| |
| IF shadows be the picture’s excellence | |
| And make it seem more lively to the sense; | |
| If stars in the bright day are lost from sight | |
| And seem most glorious in the mask of Night; | |
| Why should you think, rare creature, that you lack | 5 |
| Perfection, ’cause your eyes and hair are black, | |
| Or that your heavenly beauty, which exceeds | |
| The new sprung lilies in their maidenheads, | |
| The damask colour of your cheeks and lips, | |
| Should suffer by their darkness and eclipse? | 10 |
| Rich diamonds shine brightest being set | |
| And compassed within a field of jet; | |
| Nor were it fit that Nature should have made | |
| So bright a sun to shine without some shade. | |
| It seems that Nature, when she first did fancy | 15 |
| Your rare composure, studied necromancy; | |
| That when to you this gift she did impart | |
| She usèd altogether the black art, | |
| By which infusèd powers from magic book | |
| You do command, like spirits, with a look. | 20 |
| She drew those magic circles in your eyes, | |
| And made your hair the chains with which she ties | |
| Rebelling hearts. Those blue veins, which appear | |
| Winding meanders about either sphere, | |
| Mysterious figures are; and when you list, | 25 |
| Your voice commandeth as the exorcist. | |
| O, if in magic you have power so far, | |
| Vouchsafe to make me your familiar. | |
| Nor hath dame Nature her black art reveal’d | |
| To outward parts alone, some lie conceal’d. | 30 |
| For as by heads of springs men often know | |
| The nature of the streams which run below, | |
| So your black hair and eyes do give direction | |
| To think the rest to be of like complexion; | |
| That rest where all rest lies that blesseth man, | 35 |
| That Indian mine, that strait of Magellan, | |
| That world-dividing gulf, where he who ventures | |
| With swelling sails and ravish’d senses, enters | |
| To a new world of bliss. Pardon, I pray, | |
| If my rude Muse presumeth to display | 40 |
| Secrets unknown, or hath her bounds o’er pass’d | |
| In praising sweetness which I ne’er did taste. | |
| Starved men do know there’s meat, and blind men may, | |
| Though hid from light, presume there is a day. | |
| The rover in the mark his arrow strikes | 45 |
| Sometimes as well as he that shoots at pricks; | |
| And if that I might aim my shaft aright, | |
| The black mark I would hit and not the white. | |
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