The Complete Works of William Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
69
Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view, Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend: All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due, Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned, But those same tongues that give thee so thine own, In other accents do this praise confound By seeing farther than the eye hath shown. They look into the beauty of thy mind, And that in guess they measure by thy deeds, Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind) To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, The soil is this, that thou dost common grow. That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair, The ornament of beauty is suspect, A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve, Thy worth the greater being wooed of time, For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, And thou present’st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, Either not assailed, or victor being charged, Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, To tie up envy, evermore enlarged, If some suspect of ill masked not thy show, Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.