| Image of her whom I love, more than she,
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| Whose fair impression in my faithful heart,
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| Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
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| As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart
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| The value: go, and take my heart from hence,
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| Which now is grown too great and good for me:
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| Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense
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| Strong objects dull; |
| the more, the less we see.
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| When you are gone, and reason gone with you,
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| Then fantasy is queen and soul, and all;
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| She can present joys meaner than you do;
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| Convenient, and more proportional.
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| So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
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| For, all our joys are but fantastical.
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| And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true;
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| And sleep which locks ups sense, doth lock out all.
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| After a such friction I shall wake,
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| And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;
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| And shall to love more thankful sonnets make,
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| Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
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| Bur dearest heart, and dearer image stay;
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| Alas, true joys at best are dream enough;
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| Though you stay here you pass too fast away:
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| For even at first life’s taper is a snuff.
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| Filled with here love, may I be rather grown
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| Mad with much heart, than idiot with none. |