I would next call attention to portions of these Sonnets which I do not present as of themselves having any clearly determinate weight as to the age of the poet, but which do have great significance from their correspondence in tone and effect with what has been already quoted. The poet repeatedly falls into meditations or fancies which seem more natural to a person on the descending than on the ascending side of life. In Sonnets XXX. and XXXI. he says: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up _remembrance of things past_, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes _new wail my dear time's waste:_ Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For _precious friends hid in death's dateless night_, And weep afresh love's _long since_ cancell'd woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay, as if not paid before. * * * * * Thy bosom is endeared with _all hearts_, Which I _by lacking have supposed dead_; And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts, And all those _friends which I thought buried_. How many _a holy and obsequious tear_ Hath dear, religious love stol'n from mine eye, As _interest of the dead_, which now appear But things removed that hidden in thee lie! Thou art the grave _where buried love doth live_, Hung with the _trophies of my lovers gone_, Who all their parts of me to thee did give: That due of many now is thine alone: In Sonnet LXXI. he says: No longer _mourn for me when I am dead_ Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world _that I am fled_ From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe. In Sonnet CXXII. he says: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain * * * * * Beyond all date, even to eternity: Or, at the least, _so long as brain and heart_ Have faculty by nature to subsist; Till each to razed oblivion yield his part. In Sonnet CXLVI. he says: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, . . . these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having _so short_ a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.