- I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
- And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook
- The dedicated words which writers use
- Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
- Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
- Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;
- And therefore art enforced to seek anew
- Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
- And do so, love; yet when they have devis’d,
- What strained touches rhetoric can lend,
- Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz’d
- In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend;
- And their gross painting might be better us’d
- Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus’d.