2 We're tapers too, and at our own cost die ; The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it ; prove We can die by it, if not live by love, Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; And thus invoke us, “You, whom reverend love Made one another's hermitage; You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove So made such mirrors and such spies, 2-2 But come bad chance, And we join to it our strength, And we teach it art and length, Itself o'er us to advance. When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind, But sigh'st my soul away; When thou weep'st, unkindly kind, My life's blood doth decay. LOVE'S RECORDS 13 I'LL tell thee now, dear love, what thou shalt do How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her who from Pindar could allure,14 And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, '5 And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters which have pass'd 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades Rule and example found. There the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, This book, as long-lived as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-gravèd tome |