“O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”
“Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”
“Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,My love shall in my verse ever live young”
“You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate, And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst; But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate, For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate, Take this of me, Kate of my consolation; Hearing thy mildness praised in every town, Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded, Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs, Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.”
“Is it thy will, thy image should keep openMy heavy eyelids to the weary night?Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from theeSo far from home into my deeds to pry,To find out shames and idle hours in me,The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,To play the watchman ever for thy sake:For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,From me far off, with others all too near.”
“Love is too young to know what conscience is, Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove: For, thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body's treason; My soul doth tell my body that he may Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason, But rising at thy name doth point out thee, As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride, He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call Her 'love,' for whose dear love I rise and fall.”
“O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou beWhen time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case?Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow,That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow?Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feetWhere thou and I henceforth may never meet.”