/
/
/
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal
face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot
scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame;
Affection here takes reverence's
name.
Were her first years the golden age? That's true,
But now she's gold oft tried and ever
new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,
This is her tolerable tropic
clime.
Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes
pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
They were Love's graves, for else he is no
where.
Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
Vow'd to this trench, like an
anachorit;
And here till hers, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a
tomb.
Here dwells he; though he sojourn ev'rywhere
In progress, yet his standing house is
here:
Here where still evening is, not noon nor night,
Where no voluptuousness, yet all
delight.
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at council,
sit.
This is Love's timber, youth his underwood;
There he, as wine in June, enrages
blood,
Which then comes seasonabliest when our taste
And appetite to other things is
past.
Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the platan tree,
Was lov'd for age, none being so large as
she,
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age's glory,
barrenness.
If we love things long sought, age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in
compassing;
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest
day.
But name not winter faces, whose skin's slack,
Lank as an unthrift's purse, but a soul's
sack;
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than
made;
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
To vex their souls at
resurrection:
Name not these living death's-heads unto me,
For these, not ancient, but antique
be.
I hate extremes, yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a
day.
Since such love's natural lation is, may still
My love descend, and journey down the
hill,
Not panting after growing beauties. So,
I shall ebb on with them who homeward
go.