischances and much misery:

«As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood, [740]

The marrow-eating sickness whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief and damn’d despair,

Swear nature’s death, for framing thee so fair.

«And not the least of all these maladies [745]
But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under;
Both favour, savour, hue and qualities,
Whereat th’ impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done,
As mountain snow melts with the midday sun. [750]

«Therefore despite of fruitless chastity,
Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns,
That on the earth would breed a scarcity

And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,
Be prodigal; the lamp that burns by night [755]
Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

«What is thy body but a swallowing grave,

Seeming to bury that posterity,
Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity? [760]
If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.