| ’TIS better to be vile than vile esteem’d | |
| When not to be receives reproach of being; | |
| And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’d | |
| Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing: | |
| For why should others’ false adulterate eyes | 5 |
| Give salutation to my sportive blood? | |
| Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, | |
| Which in their wills count bad what I think good? | |
| No, I am that I am, and they that level | |
| At my abuses reckon up their own: | 10 |
| I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; | |
| By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown; | |
| Unless this general evil they maintain, | |
| All men are bad and in their badness reign. |