If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
This sonnet continues with the theme of the superiority of a love which is independent of all normal human conventions, and does not seek the favour or approval of kings, princes, states, politicians, times or fashions. It stands above them all and is secure in the knowledge that it is out of reach of any of them, however malicious, erratic, irrational or unpredictable they might be. The contrast is drawn between this love and the love which is perjured, partial, and dependent on court favours, or on the politics of the time. Such debased loves, or those who indulge in them, are time’s fools and are the sport of every wind that blows and every rain that falls. But not so for this true love, which remains constant and steadfast, and will outlive the pyramids and time itself.
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