Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Both grace and faults are lov’d of more and less: 
Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. 
As on the finger of a throned queen
The basest jewel will be well esteem’d,
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated, and for true things deem’d. 
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
If like a lamb he could his looks translate! 
How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! 
  But do not so; I love thee in such sort,
  As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

XCVII

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! 
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! 
What old December’s bareness everywhere! 
And yet this time removed was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease: 
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute: 
  Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
  That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

XCVIII

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. 
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: 
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. 
  Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,
  As with your shadow I with these did play.

XCIX

The forward violet thus did I chide: 
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath?  The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d. 
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,
And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath;
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death. 
  More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
  But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee.