eet 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."

And I am scarcely less persuaded that a third cluster, of nine, had
the same source. These, too, are clearly concerned with the deeper
interests and regards of private life; they carry a homefelt energy
and pathos, such as argue them to have had a far other origin than in
trials of art; they speak of compelled absences from the object that
inspired them, and are charged with regrets and confessions, such as
could only have sprung from the Poet's own breast:

"Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view;
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new:
Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely.

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.

"Accuse me thus: That I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay;
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchas'd right."

It will take more than has yet appeared, to convince me, that when the
Poet wrote these and other similar lines his thoughts were travelling
anywhere but home to the bride of his youth and mother of his
children.

I have run ahead of my theme; but it may as well be added, here, that
Francis Meres, writing in 1598, speaks of the Poet's "sugared Sonnets
among his private friends"; which indicates the purpose for which they
were written. None of them had been printed when this was said of
them. They were first collected and published in 1609; the collection
being arranged, I think, in "most admirable disorder," so that it is
scarce possible to make head or tail