His Life and Genius 167 



named person's singular beauty, grace and wit, 

 grave deprecations of his licentious life as a gay 

 and gallant libertine, repeated exhortations to 

 marry and transmit a living copy of such precious 

 features to posterity, so that his likeness may be 

 kept alive and he survive in it, he seriously ad- 

 monishes him that youth and beauty soon fleet, 

 wasting fast by wear, and will in his case other- 

 wise perish barrenly. It is true that he now 

 makes shame lovely by his graces, gracing even 

 disgrace, so that those who blame him excuse his 

 frailties on the ground of youth, making a kind 

 of praise of their dispraise, yet he ought to take 

 heed of the certain consequences of reckless 

 excesses — 



The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, 



Though to itself it only live and die ; 

 But if that flower with base infection meet, 



The basest weed outbraves its dignity : 

 For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, 



Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 



He warns him that although his beauty is admired 

 by all, even by his foes, yet they, measuring the 

 beauty of his mind by his deeds, add dispraising 

 comments and blame. And why ? Because he 

 was too free in his loose intimacies — 



The solve is this, that thou dost common grow. 

 Solemnly, therefore, he adjures him to think of 

 the time to come when, crushed and o'erworn 

 with age, his brow filled with lines and wrinkles, 

 his beauty shall live only in the lines addressed 

 to him ; where only it does now live. 



