Is it thy will, thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry,

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?

O no, thy love though much, is not so great,

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,

And all my soul, and all my every part;

And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart. 

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,

And for my self mine own worth do define,

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me my self indeed

beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:

Self, so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,

Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Against my love shall be as I am now

With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn,

When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow

With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn

Hath travelled on to age's steepy night,

And all those beauties whereof now he's king

Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,

Stealing away the treasure of his spring: 

For such a time do I now fortify

Against confounding age's cruel knife,

That he shall never cut from memory

My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.